What are the key factors for guests in choosing a specific AirBnb listing?
perceived value and amenities then location
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thanks for your feedback Debra!
when you say amenities, what does that constitute based on your experience?
I list a large 100 year old house. The kitchen is yet to be updated. I don’t have a dishwasher and dishes need to be done by hand - some don’t mind - some want a dishwasher even though I clearly state there isn’t one. I offer a full range of great quality cook ware, lots of dishes and people don’t feel shorted by a lack of small things.Beautiful linen and good towels, If they need something I ask them to tell me.
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It depends on why they are staying in a particular location. If they are staying for business and being reimbursed getting a business friendly listing in proximity to their activities would be important. If its a vacation for a large group and everyone is spliting the costs having a large place with multiple bathrooms may take precedence. If people are driving through town and looking for a place to stop for the night low price and close to the interstate might be important. I could go on and on.
What kind of listing are you thinking of offering?
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Thanks Debra! It seems like people are looking to cook more than I thought? Is it typically families you get more so, or do you find a lot of groups of young friends cooking more?
Will the guests typically call you within their stay and ask questions?
@Tamir_Ryan_Jacob - have you read through Airbnb Help Centre, their website and the community guides on Airbnb Community Centre.
If not wander over and have a read…you will find it covers many of the questions you are asking here.
As I’ve mentioned before you need to building your listing around what your key target audiences want and the type of listing you provide.
What works for other hosts won’t necessarily work for you.
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@Tamir_Ryan_Jacob has been on here several times this week, fishing for immediate answers to questions he is too lazy to spend the time searching and reading. Most of his questions are like this – so broad and open ended that they are impossible to answer in any real sense.
We are here to help hosts with real problems, not wannabes looking for immediate answers.
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I often use AirBnb as a guest, typically I stay in 6 listings in a year. My number one priority is always location, so first thing I do is figure out were I need to stay, then I zoom in on the map and look for listings in that area.
The next thing I look for are 5 star ratings, especially cleanliness stars must be 5. Then reviews and finally amenities, I mostly look for wifi anything else is secondary to me.
Every guest has his own priority, I think there isn’t one answer to this question. As long as you set guest expectations and be truthful about your listing you should be ok (with guests who read).
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You’re not going to draw accurate conclusions from hosts without taking into consideration how similar your listing locations are.
If you ask hosts of whole-home cabin rentals an hour from town, they’ll tell you all their guests cook. If you ask a host of an apartment/suite/room rental in a foodie town, they may say none of them cook.
As @KKC said, what type of listing are you offering? Obviously if you already have a gourmet kitchen, that’ll push you toward marketing on that attribute regardless of your location. If you’d have to drop $80k into a kitchen remodel, it would make more sense to market to a different segment, even if that’s in demand for your area.
Do try searching your town/city in the community forums. Sometimes you can find local hosts who will have more insight into needs for your area.
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When I’m a guest I look for location, host rating and a listing with a private/separate entrance. If there’s multiple options with those criteria (which is rare), then I filter by price.
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We have an apartment we were considering hosting for guests and we were looking to learn more about what we are getting ourselves into before we ‘make the plunge’. It’s a new adventure for us, so I really appreciate all of your feedback and input!!!
Thanks Allison. I never looked at it as area specific like that. I was recently reading about the same thing for WeWork and how they try to integrate local culture in every location they go. That’s a great insight for us to consider.
Looks like your sentiment is shared by a few other guests which is awesome to know. Thanks for taking the time to give us feedback! So far it seems location is number one, ratings/cleanliness are equal 2nd and wifi is a big one too! We will have to keep these things close in mind.
Love this response. Thank you for pointing that out Ken. I wholeheartedly agree. My questions are incredibly bad at this point because I do not know much/the right things to ask. If you could recommend questions I should be asking, I would love to hear from you/things we should research…I think the hardest part of this journey for us so far is we do not know what to ask!
So you own an apartment and you’ll be airbnbing the entire thing, not just a room? And assuming it’s in a urban area what kind of guests are you going to attract? Tourists? People coming for special events? People coming for work? It there seasonal appeal or year round appeal? Will target clients change with the seasons? Will you be nearby to check in guests or hosting remotely? One bedroom for singles or couples or two or more bedrooms for larger groups? How many hundreds of apartments are already listed in your neighborhood? What are the local laws regarding short term rentals?
This is an amazing useful way of thinking about our local market K9.
I literally will go through these one by one to help figure out our plan. So far we know it will be the whole apartment and will not be that seasonal. However we live in Boston so we get hit hard by the snow in the winter! This line of questioning will significantly help with our research. Thanks so much!
A lot depends on what kind of rental. Many hosts have a vacation rental but some airbnb hosts are looking for longer stays, even trying to attract traveling nurses or other temporary workers. Some are working the business traveler angle. Some of us are mostly one night road trip pit stops (like me).
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