Overselling Rooms (Not 'over-booking'). Cater easily to more guests

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I over-sell rooms. My house in Australia has five bedrooms. Usually I rent whole house, but if not booked - I also advertise rooms as sleeping up to 6 guests, despite it only having a single queen bed, because there is always other rooms I can allocate easily. The room rates are a bit more expensive than others in the area, to encourage the whole house to be booked, unless its getting closer to time.

Over-Selling rooms means guest groups who want to sleep six will see my place. If my listings were two persons per room, they would never see it. If I listed three rooms in one listing, I might get a single booking it.

By over-selling (But not over-booking) I can take a booking for six, then block out two other rooms, or as many I need to. It’s not unlike airlines that over-book, but in my case it’s more just the advertising capacity I don’t have, to allow more flexible bookings - and as soon as I do get booked, I reduce the available capacity.

Pretty easy, and it means I am sometimes renting my house ‘as rooms’ to one (or more) groups - at a combined rate that is HIGHER than if I rented the whole house. Once I get one ‘room booking’, I reduce the rate on other rooms as now I want to fill up rooms, and not discourage them in favour of whole house.

Seems to work well and been doing it for years. I once had a group of 5 (took three rooms), then a group of three book (took two rooms) on the same night. None of these would have seen my listing if I advertised it as rooms for the capacity of each room, but advertising several rooms as ‘up to three rooms’, I can take the bookings without ever worrying of overbooking anyone. I’ve never had any issues with two or more groups staying on the same night, despite very rarely staying there myself.

Has anyone else tried this approach? Advertising more capacity than you have to increase booking visibility, then reducing it if booked - based on how many rooms are needed by them?

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Yet another bizarre post and “idea”, this time recommending false and confusing advertising.

There is already a legitimate and transparent method of doing this which hosts who have entire house listings, but also will rent out rooms separately use.

They have multiple listings for the same place. One for the entire house, others for various numbers of bedrooms, with the correct number of guests the bedroom or bedrooms accommodate. They link the calendars so that if the "3 bedrooms/6 guests option gets booked, the entire place listing automatically becomes unavailable.

If I saw a 1 bedroom listing saying it slept 6 people, I would wonder why the host was trying to cram 6 people in one bedroom, assume they were running a flophouse, not bother reading any further, and move on to look for clearly described listings. And if I had read further, to understand this was a deceptive marking ploy, I would be tempted to report the listing to Airbnb.

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I’m pretty sure that deceptive advertising goes against Airbnb’s policies. It certainly goes against mine. This troll is bad news.

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Yes, this is very normal, and fully supported by Airbnb. Easy to link, and it doesn’t mean you are renting your house ‘AND’ a private room of course.
A large number of hosts run this arrangement, giving you flexibility to rent space as you need it. It’s not against policies, and it’s certainly not deceptive. Good you were able to help the host in this - always nice when we can support each other, and it can be confusing in this calendar sync area I know.

It seems however, that your misunderstanding comes from not being aware this is the exact same concept. Listing room A and Room B (separately) and a ‘Room A+B’ listing (together) is pretty common, even if the two rooms contains the same ‘one’ room - and so too for a whole house vs a room listing - it’s the same space, but you can’t rent both at the same time obviously!

It’s fully supported in the platform, and very normal. Millions of hosts would have this arrangement if they rent rooms - and certainly several I know, and the platform is designed to support this - linking multiple rooms to a ‘whole house’ listing.

A tip though - it’s always good to be curious if you don’t understand, and learn more - rather than appear misguided with a comment. I’m happy to explain and support other hosts in their journey - just as you like to do as well. But personal insults are not just unprofessional - they annoy other hosts. Let’s Keep focus on the hosting topics, and not harassing others. Nobody is interested in rude spam comments - so let’s keep bullying playground insults for the playground, and keep this a positive, supportive forum where we can discuss hosting tips.

My tip on managing calendars for room vs house is literally the same one you were ‘helping’ another host on recently - so that is good. Calendar syncing can be challenging with STR platforms for sure. We can help others though :slight_smile:

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My listing is specifically for three rooms. It’s pretty normal that three rooms can be booked by up to six guests. Nothing to see here. Very normal. Not even cramming!

Yep! You did get this bit right. This is how it works.

It seems you may have misunderstood, but I hope it’s clear now. To reiterate - my listing is for three rooms, and I can rent for up to six. It’s linked to the whole house listing, as you suggest is normal.

Are you able to share what exactly is false here? I can’t see you will be able to, but perhaps there is something I am missing - so I am ready to stand corrected if so! If you believe - can you back it up by saying ‘what’ exactly is false? It’s pretty normal to have more than one listing for a property.

I understand you only rent a single room though at your place, and only for one guest - so I presume you have not had experience in renting multiple rooms? It can be more challenging to configure in the platform, but thankfully we have good hosts here who can help support others in these technical areas.

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If you advertise a room that only has a single bed as accommodating 6 people, you are either being deceptive, confusing, or don’t know how to clearly explain your marketing “strategy”.

And how condescending- that because I only rent out one room and don’t have “experience” renting out multiple rooms, I couldn’t possibly understand the concept of various options to list entire homes + only rooms.

Many hosts have multiple listings for various rental options, which I am well aware of. You seem to think you are providing other hosts with some strategy they are all unaware of.

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The listing is for THREE rooms. Only ONE is shown in pictures, with a Queen bed. The other TWO rooms are allocated later, depending on other bookings. It’s pretty simple. But the flexibility to assign the other two rooms later is helpful in several ways.

FIRST: It gives more booking flexibility. You are not tied to specific rooms when booking. You can attract more bookings with this flexibility.

SECOND: You can better match the guest needs

THIRD: In some cases I might get booked for a couple, and if they don’t need the other rooms, I sometimes rent them out. So they book the listing, confirm they only need one room (of the three), which allows me to rent out the others. That’s quite common, and not a problem as these other rooms are only actually allocated later, not at the time of booking.

See in the screenshot, the guest message - they clearly KNOW they booked a listing with THREE rooms. But only ONE has a queen bed. I wasn’t sure if they wanted 2x double beds or one and singles - as sometimes folk are not couples and prefer singles. See they asked for a different bed combination, and I could easily accommodate them. Because they had not been ‘locked in’ up front, in the listing - so it was easy.

If I had made a listing of 3 rooms with a Queen+Double+Single combo, then the next booking may be one couple and three men, and they would NOT want the second double bed. So maybe they would not book. But now I can switch them to a room with 2x singles and all is good!

By being flexible with the SECOND and THIRD room in my listing, I can allocate far more flexibly, AND get more bookings. If you list each room ‘On it’s own’, you will NEVER get booked by a group of five, such as in my screenshot. Maybe I was unclear - it’s more about how you handle the EXTRA rooms. You list for three, showcase ONE room, but allow two others ‘if needed’ and ‘as needed’ to better cater to the guests actual needs.

I hope that makes more sense. It is certainly a confusing area to manage multiple listings and sync calendars - which is why I find it easy for others to misunderstand this area - especially as my strategy is quite novel in ‘Over-Selling’ rooms.

But while I see many hosts do multiple room listings, I think the ‘novel’ aspect key. So I can have two listings that each advertise three rooms, but I only have five rooms in total (And I even have another listing too).

So I am over-selling rooms, but never over-booking rooms…
It’s a smart way to increase bookings while also helping keep guests happier.

The only technical quirk, is that you need to be aware of guest numbers if you are allocating the second or third room dynamically. I check if they need more rooms, and if not, I let them book to others, but if so I make sure to block the others. You can’t do this with Airbnb directly, as it treats each listing on it’s own, and doesn’t know how to block ‘some of the listing - like one room or maybe two rooms’ - and ‘based on numbers’ of guests. But easy when you get the hang of it.

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Why are we humoring this troll?

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This is what we did at our place in Michigan. We had two bedrooms, which we listed separately and then we listed the two bedrooms together, for 4 guests. We didn’t know that we could do that until a nice host contacted us through our listing and told us about that option. We are grateful he did, even though at the time, we thought we were getting a booking :wink:

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It would actually be a good idea for Airbnb to provide a way for legitimate hosts to contact other hosts, aside from using the “inquiry”, for reasons such as you describe.

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This is confusing to me. Seems like going to a lot of trouble to make things more difficult and risk losing money.

I have a 4 bedroom villa. If I listed the entire house in one listing, and each bedroom separately on another, then as soon as the first bedroom were booked, the “whole house” listing has to be blocked.

And the other bedrooms? You mean, guests who book the other bedrooms have to live and share bathrooms and kitchen with other people they’ve never met? So, it’s like a youth hostel? Priced accordingly? Hmm…

What am I missing here? it would be almost inevitable that only one bedroom would be booked continuously at 1/4 (or less) the price of the entire house. After all, they get the whole house for pennies. And they might bring 6 or 8 PAX anyway.

Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with “whole house” pricing. It’s much simpler and less problematic.

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Get ready for a half page response “explaining” how wrong you are. :wink:

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Good questions! Yes, it isn’t straightforward. You would be right if rooms were booked to ‘Block off’ the whole house. This is why I price rooms as very expensive, unless close to the current date. So rooms are only viable for guests to ‘fill gaps’ in the calendar. But surprisingly, the rooms do sometimes get booked far out, despite crazy prices - so I have occasionally had a room rent for more than I would rent the house. More generally though, by renting to more than one group for rooms, they at least average the whole house rate in many cases, and sometimes exceed it even. Still, as a gap filler, I don’t mind rooms booked last minute, when it’s unlikely the whole house will rent. So long as it exceeds the costs of cleaning / supplies etc, better than leaving it not rented at all.

Maybe I am just lucky to have my home in a classy area, where guests seem always very nice. It’s almost worthy of creating an Airbnb experience - to stay and meet others. Honestly - and you can check from my many reviews yourself - there are countless comments from guests who say how it was a bonus for their stay. A positive. So given it seems to result in much happier guests (when sharing with others), at least in my area - AND results in significantly higher booking revenue - it seems a win-win. Maybe it’s not for all hosts, but I can only share what works in my listing, and as you can verify directly of course. You won’t find many reviews saying it was a problem sharing with other guests, possibly zero - but there are so many who mention they liked it. I know that is not what you might expect, but that is the reality.

I’ll find some examples - but they are all on the Airbnb site of course, if you read the guest reviews. I do agree with you that keeping only one Whole House listing is ‘simpler’. Yes. But I don’t see problematic. I like to best cater to guest needs, and this (oddly I know) seems to be a strategy that is working. MOST of my bookings are Whole house though - by my design. Rooms are really only ‘Gap fillers’.

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With reviews like this - it seems you could actually ‘charge extra’ for the shared guest experience. Who knew!

And these are all on the reviews - you might think I am making them up, as I would not have believed it could work so positively before I tried it.

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Note the purple arrow indicates a guest who failed vetting for self-clean, so I cancelled their booking. It’s important to get good alignment with guests. But I was able to re-rent that date with three other guest groups who happily shared the space

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I’ve seen listings that may do what you do - sleep lots of people in way too few bedrooms. I never click on them because I believe either: 1) they are clueless and just made a fundamental mistake so they probably aren’t good hosts, or 2) they are a hostel-type accommodation.

I never allow two separate groups to book our home. I strive to maximize profit, but not at the expense of a poor experience for guests. (We’re a “special occasion” place, and priced accordingly.)

I do about the same as you but by using two listings and extra-person fees.

The main listing price is good for up to six people, with extra fees for the seventh and eighth.

The second listing is priced for two but allows only up to five (fees for 3rd, 4th and 5th guest). I open up the second listing about six weeks ahead of time if we have open nights - but it’s almost never needed.

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GREAT to see you having two listings for your place. It’s worked well for me to do this, but it took me a while to realise there is value in having more than one listing. I recently got the largest booking I ever had - on the ‘second’ listing of my Whole house. Seems if you list the same space twice at different rates (perhaps with slightly different requirements as you do re number of guests), Airbnb will try to rent your house at the ‘more expensive’ rate if it can - else you may at least still get a booking by having two price tiers for guests to be offered.

I think this ‘double listing’ idea has benefits for sure, but I know most hosts don’t seem to be aware of how it can work. Like you, my second listing is booked less often though, but it is good when it does.

I note your concerns on two guest groups booking together on a night in one house. I had the exact same thoughts to begin. But when I tried it, I was surprised. I posted just a few guest reviews - does it seem odd how positive these guests are about sharing the space? I don’t think I have a single negative one, but I have a LOT more I could post here to show, or you can verify independently on my Reviews on Airbnb.

Do you have any thoughts on how this could be? My home is a bit classy, and I just saw now one of the ‘shared’ guests even wrote this - it’s in a nice area that is seen as a rich demographic. Nicole Kidman has a property here and a few other celebs. So I would be horrified at having a ‘budget youth hostel’ arrangement - however this is not how it has worked out. A guest I had is a French chef, and the other guest staying the same night got a French meal - they shared together. It is really surprising to hear the stories.

I accept it may be working due to the better demographic and guests than other locations - maybe if you host inner city, or a lower grade area it might not work like this.

Can you share any thoughts on the reality of my reviews I posted here - for the ‘special’ shared stay concept? - Zero bad reviews, but mostly many glowing ‘about’ the experience of sharing with other ‘interesting’ guests?

I totally get you in wanting a good guest experience, but my reviews appear to me that this is part of the appeal - an enhancement to their stay in many cases.

Can I ask have you ever tried having two guest groups share the home together? I suspect not - and if so, I would gently suggest that this might (might) show how you can actually enhance guest experiences - quite apart from increasing revenue by renting several rooms. And sometimes I make more on renting to two or even three guests than I make renting the whole place! My cleaner also occasionally stays over on such nights out of convenience and change, which is another benefit She can’t do this if the whole place is rented.

I’m genuinely interested though in your take on these reviews - do you think this is the opposite of a ‘poor’ guest experience? I agree hosts can do things differently, and there is no ‘right’ way of course.

Perhaps my reviews may show what is possible, and that concerns on ‘poor experience’ might be unfounded, as it could be a way to ‘enhance’ your guest experience - as odd as this may seem! Many years ago before Airbnb - suggesting inviting strangers into your home was weird - this is not so different I think. I’m glad I tried it though - as it seems to work very well for my guests at least.

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No, and you can’t sell me on trying that.

We have staff at the house (typical for our area in the Caribbean), so it’s already “shared”. And, our house has a unique structure - the interior walls don’t go all the way to the ceiling. Sounds carry!

That’s bad enough with a group of family/friends. It’s really quiet at night and I can’t imagine having a French chef make you dinner would make up for hearing him snore and go to the bathroom or be intimate with his partner.

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Ha ha… Got it. You sold me. It doesn’t sound like a good fit for your particular situation. Privacy is important.

My home is a designer U shape that allows significant separation of the master bedroom from the other bedrooms, so the three main rooms are at three distinct corners of the house - and when only two couples stay - they are really quite far apart and noise does not carry at all - and each have their own bathrooms.

This is obviously very different to your situation with walls not going all the way up, which is probably good for ventilation, lighting or other aspects, but certainly would be an issue if there were two different groups staying together.

Had to laugh at your comment on the chef! Yes. Agree. Snoring and bathroom might be a bit off to hear, though as for more exciting sounds - who knows, it might be a value add part of the experience for some!

But yes - having separation privacy and separate bathrooms seems to be one reason my arrangement works for sharing two groups at a time (or even three)

I also have privacy door locks on most - but not all bedroom doors. I also used to be there a lot with guests, but very rarely these days, so yes - this is also sharing. Interesting to see one guest comment in reviews I posted that she seemed to like this communal house approach better than if the host was staying there too. Interesting - Shows different people have different views on what they like I guess.