Options for hosting other people's properties as a property manager?

I’m planning to offer airbnb management services for properties here in Bali as the existing management companies are total crooks. But I’m stuck on how the Host account would work. To me it seems the options are:
Get co-host access to client account - this way the client gets the value of building up their own 5-star or superhost profile
Set up a separate Host account for my management account and host all the properties through that
Is anyone doing this and what options do they use? Pros and cons? Any other options? Thanks in advance!

In general we answer host questions here. You may need to call Airbnb to learn more about co hosting or go to their website.

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You are correct that those are the two options. The first one only works if clients already have an Airbnb account (and are willing to use it ). Another disadvantage is that the cohosting fee is fixed at a certain percentage of gross revenues and EXCLUDES cleaning fees from the calculation. You are more flexible with the second option.
Also, just a word of advice - members of this forum are mostly traditional one-listing live-in hosts. Some members can be quite unfriendly to commercial operators or new business ideas. Tread with caution.

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Are you calling me unfriendly? I don’t understand your comment Hyper. You’ve been a member a long time and you should know the forum rules by now.

For new forum members, please read the Forum Guidelines. Commercial promotions are not allowed without the approval of a mod. We don’t want the forum to turn into a big billboard. Plus it is disrespectful to the owner of the forum, who funds the forum out of his own pocket.

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Guys, I am new on this forum and I seem to have created an issue which was never my intention.

I did read the forum rules as I do for any forum I contribute to and I don’t see which rule is being broken and respectfully, so I don’t break it again, I’m wondering what it is.

  1. Is it that I offered a commercial service? I don’t see anywhere that I did that.
  2. Is it because I asked about co-hosting? I don’t see any rule about that. Maybe it could be argued that it’s off-topic but, well, it’s a well-established mode of hosting an airbnb listing, a mode of Hosting implemented and encouraged by AirBnB itself, and I asked this in an AirBnB Hosting forum.
    If its a forbidden topic I will happily avoid it but as far as I can see, it’s not.
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No, no… You misunderstood. It’s not you. It’s hypertokyo suggesting I was unfriendly toward members posting commercial promotions or business ideas. THAT is against the forum guidelines. Not asking the question you did. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

But in all honesty, we are mainly hosts here, so we don’t know about or comment that much on co-hosting. I notice the Facebook groups have much more information about co-hosting so you might want to try there.

You didn’t violate any rules. :grinning:

Got it - thanks for the clarification and I understand what you’re saying. I’ll check the Facebook groups out for the co-hosting stuff.
By the way, thanks for the forum - it’s amazing!

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I would really like to discuss co-hosting issues BUT I don’t want to do it publicly. This forum gets quite a lot of attention apparently and is quoted on other places so it seemed unwise to discuss things that your co-host may actually read and recognise (yikes!) and also why give potential competitors a head start? I proposed a private discussion on this issue back in July but I haven’t followed up on it properly - sorry to anyone that expressed interest.

Good point! And another reason to do these things via private message thread as well as keeping things anonymous for the sake of privacy for guests as well as hosts.

I forgot you were a co-host Mag!

I know sometimes people haven’t figured out how to do a private message. Just go to your little icon in the top right hand corner and click on the message icon. Down on the lower left you will see SEND MESSAGE. You enter the person’s name, and voila! A private message thread safe from prying eyes! You may also invite a number of others to the same private thread. Don’t worry, mods can’t read them in case you wanted to say something off key about one of us. :rofl::rofl::joy:

Kona, I wasn’t talking about you specifically. Your response here was neutral, not unfriendly.

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And maybe a little hasty. There ARE hosts that are co-hosts, I spaced on that. But I DO think it’s a good idea to keep specifics on a Private thread. The private thread feature is a really under-utilized feature of this forum and so useful…

I use it myself if I don’t want to hear the general peanut gallery opinions on something, but would rather have the counsel of a few close and sympathetic friends and advisers. :heart_eyes:

I’m glad we are friends again, Hyper, I still may need to book your place if my son can’t get his money out of Japan other than to come back! :heart_eyes::rofl:

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This is incorrect in the version of Airbnb open to me in Australia. I have my son as co-host, I can nominate him to receive a percentage or flat fee and select if he gets the cleaning fee too. This is very flexible IMO.

I should have been more specific: yes, the cohosting payout in Airbnb is set at a fixed percentage or flat fee - but there is no calculation for utilities, supplies etc that may vary each month. And you can’t divvy up cleaning fees; AFAIK the full amount must go to one of the cohosts. So it’s inherently less flexible than doing it under your own account, under which you can set up fees, terms, payment schedules as you see fit with each client.

This has now been phased out. So how are people helping their ongoing clients whilst still receiving a payment?