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Do you all know this famous battle scene in Braveheart where Mel Gibson commands his troops to “hold … hooold … hoooooold.” After an excruciatingly long wait, he finally goes in for the attack and wins the battle. As a host who is waiting out to get long-term bookings (our primary and most desirable type of guest) for as long as possible, these words ring in my ear. So this is our strategy which we developed over the past few months and I’m wondering if anyone else has this strategy.
Hold out for 28+ days bookings 21 days before availability. 28+ days enquiries essentially have exclusive access to our listing.
If that fails to book, hold out for 7+ days bookings 14 days before availability. Now the 28+ers are competing with the 7+ers.
If that fails to book, get 2+ days bookings 7 days before availability. Now 28+ers, 7+ers and 2+ers are competing for the place.
We are competitively priced so if we don’t manage to get a 28 or 7 day booking, we are pretty much guaranteed a 2+ days booking even on short notice. We just prefer the long-term guests because we don’t have to do turnovers etc.
Does anyone else have this “hold” strategy? How long do you hold out for to allow the long-term guest to book? Is 14 days before availability before we switch to 7+ too conservative? I’m genuinely interested in feedback in this.
For some unexplained reason, my downstairs rental until is also listed on Google, under Lodgings in my small mountain community.
There is an unremovable Google review (like Yelp), where a stranger gave me a 1-star rating because I am not a hotel, but a private-home that does not serve breakfasts to guests. I replied in the comment section we are an Airbnb (without breakfast), but we provide free coffee, tea and packaged pastries to our guests.
You might receive similar negative public comments, if short-term bookings (one to three nights) are not available.
I prefer not to have long-term guests and I prefer booking that aren’t very far out. One disadvantage on Airbnb to having fewer and longer bookings is that you are less busy and have fewer reviews. It seems that the way airbnb works is that the busier you are the busier you will be.
However I’ve also heard that Airbnb prioritizes search rank according to what kind of bookings you usually have. So because I do well with the last minute, short stays my listing moves up in the ranks the closer to the stay it is. Someone searching for a 10 day stay in August won’t even see my listing. Literally, it’s not there unless I zoom way in on the map. So in that case someone who knows a location they want to be near and searches in that area might zoom in enough.
This month I had someone book for 12 days (my current max is set to 14, sometimes it’s set to one) and then cancel. Within a couple of days I got another request for 11 days in that same time frame. This is unusual for my listing.
I’m on the Jersey Shore, so I don’t get 28 day bookings. This year we changed the availability for 7 nights. Then changed it to 5 nights and finally 4 nights. We’re actually making more earnings this summer. Last year the availabiity was 3 nights so basically the home was rented only on weekends. So I totally agree with your plan.
What kind of listing you have and for how many guests?
Mine is whole-home, 4 bedrooms, 8 guests, and not a tourist area. I set my max stay at 14 days to ensure proper cleaning and maintenance, but somebody posted an article a couple months ago on the psychological aspects of longer stays and how stays longer than about 10 days start affecting people.
I dont allow that long term booking. First, in the spare bedrooms in the house where I live I don’t want to be stuck with unknown people I wouldn’t get along with, therefore I prefer short stays (a few days only).
The other house, I make more money if it’s rented by a group rather than an individual who would occupy just one room and thus preventing the house to be booked by a group.
Also I’m in a city, no major attraction. No group would book my house for 28 days
It’s a one bedroom guest suite attached to our house for max two guests. It is completely private and days, even weeks could go by until we coincidentally bump into our guests near the entrance for instance. The area is not very touristy. Our main market are business people, international students or people in-between house moves. We like long-term guests because once we did a thorough check in and supplied them with all the towels, bedding and so forth, they just take care of the stay themselves. There is the occasional message asking for some merging related to the flat but that’s pretty much it. Guests seem to like the privacy too though we are always on standby to help out. Perhaps the above explains why 28+ days stays are so desirable for us.
I am not comparable to your strategy at this point. I take whatever length booking comes at whatever date it comes. I actually just got an inquiry for a 6 month rental starting in November but likely just tire kickers. About half my bookings are same day, a quarter within a few Fay’s and the rest run the gamut. As I get more and better reviews though, my bookings seem to get a little more notice.
Yup, I know about those. In my experience anyone enquiring this far in advance is usually not serious about booking. It’s the ones that check about a month in advance that I watch out for - they tend to be quite serious.
How long is your shortest lease? Our main market is people wanting to stay from between 2 weeks to about 2.5 months. Anyone staying for 6 months would rent a place on the open market.
@suntory I start with a minimum stay of 28 days and as the date gets closer I, periodically, reduce the minimum stay, but generally not lower than 7 days. I want to attract little old ladies coming to visit the grandchildren who live nearby and not the 3-day party crowd. Also, the idea of dealing with cleaning, re-stocking, etc, every couple of days would drive me crazy…
@Brian_R170 Sure, you can set different minimum of days for whatever period that you want; go to calendar and see at the upper right part of the page “availability settings” and set the specific minimum number of days for whatever date range you want.
This is an opportunity for you. Start asking guests to review you on google, tell them someone left you an unfair review and you need to bury it, people like to help. I went from one 1* review to 10+ 5’s and now my Google rating is 4.5.
Pretty much anyone can leave a Google review. You could try to flag it but they won’t care. There is really no way to fight these. But, you can easily get a bunch in your favor and then the 1 star person looks like a petulant child.
Google has no knowledge of whether someone stayed there or not - so just do what you need to do.
