Hi there! Thanks to everyone that helped me on my last question! I am trying to see if there are specific sites, or categories on here, to assist with local questions. Mine is really about the Atlanta market, and how best to increase bookings. We started off great in April, but have seen a slowdown for September. Thanks for any leads and suggestions.
Have you tried Airbnb’s community help center? Just type in " Atlanta"on the search bar.
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What market research did you do when you set up your STR business around demand and supply for your type of listing in your area @Flopez ?
To understand how to increase your bookings
- Do your market research so you understand demand and supply in your area
- Identify what sort of customers you see as your target market
- Identify how you can increase your booking through direct booking, investing in marketing and advertising to drive traffic to your direct bookings/listings, using relevant listing channels, reviewing your content and photography on your listing to make sure it’s engaging for your target market (taking into account seasonal variations).
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The overall bookings have been fine. Excellent actually, I’m just not as sure of the current trends. I see from Airbnb that bookings are up, but many new properties are coming online. Is the slowness of September the normal, or more than last year? I think I’m most interested in the best advertising channels to use, instead of trying to use them all. We are listed across platforms, but I’m trying to see if we went with additional resources towards Facebook, Instagram, etc, what is the best avenue.
I didn’t suggest you use all marketing channels, I suggested you use advertising channels relevant to customers you have identified as the target audience for your property.
Identify your customer base and then you can identify the best channels to use to reach them.
I don’t operate in your location so don’t know if a slow down is normal I’m afraid.
Have you looked at AirDNA and asked your local tourism organisation what tourism footfall is like in your area?
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Hi, as you can tell I’m from Atlanta and so that market is pretty familiar, although I don’t have my rental there. You may know this already, but the bump you got for being a new listing is something else to factor in here. It’s probably the main reason for the “good start.”
Still, Atlanta is a city of non-natives, so there’s always a market for visitors, especially during the holidays. And lots of events going on. If your listing is one that is better than the many that I’ve seen, you should be fine. I moved out of there last Sept. but I still go back at least once a month. So I’ve been searching for something other than the “turn and burn” apartment re-rentals and can’t hardly find any decent ones. By turn and burn I mean the places that might have one or two lamps, one (not two) bedside tables, take six people but offer four seats at a table, etc., etc., etc.
I guess I should ask you what part of town are you in? I might just be a potential guest.
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Thank you both for the replies. We are close to downtown, in a residential neighborhood. We do get a lot of visitors coming to town for concerts & conventions, and our weekends are full, I’m just trying to fill the weekdays. I’m not sure if it’s ok to post the link here for @atlnative, but if you email me, I’ll send you the link. bobby@bandlbrands.com. I was wondering if anyone has had success in marketing on Facebook or Instagram? It would just link to the listing on Airbnb, etc., but another outlet for exposure?
I think that Sept. in North America, not just Atlanta, can be generally slow. Summer vacation time is over and people are back into school and work mode until the winter holidays.
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Not Facebook because I haven’t used it for years but Instagram yes, Twitter yes, Flipboard yes…
But I never post my Airbnb link. Listings aren’t really interesting to anyone unless you specifically have the right audience.
Instead, write short articles about your location and post those. This has the added advantage of building up into a guidebook for your guests.
Have you got a good network going in your area? (Real life, I mean. not social).
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@Flopez, …and some places are too damn HOT in September… In my mind the last place I’d want to vacation in August-September is the South. Spent a week in New Orleans a few years back in August. The later, April visit, was much nicer! 
I have never had a booking from mid-May until mid-Oct. It’s super hot and humid where I live in that season. It’s not that no tourists or travelers come to the area, but they want homes with AC and pools, which I don’t have, nor do they want to walk the 20 minutes from my place to town and the beach in that heat.
That doesn’t distress me- I never banked on attracting guests year round, am not interested in investing in a pool or AC, and don’t depend on str income.
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I think both @jaquo &
@gypsy
Could teach master classes in cross marketing.
Search tiny tiki retro hut to see @gypsy’s work.
Both have been working on their brands a long time. Rome was not built in a day….
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Too funny to me…SE USA are MY people! I agree about August. Mid-September to 11/1 are perfect in coastal SC.
I love love love Thanksgiving (late November) at the beach too
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It looks like you might be using Evolve?
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We are using Evolve, and they have been great! BUT, this is our house, so any extra way we can go beyon just listing the property for rent, we want to do.
We are close to Downtown, so we get bumps from concerts and conventions. We were full all but 6 days in July, so the heat was not as detrimental you might think.
Thank you Annet!!
Tiny Tiki Retro Hideaway is the name.
Another mini heat wave here in Chatsworth Ca. Damn hot @ 98. But nothing like 110 degrees @ labor day when we had three sets of guests that I said “after this warning you can’t quit due to the heat!!”
I’m actually happy not to have any bookings 
We are going on a 10 day trip and a former guest is house and dog-sitting here, so our calendar has been more than 50% blocked since aug 9. We might be getting a nov booking today!
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I’ve heard lots of bad things about Evolve from a guest point of view in terms of customer service, switch and bait, keeping money when there are cancellations etc.
Interesting to see it from a hosts perspective.
We are new, but so far, no issues. They have been very helpful with accommodations for our guests when we had to cancel a reservation (previous guest smoked pot inside for 4 days straight). They helped them find a new location as soon as they heard of the issue.
I’ve also read a lot of negative posts from hosts re Evolve. However, I would guess it depends on the individual managers in any given area as to whether they are problematic. If they are good ones, so guests have nothing to complain about, guests and hosts may not experience anything bad- it’s when the hands-on managers don’t do a good job, or the property has issues and then one is stuck dealing with corporate offices and “company policy” that problems likely arise.
Another thing about those big mgmt. companies- they seem to have properties with good ratings and bad ones. If the homeowner is just an investor-type who doesn’t want to spend money to maintain the property, there may be lots of complaints that aren’t really the manager’s fault, aside from them not being discriminating about which properties they agree to manage.
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