Airbnb Best Practices for Running a Successful Business
The key to success is to make your Airbnb stand out and provide a fantastic experience to your guests to make them happy with their stay. Being an amazing host will help you get 5-star reviews and win more bookings. Here are Airbnb best practices to help you become a great host, maximize your listing potential.
Airbnb makes renting out their property short-term easier for anyone to earn additional income. But buying a vacation rental property in an attractive location and getting it listed on Airbnb and other similar websites isn’t enough to maximize your returns.
The key to success is to make your Airbnb stand out and provide a fantastic experience for your guests, ensuring they are happy with their stay. Being a fantastic host will help you get 5-star reviews and win more bookings.
Here are Airbnb best practices to help you become a great host, maximize your listing potential, and run a successful Airbnb business.
Invest in High-Quality and Durable Furnishing
When renting out your property short-term, you need to fully furnish and equip it to provide a comfortable stay for guests. Invest in high-quality furniture and comfy bedding that will add personality to your home and enhance your guest experience. Ensure that your furniture is durable and matches the overall style of the location and your rental property.
You must also invest in home décor to transform your home into a stylish and welcoming retreat. Select a theme and decorate your Airbnb to visually appeal to your ideal guests. Refresh your space by adding live plants to make it look and feel more inviting.
You may want to check out our blog article to find Airbnb decorating ideas and tips on creating a cozy and inviting space.
Respond to Booking Inquiries and Guest Messages Fast
Replying quickly when travelers reach out to you will show that you’re an attentive host. Airbnb requires hosts to respond to booking-related messages within 24 hours. A high response rate is one of the criteria for becoming a Superhost. This status can help you secure more bookings because your listing will appear higher in Airbnb’s search results pages.
Responding quickly can also reduce the chances that potential guests will book a stay elsewhere and is essential for creating the best experience. Ideally, you should try to respond to all guest messages and questions within an hour or two and be proactive in communicating with guests at all stages of their journey.
Use messaging to give your guests the information they need to have an enjoyable stay—check-in and checkout instructions, house rules, and local tips. This way, you can make them feel welcome and encourage them to share positive reviews about their stay at your rental.
Guest messaging is very time-consuming if you manually type each message to each guest. Still, you can automate this process with the help of AI using short-term rental software like Hospitable. With Hospitable, you’ll be able to create an automated message flow to provide your guests with the necessary information at the right time and utilize Inbox AI to draft and refine detailed, personalized responses to challenging guest questions.
You can use Suggest with AI to quickly generate draft responses based on property and booking details, previous replies to similar guest messages in the past, and any information you’ve uploaded to the Knowledge Hub to help our AI write more accurate messages. You can review AI-generated responses and edit them before sending to guests.
You can provide some bullet points as guidance and use Improve with AI to rewrite your own message, ensuring it is both warm and professional. You can also opt for a fully automated AI Inbox, allowing our AI to reply to your guests automatically, even when you're asleep or 24/7.
Optimize Your Listing for Airbnb Search Engine
Raising your listing's ranking in the Airbnb search results can help increase your bookings and rental income. Here is what you can do to optimize your listing for the Airbnb algorithm:
Complete your Airbnb host profile
Create a detailed listing description that highlights its unique features and use relevant words and phrases to help the Airbnb system show your listing in appropriate categories
Upload high-quality photos of each room in your STR property to create a tour of your rental space
Have many 5-star reviews
Enable Instant Book to allow travelers to book your listing automatically
Get Superhost status
Add an interesting guidebook to your listing to give guests a local tour
Price Your Listing Reasonably
You must keep your nightly rates competitive to ensure a high occupancy rate and maximize your profit. But you can’t rely on guesswork when setting the right price for your listing. You need to understand your market, your local competition, seasonality trends in your area, and economic factors. Your pricing strategy should be based on in-depth research and reliable data.
You need to constantly adapt to market trends and update your prices accordingly. Adjusting the nightly rates daily can be time-consuming and turn hosting into a full-time job. Successful hosts utilize dynamic pricing tools that provide pricing recommendations based on booking data, market supply and demand, seasonal trends, and other relevant factors.
The good news is that Hospitable has a built-in Dynamic Pricing solution, which is included in the Host, Professional, and Mogul plans at no extra cost. Hospitable users don’t have to overpay for third-party tools to optimize their prices.
If you activate the Dynamic Pricing feature for your property, Hospitable will adjust your nightly rates automatically every 24 hours based on the latest market conditions to help maximize your revenue. Our Dynamic Pricing works for all your connected channels, including Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and your Direct booking site.
Take a look at how this feature works with the interactive demo below.
Keep Your Place Clean
All Airbnb guests prioritize cleanliness and expect the tidy rental space that they see in your listing photos. A well-maintained rental property can lead to 5-star reviews and ratings, which can help you attract more bookings.
That’s why it’s essential to thoroughly clean your property between guests and use a cleaning checklist to ensure your space is spotless. Giving your Airbnb a deep clean during each turnover can be time-consuming, so consider hiring professional cleaners to help you stay on top of your cleaning routine.
Automate Your Hosting Routine
Many people start an Airbnb because they want real estate passive income, but in fact, running a STR business often feels like a full-time job and can be stressful. Many hosts opt for Airbnb automation tools to cope with the workload.
Short-term rental software like Hospitable can help automate almost all your daily tasks, such as guest communication, updating calendars and prices across multiple channels, assigning tasks to your team, creating unique smart lock codes for each guest, and managing guest reviews, among others. Hospitable will save you time and effort in running your Airbnb business.
Offer Amenities That Enhance Guest Experience
Wow your Airbnb guests with the right amenities. They are essential for a memorable stay and can be the key to attracting guests. Guests searching for STR properties on Airbnb often filter their search results to find top amenities. So if you want to stand out in search results, you should add these ten popular amenities and include them in your listing:
A kitchen
A pool
A Jacuzzi
Free parking
Air conditioning or heating
A washer and dryer
Pets allowed
Laptop-friendly workspace
You should also research the amenities and extras that top-performing listings in your area offer and add them to your property if possible. It’s better to focus on amenities that add value to the guest experience without incurring a high cost and requiring extensive maintenance.
Bottom Line
Buying an Airbnb property with a good earning potential in a high-demand area is the first step to becoming an Airbnb host, but it’s not enough to run a profit. Since the competition in the vacation rental market is intense, you need to put effort into providing your guests with a better space and experience than the other short-term rentals in your location.
For improved efficiency, outsource cleaning and maintenance tasks to professionals and automate your routine operations using property management software, such as Hospitable. This way, you’ll save time and avoid last-minute stress.
Follow these Airbnb best practices, and you will be on your way to becoming a successful Airbnb host and maximizing your profit.
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Table of contents
Invest in High-Quality and Durable Furnishing
Respond to Booking Inquiries and Guest Messages Fast
Optimize Your Listing for Airbnb Search Engine
Price Your Listing Reasonably
Keep Your Place Clean
Automate Your Hosting Routine
Offer Amenities That Enhance Guest Experience