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And what about the other issues I raised about the poor reputation and ratings of the property management company you have chosen?
What about the fact that you don’t have access to your own listing and will lose your ratings and reviews if you decide to use another company or host yourself.
You don’t understand what I’m saying. Nothing changes about what you do. The difference is that reviews go to you and you have full control over your Airbnb listing, not Evolve, so you’re not dragged down by Evolve’s poor reputation and you can easily change property management companies. They way you have it now, you can’t change property management companies without creating a new listing, which means you have to move existing reservations and start over with your reviews.
I am not even quite sure what you are asking. If you didn’t already know…the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area of Tennessee is one of the most cut throat places to market a property in the United States. And I also know Christmas is huge. So, I know those Christmas pics being okay year round. Christmas season starts early and ends late. The entire area markets Christmas for months!
Now Evolve has some sort of partnership with Homeaway. To be honest, I have not kept up on the most recent industry changes. Evolve’s reputation is “better” but in the past was very poor. You need to decide what you feel is worth their services.
BTW - there are people I know in the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area and they have success with regional sites. I could probably try to google to find the one I have heard consistently about.
Honestly, you could easily deal with the bookings youself, if that’s all they’re doing. It’s really not that big a deal. It certainly isn’t worthwhile to pay someone else to do that if it means you don’t get to benefit from the reviews and ratings that you and your housekeeper are essentially earning.
So you are paying them for doing nothing in a highly competitive area with far too many listings, and it’s THEIR listing, not yours. At the most they should be cohost, and it should be YOUR listing. My advice since yours is a relatively new listing is to cancel with them, and set up your own listing. Even though you have a full time job, you can either use Instant Book or answer booking requests within 24 hours. Most Air bookings do NOT require talking to guests on the phone. And the listing will be yours, not theirs, with their poor ratings dragging yours down.
Continuing to allow these inept “property managers” to keep your property on their listing is not a way to improve bookings. Taking control and running your own business is.
I have read this thread, day by day, as it has gone along. My memory of every post is probably not clear, because I haven’t read them all at once.
However, the OP seems concerned about not getting the type of property promotion that he or she wants. (Sorry I don’t know the person’s gender.) I think there have been a lot of good suggestions and valid questions here from other hosts.
My perception is that the OP is resistant to all the suggestions. That doesn’t encourage me to make any additional suggestions.
If the OP’s management company isn’t doing the job that the OP wants, then I can’t imagine why anyone would stay with that company.
I have business cards. I keep them in the condo for guests to pick up. I have somewhat of a logo on my website.
How do I find out about joining a tourism bureau? You aren’t the first to mention that. Sounds interesting.
Look up the local tourist bureau and call them.
I have been given some really good advice that I have used and will use. I was originally asking what kinds of things I could do to find new guests to be directed to my listings.
Like I said, I have posted on Craigslist and Facebook. I have now posted on Twitter after the advice from someone on here. Someone also suggested instagram, which I know VERY little about. I’d still like for someone to tell me how I can get that to work for me.
Even though I have been on here for over 4 days now, I keep getting a message that says, “You’ve reached the maximum number of replies a new user can create on their first day. Please wait 9 hours before trying again.”
I guess this will count as one of mine for today if it is still doing it. I am unable to respond to several great comments because of this.
No, I am paying them to take calls when I am unavailable. They also set up my ads and a few other things, but they charge a very low %age.
Why would you need someone to answer the phone for an AirBnB listing? The whole idea is that you don’t have to answer the phone, folks book online. In 2 years I have had 2 calls about Air rental, one from a neighbor, another host looking for a place for a guest that wanted to stay several more days when she was booked, and one from Air wanting to rehost someone on notice too short for me.
@gigman7 The only time I ever have a phone call from an Airbnb guest is when they arrive in town and I ask them to call or text me so I can come pick them up at the bus station (easier than them trying to find my remote house and only a 5 minute drive for me).
All other communication with guests happen through the Airbnb messaging system.
I think your property managers have given you a false idea of how most hosts manage their lisitngs and communicate with guests.
I think because it’s listed on multiple booking sites, but yeah, the reality is that they are mostly automated and you really could do this yourself.
They have already had a few calls. It’s on 4 sites if you count HomeAway and VRBO as one.
I had a different pm for about a year and a half. They charged 40%. After nickle and diming me it was more like I got 40%. I am tickled to pay Evolve 10% to do what they are doing.
You’ve been given many, many great leads and feedback about Evolve and your listing. You’ve even been rude to someone who actually does social media marketing for entrepreneurs and Fortune 1000 companies (me) who offered to give you lessons. I was considering an hour for free, but at this point, you keep asking us all to spoon feed you, so my consulting rates of $100 an hour apply.
At this point you’re phishing and hoping that if this thread stays on top long enough, you’ll have garnered enough clicks to help your listing even though Air also counts the booking percentages into their algorithm.
You have a logo, cards, website, and a management company. I stand by my original statement that you’re part of Evolve and phishing. If not, then you’re just asking folks here to do your work for you.
Figure it out. We did. And many before you did it without the help of this forum. Some of us have been marketing since pre-internet days.
I’m starting to smell fish, too.
Go phish 
(preferably somewhere else)
202020202-2-2
Why is Evolve taking calls. (that’s not how the main platforms work) How many views have they had for your property? How many calls?
Why are these views and calls not converting. This is what you should ask yourself.
And why are you wasting time playing about with social media.
Quite honestly if you have time to mess about with social media you have time to manage your own listing.
Interesting that you refuse to comment on why you are continuing to use a property management company which has hundreds of listings posted with low ratings.