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Early this year we set up a wing of our home for self-contained accommodation and listed it on Airbnb. It is in a great location with fabulous views, and we have been very happy with our guests and their reviews.
As a couple with family in both Australia and Brazil we spend periods of the year in both locations, and in the past we have used house-sitter sites to find and vet people to care for our home and dog while we are overseas. I always thought this a pretty sweet deal for the sitters, with them enjoying a marvelous vacation while I cover the $8k/month mortgage, utilities and rates!
It was my intention to do the same this year, blocking out the Airbnb listings while we are away, but then I got to thinking that the vetting and reviews already done by Airbnb on their hosts is at least good or better than that done by the house-sitting sites. And as the hosts are already familiar with Airbnb hosting, perhaps the apartment or rooms thereof could continue to be listed while they looked after the place, hopefully a win-win situation.
I’m not sure how common this situation is, but possibly it could become another function of the Airbnb web service, allowing hosts to find other hosts willing to take on their hosting responsibilities while they both get a well-earned vacation?
Anyway, I’d like to hear what others think of this idea.
I’m heading off to sunnier climes mid September!
A great idea and well done. We will be away in November for the AirBnB open and were initially going to “close” our calendar for our dates away. Trouble is, an expense of the conference plus the added expense of no bookings. Not good. Fortunately a really good friend can come and house sit in our absence. (He is very experienced at hosting). However if he was away, then your idea is awesome! A win win on both sides.
It’s a great idea, but would need a sizable number of parties to cover everyone’s required schedule. One idea would be to set up a site with calendar matchmaking facilities.
I noticed the other week that AirBnB added a tab under “Calendar and more” for adding another host to help with managing your listing.
I suppose at this point you’d have to either add friends and family, or hunt for an available host through the forums, either one like this or the official AirBnB host groups.
Come to think of it, I’d really like to try to find another host to do this for - December/January is a busy, busy time here.
Thanks for pointing that out @Sonya_Wilson, I heard it was coming but hadn’t found it, due to the “Management->Additional Host” section being scrolled out of view on my screen. Perhaps the “NEW” flagged features should be shown at the top of the list!
In any case it looks to be an ideal component in implementing this feature, now we just need a way to locate people looking to participate.
Well, spotted @cassid, I’ve located it and applied to join the group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/airbnbhostswap/
I still think this would be a great feature to add to Airbnb, but hopefully the Facebook group will work until that happens
Following up on the FB swap group suggested by @cassid I joined and took a look, but that is currently based around host swapping, and doesn’t provide for an experienced host to come in and manage the listing while the primary host takes a break.
Interesting idea,I saw people based in Ireland who will do that for you, run your listing for you. I sure if you search other locations you might find something
I"m wondering what the financial benefit is for both parties, how does that work? Because obviously the owner has expenses they have to cover, but the host doing the work has to make money too. I wonder how it’s all set up.
With the house sitting sites I’ve seen it is left up to the parties, and would depend on circumstances. Using a house sitter I’m still paying off a $9,000 a month mortgage on the house, the sitter gets free accommodation and looks after it for me. If they can host for me too we both make something from it, I’d probably suggest a 50:50 share. But a big benefit is the AirBnb references, which can add to peace of mind.
I’ve just been talking to a host from Uruguay with great references who would love to host our place in Australia for a few weeks while on vacation here, but the timing just misses. I found her by chance on a house sitter site, if Airbnb had a way to find matches from their huge host database it would be so much simpler.
