I’ve been hearing more and more on social media about people charging for coaching around pricing strategies to improve your bookings and SEO strategies to show up in top results. Do any of you have experience or knowledge you would share around this? I’ve noticed a drop in bookings lately and it’s making me nervous. I don’t particularly want to spend tens of thousands to an Airbnb coach and not get the results I’m hoping for. I figured there must be people out there who already know these techniques and more than happy to share.
I personally would not pay for coaching. I’m at the Jersey shore so I know that for Oct-Apr I won’t have any bookings. Some destinations are seasonal. I don’t think that anyone is fully booked for all 12 months. Take the off season as an opportunity to update your Airbnb and to get much needed rest. Don’t waste thousands of dollars on coaching, instead invest that money in your Airbnb.
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I would imagine that most of these so-called experts are just fleecing people.
There are so many variables that affect bookings, whether it’s seasonal for your area, whether times are economically tough and people just aren’t travelling as much, how much competition has sprung up in your area, etc, etc. Then there is so much variation in types of strs, from big homes that sleep 16 with all the bells and whistles, to remote cabins that sleep two with no Wifi, that there can’t really be any universal answers or strategies.
I think you just have to play around with pricing, what you offer, the demographic of guests you are marketing to and who would be attracted to your listing, maybe your listing wording and photos. And have a read on what goes on in your area- which places are getting lots of bookings and which aren’t and try to figure out why that might be.
Some hosts have 2 listings for the same place, which offer different things and guest counts for different times of year. You might want to increase your maximum stay, lower the price, and market to digital nomads, for instance, at times of year when people aren’t really vacationing much.
In my area, like Ritz’s, my business is quite seasonal. Almost never have a booking between May and Nov. It’s really hot and humid where I live. That doesn’t mean there’s no tourism here then, but guests want pools and AC, within a couple blocks of restaurants and the beach, which I don’t offer. If it was important to me, I would make some changes, but I don’t mind having the summer off for my own holiday, and having time to spruce the place up. And I like the guests I do attract during my booking season and have never had guest problems, so it works for me.
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I agree with what Muddy. I hit my slow season Nov- April. This year I noticed that I wasn’t booked as much but I did raise my rates and cleaning fees which helped.
I am playing around with creating the two listing for one STR idea to allow more people to stay in my suite but the 2nd room would be over my bedroom and I haven’t decided if I want to do that yet.
I can tell you that if you are willing to host dogs, you will probably see a spike. When I want to travel with my dog, it’s slim pickings. I’ve decided against it for STR because I don’t want dogs barking at night, scratching my wood foors, ect. not to mention the stress my pets might have.
I look at my competition in my area at least 3-4 times a month doing a private search to see how I fair and were I turn up in the search and pricing. I filter for my price point trying to get part of the Boston market and it works well.
I’ve also noticed that my bookings aren’t as robust as they were prior to the pandemic but one of the reason I have the STR if for the deductions on taxes for the mortgage, taxes, utilities, and landscapers so even in the slow months, it’s a win for me.
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I think so too. You can do all these things yourself, it’s not hard, it’s slightly time consuming but really not too bad.
My listing is the first one you see if you do an AirBnB search on my town with the right number of guests and available dates. This has been true since I started in November. I think the reason is I have a solid 5.0 rating, nearly 40 reviews, and pricing is the most competitive, and most of my photos were taken by a professional supplied to me by AirBnB.
You definitely want your listing on the first page if you can get it there. I have experimented with pricing and found I could move my listing to the second page simply by raising the price.
About once a month I do a little study of how my property compares with my competition. If you do this be sure to look at total booking price, not just the nightly rate.
At this stage the only thing I can change is price. I offer more than 60 amenities already, I really don’t have room to add any more.
But if you can add any amenities, that might help. AirBnB provides a list somewhere on the website of the most popular amenities in your area, as well as other local booking data.
“Smart Pricing” offered by AirBnB can cause lost bookings for me. I’ve done experimenting with SP, which is properly called demand pricing.
I have Smart Pricing on but you can turn it off on a day by day basis by going to your calendar and clicking on the date. So if I have gaps in my schedule, that’s the first place I look. Often smart pricing is asking a ridiculous price for those open dates, so I over ride the price to make it in line with my competition. This has resulted in a booking 100% of the time so far, with a 1 month lead time. (That’s when I pull the trigger.)
If you do this you may receive an automated nagging message saying your potential guests will actually pay more, $X, but if you’ve done your homework you know more than the algorithm. ABB tempts you, but I remind myself that accommodation nights are perishable and earn $0 when the space is empty.
Your price should be $49 a night and not $50 a night, for example. So if I am accepting the demand pricing suggestion, I will always change it so the price ends in a 9 or lower, never a 0. This is a verified psychological trick and you might as well use it.
Numerous TikTok users are angry at ABB cleaning fees, and also probably other less common fees. Hosts may think guests only look at the nightly price but ABB provides the total cost of a booking to guests so when I’m booking my own travel, that’s all I look at.
I have a 3 night minimum and I charge a $30 cleaning fee. I have competition that charges a $100 cleaning fee (although I can’t easily know their minimum stay requirement.) My lower fee helps me even if my nightly rate is a bit higher.
As far as SRO, your first step is to get the short URL link to your property listing from AirBnB. Then just plaster that all over the Internet that you have access to–FB (which I don’t use), Insta, Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn, whatever you’ve got going right now.
You could also put up a website featuring that shortened URL, as well as photos and info of course, and a contact email at a minimum.
You would want a domain name that would help point people to your property as described on your website. For example: washingtonDCpetfriendlyairbnb.com – words someone might use in a Google search. This would help your website show up on Google searches, although it takes more than just this. You also need to get that URL all over the internet.
The goal of posting URLs is so people will click on the link. So if you happened to have lots of friends and family, get them all to go to the link and click click click.
SRO takes time. I do not know of any cost effective mechanism that will make SRO quick. (If anyone knows please share.)
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This was really helpful thank you! I like the idea of the price ending a 9 like you mentioned. I also might try your method of doing a super low cleaning fee but keep the prices slightly higher and see how that goes. Any thoughts on having your own booking website? I’ve seen other people doing this and not sure if that helps or gives you additional ways to get bookings.
Many hosts here, including me, see empty nights as having a non monetary value. Some who were hosting since before the pandemic noticed they were happier when not booking as often. Many will use a last minute cancellation to do some maintenance, deep cleaning or quick upgrades. Things like grout sealant or new paint need time to dry completely.
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If I needed a booking website I would create one immediately just to see what happens. If you have no experience there is a learning curve, but it is really not so difficult.
I tell ABB to put 2 nights of preparation before every booking and I take a week off at least almost every month. I would burn out if I didn’t.
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I try to let the market dictate when I take off, or I did when I was really busy right before the pandemic. But if I were booked all the time I’d have to force some time off.
I’ve been using Wheelhouse for pricing, which I adjust. I don’t know hot to evaluate their service but I thought it was probably better than my pricing guesses alone.
I invested about $100 or so to have a professional writer, Katharine Hansen, evaluate my verbiage. She has a posting here somewhere: DD_kathy@tmd9.club; [http://kathyscompellingcontent.com]
I received feedback from this forum on some of my standard messages. They’ll be happy to evaluate your listing if you’d like.
On optimizemyairb.com I hired for ~$150 an artist to do a drawing of the whole property, which I thought was cool.
So I think that you can do a number of things for free (here on the forum) or elsewhere for relatively small amounts of money.
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There was an experienced and savvy host on the Airbnb CC who used Wheelhouse and recommended it highly. She said it worked really well for her.
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I would not recommend any of these pricing tools, coaching etc.
The best method I have found is to set your own prices by checking what other superhosts near you have done, assessing yourself if you think your property is better or worse and then setting the price based on that. If you get bookings, raise prices slightly for the next year and lower prices in between bookings if you care about occupancy. You’ll get the hang of it, avoid AI messing up your pricing, and save yourself a fair bit of cash that goes straight into your pocket.
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