What is a rule set? I am so stupid with this.
Small update. We got another Airbnb booking; just the one, for four days next week.
Visibility appears to be well above the market median on Airbnb, but everything we have is now either direct or via BDC. Actually had more enquiries from HA than Airbnb.
Dug out some notes i’d made last year about this time, like real notes made with a pencil on paper 
where I’d been trying to work out our Winter pricing policy.
These are only whole house/apartment listings in the central area (most popular) and checked for a selection of dates, midweek and weekend stays…
Last year, between Oct and Dec the number of available listings on Airbnb, without free on the premises parking, was 229 or thereabouts. The available listing with free parking (very important in Spanish cities) was 49.
This year, for the same period and similar searches tells a very different story 
Available listings without parking 300+. Available listings with parking 127.
What a difference a year makes 
As far as I can work out there are about four or five property companies who have gone from two or three listings up to twenty plus. Bastards.
Plus side is that most of these companies have a lot of availability, as in nada bookings. Maybe they’ll just get bored and go away.
JF
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I wish it was possible to give a 
face, instead of a heart, just so we could say “I feel for you”. I used to check this page and see 700+ views and think “Where are you?!?” But then I quit looking. I’m booked at a good rate, but dang it hurts!
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My booking window is 3 months. I went from 2 weeks ago having ~$350 in projected earning for the rest of the year to having almost $4000 today.
I’m wondering if the 3-month booking window is good or bad. It seems like it’s bad for revenue predictability, but it might be better for maximizing revenue.
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I asked this already, too. Please can someone explain?
Do you mean availability settings or… what?
It’s a way of setting “rules” for different blocks of days. You can increase or decrease the price, offer a discount for booking 3 days, set different mins and max days for different check-in days, even just set multiple days they can check in or out - a bunch of stuff. You use it with your Multi-calendar. That looks like this:
You can make the rules by selecting blocks of dates for all, some or just one of the listings. I can select all of the empty dates and give them the same rule, maybe a discount if I want to book them or a minimum stay if I don’t want to book them (effectively blocking them). Like this:
These are the things you can set, they each open to a bunch of options. You can make all kinds of combinations of these options to create very specific rules (if this, then that, but only here). You’ll see in the last photo that you can “Save the Rule Set” and give it a color to code it to use it later or repeatedly.
On the multicalendar, you can “show rule sets” and they’'ll all come up with their different colors and such.
I used it a ton over the summer when it was super-busy. Sometimes I’d get a block of 4 days stranded together in the month and would prefer to rent all 4 of the days together instead of only 1 or 2 (depending on that listing’s minimum) so I could set a Rule Set that still allowed them to be booked individually (because a booking is a booking!) but the price would decrease if you booked 3 and then decrease a little more if you booked all 4 of them. It worked really well! And I liked it because, if I was going to end up flipping the unit more often, I’d also be making more money, so it seemed more worth it.
Also, in my city, we have a few random Saturdays that are super-high demand because of a recurring event. My Saturdays are 2-day minimums but on these Saturdays I’d prefer you book Friday/Saturday because I get a ton of $ for that but some people would book Saturday/Sunday to save money and then leave my Friday in a position where the price couldn’t stay as high, so for these Saturdays, I set a rule that if you were only booking 2 days you couldn’t check-in on Saturday forcing the Friday to go with the Saturday unless you were booking at least 4 days (then you could check-in on Saturday because now you’ve also booked my Mon and Tue and that helps me out in a different way).
Honestly, it turns into Algebra, which I really enjoy 
but ultimately you can use them to manipulate guests into booking the way you’d prefer without limiting bookings overall (e.g. setting a straight 4-day minimum at all times).
Anyways…sometime in late August something went awry. We stopped getting bookings and it didn’t make any sense (in late January it would have taken me a lot longer to notice ,) and it wasn’t any of the usual suspects (we were showing up in searches, there wasn’t a loss of a new-listing bump, no decease in ratings, location was correct, no new hotels, no new legislation, etc, etc). We were super-busy at the time so I only did some skimming in the Community Center but found some reports from other hosts (several, in different parts of the world) that were reporting a similar situation and someone showed that there was a possible bug in the mult-calendar rule sets, something to do with a “various rule sets” that you could find by searching. They removed their rule sets and everything seemed to be fixed for them. I also found this “various” message in my rule sets so deleted all my past and future rule-sets and got 3 bookings in the next hour and continued normally since. I never followed-up (still meaning to) but it seemed to fix my problem and I probably don’t really need them again until next summer anyways. I’ve also learned to use the few rules available in the regular settings to their max potential.
This is super-way-too-long and I’ve probably lost you but let me know if you have any specific questions, I’m happy to help!
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Thanks so much for taking the time do this, really appreciated!
I already use the custom availability option (very useful) but hadn’t checked out the discount offers etc. Going to do that now.
Thanks again!
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Do you mean that you only allow to book 3 months out? Not that you asked ,) but I used to do that and then I realized that people send out save-the-dates for weddings 6 months ahead of time so I find it really worth it to at least open June and October (the biggest wedding months) up 6 months prior. We booked up most of October by the end of May but I notice a lot of my neighbors are still trying to book their dates in October now. I only mention it because I wish someone had told me, sorry if you already know and dont’ care 
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I used to limit it to 3 months as well but since eliminating that I actually got one booking for 6 months out for the holidays at a much higher smart price. They ended up cancelling because they didn’t want to follow the house rules and/or pay for the extra people but it worked out fine and I am still sure it will get booked closer to last minute and it will be at an even higher price because I have it increased based on it immediately following my current 3 month booking. Ironically this guest was a host herself…
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Thanks so much…essentially, this seems to be an excellent option more useful to hosts with multiple properties. I already do a lot of this with the plain old Calendar options.
Good to know I havent fallen irrevocably behind.
I do to, and usually I raise prices a bit hardly ever go down unless it is Thursday and no bookings for the weekend.
RR
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Yes, guests can book only less than 3 months before than check-in. I originally chose that window so that I could block dates for my own friends and family could only 3 months in advance. When I look at nearby listings, it looks like hosts that allow bookings farther in advance have a higher occupancy rate. Whereas hosts that allow bookings only 3 months in advance are getting a higher nightly rate. I’m in the middle of both. My sample size only the 10 listings within a 2-mile radius, though.
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Ok, that’s really interesting. I know different places vary a lot. I think it’s the opposite here. I know I said it wrong, I didn’t mean that you hadn’t thought about it, just a long day, but was really curious. It was surprising to me when I first realeased dates so early here because I put much higher prices on those dates. I think they get booked at an oddly higher price because there are just some folks who want to book early but there isn’t as much competition so they’ll book at the higher price. Once everyone else opens up the dates, that’s when all of the “I’m putting my place $1 lower than yours” starts - I’m probably in a particularly annoying neighborhood ,) I get the best prices 4-6 months out and in the last two weeks. The wedding thing is working for me too because it’s something people will naturally pay more for - the price of my units are nothing compared to the taffeta dress they had to buy.
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One of my concerns is the guest that books at a higher rate early, then later sees a lower priced listing open up, and cancels the higher priced listing to re-book the lower priced listing.
Funny, I’ve got two groups coming for weddings by the end of the year. There’s a very popular wedding venue about 2 miles south of me and I just realized there currently aren’t any Airbnb listings closer than mine.
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I had this same concern but have not had it happen. My theory is that people who want to book early, do it so they don’t have to worry about it later and so don’t go searching around later when the prices drop. If you’re that close to a wedding venue, I can’t help but think that you might could rake it in by releasing at least June and October 6 months out. People going to weddings seem to book and then communicate again 3 days prior. I totally understand the concern but is not what I’m seeing in practice. I don’t know. All of it’s just interesting to me.
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The “wedding season” in Phoenix is exactly the opposite of that, LOL.
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Oh. I didn’t realize you were in Phoenix. A June wedding sounds like a nightmare. Someone must do it…inside I would hope!
I was on instant book until I cancelled one guy who in February sneaked in my other house and took a room without paying .
I called Air and told them that I already reported this guy and here he books again. I even confronted him and he of course denied. But few other guests recognized him when I send them picture of him and these guests were not connected .
Anyway…Air told me I can’t be on Instant book anymore because I cancelled and it will come back after I do couple of non instant bookings .
Unfortunately it was when we hit slow season here and I was out of 300+listing not on IB . Ussualy at this time of the year I would get international students. Two year in a row I had Europians who stayed almost 6 months each.
Yesterday I checked what’s happening there and my listing doesn’t show . Check my calendar …all is open . Called Air…I just love when they tell.me they can see my listing .
Then I asked a friend to look and it’s not there I am almost done renting my rooms till and of December with Craigslist. Not an easy task with 7 of them. But I am getting there slowly but surely .
This year showed me that it’s basically impossible to rent through Airbnb for me when it’s slow here. And I know it won’t get better . Too many jumped into wagon . I am just surprised to see how low in pricing some people are willing to go.
We will see what winter will bring
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Sorry, should have been clearer. When I said “booking window”, I was referring to our actual booking window (average time in advance folks book) as opposed to the Airbnb availability window.
We are open twelve months in advance, mainly because of BDC. They do rank you down if your forward availability is short.
Airbnb guests (for us anyway) tend to book a couple of weeks in advance whereas BDC can be anything up to six months in advance. Unfortunately, the cancellation rate when they book that far ahead is higher. Given that the BDC nightly rate is a good bit higher, that’s bearable just now.
Only you know your local market, are there events where dates are released over three months ahead? Will your cancellation rate increase if you take bookings way ahead?
Lots of factors to consider.
JF
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