Promotions, Bargain-Hunters and Star Ratings

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From reading many posts on the forum, I have come to the conclusion that bargain-hunter guests many times are critical even after they have scored a bargain.

When the email about “Promotions” came from Airbnb, I ignored it at first. But then I thought it might be nice to fill a few of the empty weekends left in the year. After a very successful second year, just a few more reservations would push the payout total beyond what we could have imagined.

It didn’t cross my mind that the promotions would be targeting bargain-hunters. I don’t know why not?

My husband and I decided to go for the 20% discount so we could take advantage of the four special perks – strikethrough styling, updated price breakdown, special callouts, and placement in emails to guests.

Thursday evening, we got a reservation for two nights – Friday and Saturday. Two couples were coming from different locations for a last-minute hiking weekend. They instant booked and it sounded perfect to us.

The Catharine Valley Trail is a state park and recreation trail which is walking distance from our location and The Watkins Glen State Park is a four-mile drive. Our exact location is noted in our listing.

After 66 5-star reviews, we got our first 4-star. We were rated 3-stars for location, 3-stars for value and 5-stars for everything else. These guests chose the location and they knew they received a discounted rate.

They didn’t pay a cleaning fee, but they were perfectly comfortable leaving their breakfast dishes unwashed scattered throughout the house. It wasn’t that they ran out of time, because they checked out an hour sooner than they had to.

It doesn’t matter about the 4-star review. The $308 payout was easy money and the dishes washed up quickly. I’m over it, but I should have known …

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You’ve been reading selectively though. :slight_smile:

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And I’m sure you included this in their review. So maybe it evens out a bit.

Nice. That must be from two rooms?

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@wwirth, for a lot of bargain-hunters I know (not just as Airbnb guests), the bargain is like “the kill” to a hunter. It represents some kind of personal victory. I’ve heard lots of them tell stories about a great bargain and then about the wretched time they gave to a store clerk or a restaurant server because they expect to get the same service as everyone else, even though they got a bargain. (In their minds, I think “the same service” really means “much better service.”) More victory, I guess. And then, in restaurants, the ones I know leave abysmal tips for the servers they’ve given a hard time to.

Not my favorite type of person.

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But I hope you enjoyed writing your review for them; it only needs to be as factual as what you’ve told us here!

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Our experience, over three years of hosting, of not so good guests, (thankfully we’ve not has really bad guests), is they do not have a common denominator.

Specific to the wwirth’s post, the only guest that asked for a discount, (which he didn’t get), turned our to be one of our best guests and left us a glowing 5 stars throughout review.

We’ve had guests we though would be excellent, only to find they left our barn pretty messy and we’ve had guests we thought may not look after our place, but they were so clean and tidy, you’d hardly know someone had been living there.

So once we’ve accepted a booking we have no expectations of the outcome and when the guests have gone, we go in with an open mind and our fingers crossed. :thinking::face_with_hand_over_mouth::rage:

I guess I’m saying pigeon holing people prior to their stay isn’t a very precise tool imo. However filtering requests to book, has for us, been by far the best risk reducer.

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@jaquo, you are right, but I did read both sides and that’s why I said “many times they are critical” and not that they are always critical.

This was the first experience we had with a price reduction so I am sure, as time goes on, we will find out there are guests who will be appreciative. We are going to leave the promotional pricing for the two other weekends and see how it turns out.

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@KKC, I did mention the unwashed dishes in their review and I was happy I did. That tarnishes their five previous 5-star reviews and if something like that matters to other hosts, they will know about it.

Ours is a whole house, three bedroom, that sleeps six.

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Thanks for the honest review. I don’t have a whole house but I do want to know about this kind of behavior. The Airbnb TOS says guests are supposed to leave a rental like this:

11.1 As a Guest, you are responsible for leaving the Accommodation (including any personal or other property located at the Accommodation) in the condition it was in when you arrived.

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I know that I’m going to sound like an old granny here (okay, I am an old granny :slight_smile: ) but please please remember that there are other ways to promote your rental rather than reducing the price.

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@wwirth I had that promotions thing pop-up recently (we’re in the slow season here now) but just the fact that they were going to put the line through the price and make a big fuss about it being a “deal” is a real turn off to me.

In fact, sometimes when I adjust prices, and then do an incognito search to see my listings, they’ve put that dang line through the price. I’m guessing it’s because of a certain amount of drop in price, so I go and raise the price up by $5 or $10 at a time so that the “slashed prices” line goes away. If I really want to drop it a bit more, I have to wait 24-hours so that it doesn’t get that line slashed through it. I think that line through the price is a bad look, regardless the price you actually want and regardless the type of listing. I do think that being the lowest priced or having a dramatically dropped price that is advertised that you’ve dropped it can bring you guests that aren’t the best for your listing.

Here’s why I think that (and I’ve thought a lot about it). As @jaquo is implying, I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with guests who want/need a certain price. I also don’t think they will be more critical merely because they got a deal. But (you knew that was coming ,), I think where the problem lies is that unless you have a very very generic listing with an exceptional location, it is best for you to get guests who like your listing or who your listing is the best fit for them, e.g not guests who merely choose your listing because it is the best priced (because that really isn’t the best way for anyone to find the best listing for them, considering the huge variations in listings).

Also, I think that stupid “slashed price” line messes extremely with expectations (and isn’t that what all the stars in our reviews translate to?). “Holy crap, we’re saving $60, this is gonna be so awesome”. And “awesome” is so subjective. So maybe your price is usually higher because of demand, location, space, parking, friendliness towards kids or pets, other amenities, etc but if someone books it primarily because of the price drop, they have chosen it only for that and not for example, the awesome swing set you have for their kids, which they don’t have so they don’t get the value once they’re there. And when they review they are asked specifically about how the listing met their expectations and their expectations are way out of whack because they think they got something for $120 that usually cost $180. And maybe they never spend $180 on accommodations so the idea of it is highly inflated in their heads. And that comes out in the review.

I adjust prices on a daily basis but I do not want it advertised that I am giving a “deal”. I want guests to pick my place because they like something about it (e.g. the style or the books) or they need something it has (e.g. a full kitchen, the location), because I believe that that is where the “value” is.

FWIW, I have had great guests pay $89 and also $390 for the same exact apartment and both have been happy and both have left great reviews but they both chose it for things other than just the price. I have yet to receive the dreaded 4-star review but I have received 4-stars on the “Value” rating a few times and it never once surprised me because I kinda knew that those guests weren’t the best fit for my listing or vice versa but that they had booked it because it was the closest thing to what they wanted that was the best priced.

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Well, from one old granny to another - I welcome all comments, so I appreciate what you have to say. We are plenty busy and really only tried this “promotion” thing on a whim. We don’t normally reduce our prices and are consistently a mid-priced listing in our area.

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I think pretty much everyone got it recently. My neighborhood looks like a Christmas sale at Walmart :woman_facepalming:

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Sorry, one more thing. This “promotion” thing really bothers me because it’s just another trick by Airbnb for them to make the money they want while we lower our prices. Everyone knows that the “Price Tips” are ridiculous and everyone ignores the “want to increase your bookings by umpteenth% for November, lower your prices” emails so I think this is really just another tool in that same box.

The service fees for guests have increased so much that we are being forced to lower our prices to remain competitive. Most of the places in my neighborhood actually cost more than the nicest hotels downtown now, once you add in the service fees. Guests are starting to catch on and we have new hotels here (and more on the way). I’ve seen listings lower their prices that I’ve never seen lower their prices but the reason it’s happening is so that the price is still good with Airbnb having a bigger take. Obviously we have to adjust but I’m just not going to pretend it’s some kind of special promotion that is being extended to me.

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I want to like your post but I hate that we have to lower our prices while AirBnB gets a bigger and bigger part of the pie.

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But in the OP theory, this guest might not have been so good had they actually get the discount…

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I’m not sure I follow this. Do they still calculate the service fee on the before promotion price?

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Yep! We actually have a fully registered domain name. We sponsor all sorts of local events and charities. We put our Airbnb URL on all those sponsorship. We’ve had a LOT of local people share our Airbnb with their families who now book us when they come to town. We also have a number of regulars. We have one man and his daughter that book our property one week a month. Their daughter plays with our kids. They’re now like family, they even eat dinner with us (and buy pizza) when it’s their “turn”. Anyhow, all that to say, you’re right there are a lot of other ways to monetize your property than just taking the “flash sales”.

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I don’t know. But I know they raise their percentage as the price decreases. And they’ve increased their percentage in the past year or so. We’re not getting almost any bookings from AirBnB since they raised their service fee. We’re getting enough from Vrbo to make ends meet, so I didn’t lower our rates on AirBnB to compensate for the higher booking fees.

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Your regulars are still booking on Airbnb? If so you are giving Airbnb 15% or more for no reason.

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