Things have been going well this summer!
I only had two bookings for July despite most of the other hosts in July being all booked up, so I got some advice from Seattle hosts on our local Facebook group. I replaced some of the old furniture and got some new decorative items and took new photos. The new pictures made a huge difference. Ironically they replaced the ones taken by the AirBnB photographer back when Air offered such a service.
I learned that the conversion rate (percentage who view your listing after viewing) is a big determinant in your rankings so I improved mine from .07% to 2.1%. I’m hoping this will set me up to get fall bookings when tourism slows down; my search rankings have improved greatly when I search for listings in Incognito.
I’ve only had one 4-star review since the pair of critical reviews I posted about in May, and these guests didn’t say anything negative in the written review. Guests have mentioned the noise overhead but clarified it was as advertised and I provide earplugs and still left 5-star reviews. I like this kind of review since some guests won’t read my listing but will read reviews when booking.
I’ve had three groups of guests in a row who seemed newer to AirBnB and were unresponsive to my efforts to engage them and manage their expectations. None of them have reviewed me yet (knock on wood) but my intuition tells me they had unrealistic expectations.
The guest who left today seemed especially unhappy. She didn’t seem to understand the basics of AirBnB like where to find my address in the app or how to read the house manual in the app (or the physical copy in the apartment). This is the guest that asked for drinking glasses, which isn’t a red flag in itself but just gave me a feeling she was particular since she didn’t want to drink out of the mugs and stainless steel cups. She probably didn’t like that my family drinks out of reused mason jars! This guest broke the bed frame and didn’t say anything, so I think she’ll either not review me because she’s afraid I’ll be mad, or slam me for the bed breaking on her. I was able to repair the bed frame myself so it wasn’t a big deal. Anyhow, I am not going to review her unless she reviews me because I don’t want to prompt her to review me. I’ve tried waiting to the last hour to review guests a few times and screwed up the timing.