As a short-term rental host, your success or failure is largely determined by the productivity of your listing. In the online digitized world, productivity is measured by your listing’s number of views. It’s very similar to social media algorithms – the money follows the eyeballs.
The better your listing, the more views you’ll get, and with more views, you’ll get more clicks onto your listing, from there you’ll get more bookings, and then more reviews – which as long as they are good reviews, and we’ll talk about some tricks for that – will turn into more views and so starts what I call “the virtuous cycle” (put on screen in text). That is your listing outperforming other hosts’ on the platform and you make more money – the true end goal.
So what are those things that lead to a more productive, higher-performing listing in the first place?
Well let’s look at some examples: (see video)
So after seeing the examples, can you guess what the difference between these high-performing listings is?
If you guessed the instant appeal of the cover photo, you’re right! A great cover photo, on top of being in a really good location, appeals to potential guests and drives views. And I’m going to tell you why in just a minute. But first, it’s important to understand that the reason behind it is Airbnb wants to highlight its most appealing listings to drive bookings on the platform and gain market share, and to promote its brand image in the marketplace for these Instagram-worthy unique places. Because when people stay in these places, they share their experience either on social media or word of worth and it promotes Airbnb’s brand image and grows its customer base.
And if you are an Airbnb or have used the platform as a guest recently, you know Airbnb has shifted its platform experience to push more unique spaces through its use of categories (show categories page). Travelers are now more flexible with when and where they book and access to these premier properties all across the world builds brand loyalty with guests, which is the real revenue driver in the near and long term for Airbnb.
And now here it is, the reason why some listings do well when others don’t, and how you can take advantage of knowing these items.
First, Airbnb uses an interest algorithm (put text on screen). This means that the listings that generate the most interest will rise up in search results and get all the attention from potential guests, and all the bookings. And the biggest thing that contributes to your listing’s interest is the Click Through Rate (put text on screen). This is how many see your listing in search and then click on it to check it out. And from that point, there are additional metrics like hang-time and engagement, how long someone spends looking at your listing and clicking through to see all the pictures, amenities, and features.
But how do you appear in search in the first place and get seen to increase your click-through rate? Airbnb has 3 big components to its algorithm that determine why one listing is ranked higher and appears in searches higher up on the page. With 1 bonus that has really changed the game for hosts. And I’ll tell you how to take advantage of that too.
1st is Price: The price of your listing plays a huge factor in how often you appear on the platform, and thus how frequently you get booked. You do not want to be priced too high compared to similar listings.
Another thing Airbnb loves is when you use Smart Pricing. They want you to be priced the best because they take a cut of the total payout. I don’t use smart pricing, nor do I normally recommend it because it often ends up lower than the market rate, But if you have a listing that has zero bookings, try turning Smart Pricing on. Set the price higher than the recommended price so you don’t get booked too cheap and leave money on the table, and then go into the multi-calendar and put discounts on your dates in the price range where you’ll actually get bookings. This will allow you to control your price and get the benefit of having the “smart price box checked” for the algorithm to experience the boost.
Make sure you are competitively priced and using all of the discounts available on Airbnb. These are things like the weekly discount, monthly discount, and the lesser utilized last-minute discount and early bird discount. Most hosts don’t use all of these, and if you do you will stand out and have better prices, get booked more, and make more money.
The second 2nd algorithm input you want to focus on is Quality: The quality of your listing is measured by your overall property rating, or OPR (show OPR on the insights page). This rating is given by your guests after they stay in your property and give you a review, and is your lifeblood as a host. Because if you get bad reviews, that will feed into the algorithm and get you seen by fewer potential guests, but ALSO when guests are searching and reading reviews and they see poor reviews, that feeds into their decision to book your place.
And I’ve got a few tips on how you can increase the number of 5-star reviews you get.
- My first tip on reviews is about the psychology of the reviewer, your guest. People are 70% more likely to leave a positive review when asked to do so. And most people who stay in your property probably do enjoy their stay, but just forget or it doesn’t occur to them to leave a review. Create an automated message or message template to send out after checkout to ask your guest for a 5-star review if they enjoyed their stay, and if they didn’t ask them to let you know so you can fix that problem for the next guest to earn more future 5-star reviews.
- Follow up. Even though the act of asking your guests for reviews will increase your reviews, people get caught up. They are busy traveling, on vacation or doing other things and though they might want to leave a review, they could easily forget with everything they have going on. Don’t feel bad for following up with them about leaving a review. Let them know it’s super important to give other guests the confidence to book or important as a host to get good reviews. You delivered them a good stay, so you shouldn’t feel like you are imposing by asking for a good review.
- In either of these messaging sequences above, incorporate a review scale in the message to your guests. Hosts know that anything less than a 5-star review is the reviewing guest essentially saying to future potential guests “don’t stay here”, but guests don’t necessarily know that. Imagine if you had a 4.0 out of 5 rating, that would look terrible. Superhost is 4.8 stars out of 5 and often that is the threshold in the booker’s mind as the indicator of the quality of the place. Maybe instead of a message, you can print out a little card and place it in the unit, or a magnet on the fridge. I’ve seen this done a couple of different ways, and I saw improvements in my business when we did this. A review that says “Great stay” and then leaves 4-stars is so frustrating, and this step will turn more of those 4’s into 5’s, elevating your listing’s rank.
The 3rd determining piece of your listing performance is Availability: Availability has a few components and I want to make sure you are aware of all of them. Essentially, it is how many available dates you have on your calendar for guests to book. Contributors are your length of stay and your booking window (how far in advance guests can book).
Picture a property with a booking window of 1 month, a minimum length of stay of 7 days, and a maximum length of stay of 14 days. So people can only book that place in the coming month and are restricted to a 7-14 day stay. You won’t show up in many searches this way.
Now that is an extreme, but it’s pretty frequent that hosts may have a 6-month booking window with a 2-day minimum length of stay to avoid 1-night bookings, and a maximum length of stay of around 30 days so that they don’t risk getting booked for too long in their high season with a length of stay discount. But the effect is the same, you will show up in fewer searches when you are too restricted for when guests can book your place, and if you aren’t available on those dates, you won’t even show up in the search.
So increase your availability and the number of searches you show up in by lowering your minimum length of stay and increasing your maximum length of stay and booking window. And then you can change your pricing to make stays you don’t want like 1-day stays really unappealing and earn a premium for when they are booked.
And finally, the mystery factor to appear in more searches, get more bookings, and make more money on Airbnb is Appeal: The appeal of your listings is a combination of your amenities, your listing type, and your photos.
To be competitive and get ranked higher, you have to have key amenities on your Airbnb listing checked. I recently did a scrub of my Airbnb listings and found that certain amenities were not checked for whatever reason, going through too quickly or just forgetting to mark them, and once all the checkboxes were checked I saw a double-digit increase in views on those listings. So go through and ensure all your amenities are checked (show video of amenities page), every possible thing your listing has. And then to go a step further, you can add popular amenities based on your market like a fire fit, a desk for a dedicated workspace, or even a hot tub. The goal is to get the best bang for your buck and make sure your listing stands out.
Airbnb’s algorithm is also advanced enough to scan your photos for the different interest metrics and your amenities. If you’ve recently made a listing you’ve probably seen this. When you add your rooms and spaces on the listing details section, you add photos for each space your listing has, like a bedroom, living room, dining area, etc. And Airbnb auto-fills the photos for this section as suggestions, so its algorithm knows what kind of space the photo is for. This is why it is so important to get professional photos taken including all your amenities and what makes your listing unique. String lights and dusk photos with exterior lights are a big attraction as well.
So the goal is to Stand out and eliminate competition by your uniqueness. Crazy nice professional photos, and angles, maybe even hire models for your photo shoot or you can be the model yourself. Some of the most premier listings I’ve seen recently have their places staged for guests like a fire going in the fire pit, floaties in the pool, or models posing to enjoy the space. All of these things make a guest picture in their mind’s eye using those amenities or being the person in that photo having a great experience and making an awesome memory. It’s subconscious emotional triggers that drive interest, get clicks, and get your listing jacked up in search results. To see it for yourself, Go check out Airbnb.com without putting a date or a location in and see what I mean. These are the listings you want to emulate or even one-up.
Conclusion: If you implement all of these things, I guarantee your listing will perform better and you’ll make more money. You won’t be worrying about Airbnbust (show video of Airbnbust youtube search), but instead, you’ll be comfortable racking in bookings when other hosts are not making these changes and they are the ones who suffer.
One last thing I’ll leave you guys with to find additional areas where your listings can use some improvement is the Insights tab on Airbnb. I want you to go to insights and then click Opportunities in the top left navigation bar. This will show you where you have room to make improvements on these price, quality, availability, and appeal metrics. Most of these are explicitly named, and you can use the filters to go through each. And you can also see how you rank to similar listings. Your goal should be to get as close to 100% as you can on all these factors, and if you do that, you’ll see huge improvements in your views and listing conversion.
So I hope this was helpful for you guys and that you realize there and levers you can pull to increase your listing performance and earn more revenue on Airbnb. The set-it-and-forget-it days for your listing are over and it will take work on your end to stay at the top of the search results. But if you subscribe to my channel I’ll keep you informed and keep putting together the information that will help you guys stay on top. And if you made it this far please hit the like button and subscribe so you can stay up to date on everything you need to be a profitable short-term rental host. And I’ll see you guys next time.
