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Good Afternoon! We have recently listed our entire house, in Charleston, SC. It will be open from May 25th-August 20. We have two weekends booked, but I’m wondering how to get people to start REALLY booking. I have asked friends locally and many have said that a lot of people book with not much advance notice. Is this the case or are there things I can do to ensure booking?
Thanks so much!
Have you spoken to your local tourism visitor organisation?
There’s nothing much you can do to ensure bookings, but a number of things you can do that will promote bookings. It sounds as if you may not have read and absorbed the Airbnb materials about setting up and listing your property. First of all, as a new listing you get a couple months of ‘preferential presentation’ of your listing over other, older listings.
When is your prime tourist season in Charleston? I was stationed at Shaw Air Force Base back in the day, and don’t remember late Spring/early Summer as a tourist High Season. So if tourism is slow you may start slow no matter what you do.
Post the URL of your listing so we can take a look at your verbage and photos.
The right (or wrong) verbage and/or photos can make or break the allure of your listing. There are things you really need to say, that you may not have, and vice versa. Too wordy of a description can be ^crickets^ for listings because although it may be beautiful prose, our first watch word here is that “Guests Do Not Read”.
Not enough of the right photos or too many not-right pix can drive away potential guests, as can poor quality cell phone snapshots compared to properly composed, exposed and enhanced digital camera pictures.
Personally I would turn off Instant Book in spite of what Air says. I would not offer discounts or lower prices because you are new.
No, hadn’t even thought of that. Thanks!
The problem for many new hosts is that they believe that they can put up a listing on Airbnb and it will miraculously get bookings!
Unfortunately, that’s not true. The new host boost is a huge benefit (so make the most of it) but no-one can promise you that you’ll come up on the first (or second or third or…) page on an Airbnb search. To make a real success of your listing, you have to put aside a little time to market your place.
@Helsi’s suggestion of your local tourism place is good. Look beyond that to conferences in your area, businesses/hospitals/universities that have people visiting.
If you have a good social media presence, make the most of it. Get reviews and write ups of your listing on travel sites and blogs (and promote them).
Really, your Airbnb listing is just like any other self-employment business - you have to take control to ensure its success.
Listing on multiple sites can help fill out the calendar even if most bookings are on ABB. Bookings, Tripadvisor and Homeaway are three I use and get the occasional booking from. But it is important to keep your calendars up to date otherwise you are wasting your time turning down bookings you have already filled elsewhere. The best way to manage this without going crazy is to use the sync function most of them (and all those I listed and ABB) have using iCal. You can set it up so it does it automatically and then you don’t have to manually update 3 or 4 listing sites every time you get a booking. Particularly useful if you are on IB. You’ll see it below the bookings settings with “import” and “export” calendars.
Thank you for the advice!
Great idea! Thank you.
You very likely will get last minute bookings if your settings allow it. Our unit is very near a major freeway in the SE US and we get same day instant bookings pretty often when the unit is available. I had a check out yesterday morning, got an instant book for last night at 7pm last night, and another instant book for tonight late last night. I like the one day, pass through type bookings, so a random Wednesday or Thursday night is good, easy money for us.
If you want to use this strategy, make sure you have enough linens and stuff for quick turn over, and have adequate time to do the turnover.
Fantastic advice. Thank you!