I think it’s a combination of things as you suggest- especially STR over saturation.
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I don’t think so. One of my “worst” guests was a local overnight stay. I gave them low stars, honest written review and wouldn’t host again. They only had a handful of reviews but they were okay reviews. If hosts won’t be honest, or won’t leave reviews because they don’t have anything good to say and/or are afraid, it’s only going to get worse. Such hosts think they are looking out for their best interests but eventually the “trash will be passed” to them too.
My bookings seem slower when the calendar is open but I block off a lot of time due to my own travel, being busy with the dog boarding business and direct bookings. I don’t use other platforms but it makes perfect sense to me that Airbnb would “reward” hosts who are more available. They may also be “punishing” hosts who book direct. Air can’t tell why a date isn’t available but obviously direct booking or booking with a competitor would be reasons.
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Certainly, your experience is the outlier for current market conditions. Is there something about your target demographic or location/listing ?
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Airbnb was our “bread and butter” for years - we’ve been doing this since 2013. But right now the only bookings we’re getting are from 1. BDC (whom I dislike immensely), 2. Direct bookings, 3. Vrbo and 4. Personal (no $$). We have NO Airbnb bookings right now. NONE. NADA. ZILTCH. ZIPPO.
I checked our views on Airbnb the other night. They only keep the data for a year, so I checked beginning from last March until this month and WOW!!! what a drop in views!!! We were getting 500-900 views a month, every month…and then for the whole of January 2023, one listing had 2 views and the other had 9 views! That is completely nuts!! I don’t know how to fix this. How can you force someone to view your listing?
The other thing I noticed is that when I search my town with an incognito window when I know my units are available, at the top of the window it says 1000s of listings in Kihei, HI. and Airbnb only shows 15 pages (and some of the listings that are showing up are not even in Kihei - they are way on the other side of the island). We don’t show up on the first 15 pages. Neither do many many other listings, obviously…however, if you use the map and zoom in on an area of Kihei, then we show up on the first page.
The other thing I noticed on the first 15 pages of listings is that no one has the overall rating that we have (ours are 4.95 and 4.98). Most are WAY lower than ours. So, what is making these listings get top priority?? From what I can tell it’s price. They are WAY lower than what the market bears.
They all have cleaning fees, and they all have cancellation policies, some more strict than others. Very few have weekly discounts or monthly discounts.
So, it’s price. That’s it. Lower your price considerably and maybe you’ll have a chance to get on the first 15 pages. Ridiculous. Doesn’t Airbnb want my money?
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Located in the capital of Iceland. Right downtown.
ICeland is trending alot and I guess it is the reason. Record breaking tourist numbers in the country.
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This is very good research you did and I congratulate you for doing it.
Local markets change, sometimes radically, and sometimes quickly. I have watched this is several places in the residential real estate market.
I have close relatives who have lived on Maui for about 30 years, currently in Kula. My understanding is that Maui tourism is being discouraged because of Native Hawaiian objections to over tourism, and because of water concerns. I’ve seen multiple posts on TikTok about both of these issues. One post I remember urged people not to go to Maui at all (and so to consider a different island.) Whether tourism is actually down in Maui I don’t know.
What I would do in your situation is temporarily price these properties so that they appear on page 1 or 2 of the search–assuming that changing the price will actually give you this result.
I would try it for 2 weeks just to see what happens…this assumes you have enough vacancy that you want to bother doing this, of course.
People don’t like to hear this but it’s possible you are priced too high for the current AirBnB user market.
Personally I would want to figure that out if I could.
The market is the market and that’s just the way it is.
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I have one of the lower priced rentals in this town and my listing often is on page 4 or 5. Last year it was on one or two.
Last February I got 300+ views, this Feb–100. It’s been this way for months now.
Air still says there are 1000 rentals here which is ridiculous. Yeah, maybe 1000 in a 100 mile area.
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Your money? No, they don’t care whose money they get. If they connect two guests to units bringing in half the fees of one of your units, it’s exactly the same to Airbnb. Lower ratings for some units don’t impact them either. If all rentals were low rated, they would be concerned but as long as they can say things like “hosts in your area make XXXX a month,” or “Airbnb rentals average 4.7 stars internationally,” or other things that sound good in press releases, they are happy.
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Very interesting post to read! I actually contacted Airbnb today about the sudden drop-off in bookings and their response was overall the platform in January & Feburary (from SuperHost support) is slow on their end but they are ramping up. Interesting observation comping from the company itself…
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It also assumes that the host can price any lower and still make it worthwhile to host. I would rather my unit sat empty than do things to get on the first page that would mean I was just breaking even.
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Yes, of course. That goes without saying methinks.
People with multiple properties, like the original poster seems to have, often have debt service to consider. If you’re paying on a loan (or mortgage) you pay whether the unit is occupied or not. So just making enough to cover debt service can be a reasonable business goal.
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Kula is beautiful! I would love to live up there, but we have to be closer to our business which is smack-dab in the middle of the touristy areas.
Yes, some of the young people that are on Tik-Tok are discouraging people from coming to Maui. However, tourism is up and somewhat surpassing pre-pandemic levels. And it’s sort of like shooting themselves in the foot - Tourism is the main industry, unfortunately - and it touches most, if not all that live here in some form or fashion. So, to get rid of it would be devastating.
You hear different things from different sectors - we don’t have enough water to sustain or superlatives such as we have the most fresh water in the world. I’ve heard that we definitely have more water than O’ahu and far, far fewer people. So, it’s hard to know what/who to believe. And Maui county keeps allowing the building of more subdivisions, so they must know it’s okay…right?
Yes, even for a time right after we reopened, Governor Ige asked people not to come to Hawaii - and some people listened at the time. I think we had one cancellation due to that message.
We might try this on Airbnb, just to see what happens.
True, people don’t like to hear that 
. And I would tend to agree with you however we are getting the price we are asking on BDC and Vrbo. We have had a surge of bookings from BDC in recent days, every day. But, my husband and I call BDC “Cancel Dot Com” because very few make it to fruition.
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Ah…I should have put a smiley face next to that as it was said in jest.
It’s a bummer for sure - but also good to know that we don’t have to be perfectly rated to still get on the first page.
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You are correct when you search a location you often get properties outside of that location coming up.
However I don’t agree price is the main factor . It’s likely to be immediate availability.
If you’re using other channels then your calendar will show limited availability on Airbnb and therefore you will go lower down the rankings .
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I’m really seeing this right now. I have a direct book guest that has booked 4-5 days every other week from Oct through Aug. It’s a cushy situation so I’ve been lazy about opening up my calendar and for the first time I’ve seen my listing drop down many pages.
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What’s really unfair is this business of allowing a guest 24 hrs to pay. If Airbnb is going to drop one’s search ranking because of blocked dates, that shouldn’t include counting blocked dates due to “awaiting payment”.
This just happened to me. There was a guest who wanted to book, but she had had a few questions first, so sent an inquiry. We had exchanged a couple of very friendly messages, and I had also asked her a question the answer to which would determine whether I would pre-approve the inquiry.
While I was waiting for a response, I got a request which overlapped the dates she was interested in. I accepted that request, only to have it sit there “awaiting payment” for 23 hrs, and then marked “request withdrawn”.
In the meantime, the inquiry guest had responded, answering my question, now wanting to book, and apologizing for not responding sooner, that she had been somewhere with no reception, and saying she now saw some of her dates blocked.
I explained that I had gotten a request that I had accepted, that it was not confirmed, but awaiting payment, and I’d get back to her as soon as I saw it confirmed or not.
By the time the “request withdrawn” appeared, she had already booked another place, as she was down to the wire- her check-in was in 2 days.
So I lost both the request and the inquiry. And I would have much preferred the Inquiry guest, who had 20 wonderful reviews, as opposed to the Requester who was a newbie.
How Airbnb thinks that giving newbie guests 24 hrs to verify their payment method and collect the $, blocking the calendar to other guests who have their ducks in a row and whose payment would go through immediately and the booking confirmed, is really stupid. Not only do I now have unbooked dates, Airbnb lost out on a service fee.
Furthermore, this request was made 3 days before check-in, within the time for my moderate policy to pay me for a cancellation. An accepted, then retracted request that blocks the calendar within the cancellation policy being in effect should count as a cancellation, as far as I’m concerned, because it has exactly the same effect.
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A few reasons:
-When I’ve tried looking up my listing on a different browser, it sometimes doesn’t even show up. I first contacted Airbnb about this because it wasn’t even showing up when I zoomed all the way in on a map. They had no answer.
-My bookings fell off a cliff after last summer so it didn’t feel like just a slow down or fewer people traveling. (example down 35% in bookings).
-When I’d open a date in another browser loads of (not great) listings would pop up…I’m talking no thought, time, money put into them and they would have 4.2 ratings…yet were on the top of the page and the thoughtful, highly rated listings with hundreds of reviews were buried three pages in, or not showing up at all.
Things like that made me wonder/realize something was way off with the platform.
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THIS is what is most upsetting to me. I put my gd heart and soul into building this business with Airbnb and this is how they treat their money makers?? By taking all our business and handing it over to lesser competitors who didn’t do anything to build up this website??
That is reprehensible. Why not just open my wallet and take it straight from there-feels about the same.
I was planning on opening another listing this summer (and already $$$ invested). But now, what’s the point? It’s as if the past decade of hard work has been for naught. Should have invested my money some other way.
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I’m sorry that you’ve had such poor experiences with Airbnb algorithms and practices.
Although I have not experienced this I know I must add, not experienced that yet.
So let me share with you my approach in case you find something in it that might fit with your strategy. I’m working to offer a direct booking site (this presupposes that I’ll get enough Airbnb and VRBO guests who will want to direct book, which could be a discussion in another thread).
To facilitate direct booking, I’m getting on OwnerRez.
After that I will look at other opportunities, like Direct Booking Sites: The Key to Making More Money - #12 by jsoulo
This strategy has helped focus me on my customer service objective, which is not merely a five-star rating and an effusive review but also – actually, MAINLY, a desire to come back and book here. Everything else is a ‘given.’
I guess that’s the question.
Since you say you’ve ‘already $$$ invested’ you might need to move ahead. You might want to collaborate with members here how to make your new listing most distinctive and present to your target market. We can be a little hyper-critical at times and more than blunt, but you’ll find a lot of knowledge, detail orientation and a diversity of views (that diversity is really is what you want; and when the group is almost unanimous you know it’s a ‘must do’).
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Yes, and this is a factor that I wouldn’t be able to find on others’ listings to complete my quick and dirty study.
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