you are right - my friend, close to me, who charges double tells me that all the time - but then she also doesn’t get near as many bookings - I think people go to Airbnb to save money for the most part - if I raise my prices anywhere close to what the hotels cost - my bookings will go down. I somewhat depend on the income and the ratio of my riff raff to awesome people is very low. Like someone mentioned on here - we only talk about the BAD guests, I’ve had my share, but the gracious and wonderful people truly outweigh the bad! My friend has a beautiful zero entry pool and her home sits on a river. She’s very close to a quaint downtown area and she gives her guests use of bikes to go downtown and also the use of the kayaks on the river. She also attracts vacationers, retirees and couples who HANG around her pool all day. I actually prefer a working class clientele, who work all day and are here just to sleep. I get a lot of traveling nurses, who get a nice per Diem and they pocket the difference. I work from home, am here all day and really don’t like people just hanging around my house. I kind of enjoy them coming back in the evening - watching a show or chatting and maybe coffee in the morning, THAT’S ENOUGH for me! But then to each his own. My prices are not the cheapest, my summer rate is $55 (plus cleaning fee and extra person fee if more than one) - and several hosts around me are at $50 now for summer. In South Florida, summer is not our prime season. My max stay is 10 days, as I usually am pretty tired of them by then and also as time goes on, the guests seem to get more and more comfortable and stop acting like a “guest”. What I do need to do is to follow my instinct more than I do,sometimes I have doubts and yet accept the guest anyway, those are the times I find I should have not. Thanks so much for your input, it’s so nice to hear other hosts ideas! I learn something each time I read this forum!
Slow, to say the least. I do longer terms for the summer, and dropped the price fo the point that it cant go any lower. I had 13 views in August only . I think also this Zika virus scares everyone away
I had a guest cancel because of that. She was pregnant though so I don’t blame her for taking no chances.
I gf who runs a house of airbnb told a story how a guy from Africa with a blurry pic told her that he is from England (just because of his connecting flight was thorough London) started receiving packages several times a day. She tried to stop this process but could not…
Omg, refuse to accept or sign for parcels, or phone the delivery company and say they’ve made a mistake and nobody of that name lives there, or phone police and tell them somebody is using your address for fraudulent purposes.
Total nightmare !
You can ask guests to sign a separate contract with airbnb? does this give you extra legal pull? but wouldn’t the expense of a legal team not be worth it? How would you enforce an 50$ hr extra late fees? Do you tell airbnb and they will say okay here it is cause it was in your rules? Do you have any “suggested air conditioning temps” for guests to suggest to them?
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