Becoming an Airbnb host is a great way to make extra money and meet new people from around the world. At the same time, being an Airbnb host can be time-consuming and overwhelming if you don't know how to manage your business correctly.
What can you do to make the hosting process profitable but also enjoyable and fulfilling? Here are some Airbnb hosting tips that can help make hosting easier.
Airbnb Tips and Tricks: Creating an Attractive Listing
Before you host your first guest, you must list your property and make your listing stand out. How? You should create a listing that focuses on the overall guest experience of your place.
Here are some easy Airbnb listing tips you should follow.
- Prepare your property for short-term rental business. There are several minor tweaks you should make before you begin. You will thank yourself for doing it a few months later. Make your place welcoming to guests so they can truly feel at home and comfortable. Create an atmosphere that encourages guests to relax.
- Write an accurate description of your place, highlighting certain aspects that make it unique and appeal to potential guests. Don't just state dry facts. Use your creativity to describe the experience your guests will have if they book your property. Use appropriate words and phrases to help the Airbnb algorithm show your listing in relevant categories.
- Add 20-30 high-resolution photos to create a virtual tour of your Airbnb and help guests clearly understand what it will be like to stay in your home. Add inspiring pictures of each room, and don't forget to include photos of your most exclusive amenities and focal points.
- Set clear house rules to inform guests of what they can and cannot do at your vacation rental, as well as what is expected of them. Well-defined house rules can help protect your home and avoid many problems. They will also allow guests to evaluate whether your listing is a good fit before they book a stay.
- Complete your Airbnb host profile and showcase your personality—mention your interests, hobbies, and travel experiences, and include a professional photo of yourself. Travelers want to know as much as possible about you to feel safe when booking your property.
Airbnb Hosting Tips: Keeping Your Guests Happy
One of the secrets of successful Airbnb hosts is exceptional hospitality. It's essential to do everything possible to make your guests feel welcome, valued, and cared for, ensuring a memorable stay.
Remember that happy guests are more likely to leave you great reviews, become returning customers, and recommend your rental to their friends and family. Here are some Airbnb hosting tips to help ensure a seamless and stress-free experience for your guests.
Manage guest communication the right way
Communication is a major aspect of guest reviews, as they seek a more personal experience. You need to stay in touch with your guests at all stages of their journey:
- Pre-booking
- Between booking and check-in
- During the stay
- After the stay
You should be proactive in your conversations with guests to make them feel welcome, from the moment they inquire about your property to when they check out. Be responsive and available to answer all their questions immediately and address any issues that may arise during their stay.
That can be rather time-consuming if you try to handle it yourself. The good news is you can put your guest communication on autopilot while sounding like you. Using short-term rental software like Hospitable, you can create automated messaging templates and utilize shortcodes to personalize them.
You can schedule your messages before and after specific stages of the guest's stay or based on the day of the week, ensuring that all your messages are sent to your guests at the right time, regardless of the number of listings you have.
Hospitable uses AI to save you time and improve the guest experience. Our AI can detect questions on more than 20 common topics and automatically send quick responses to guest messages using your prewritten answers.
Create a digital guidebook and upload it to the Knowledge Hub to educate the AI about your properties. Our AI will use this information to instantly answer guests' questions. You can use Suggest with AI and Improve with AI in your Hospitable Inbox to quickly draft and improve detailed responses when manually messaging your guests.
Have conversations with your guests even when you sleep
Organize a smooth check-in
Make it simple for your Airbnb guests to check in. The best approach is to offer them a self-check-in option, as it saves time for both you and your guests. Allow your guests to get access to your property using a smart lock. You can automate the entire process, including changing the unique code remotely for each visit. A self-check-in is one of the most popular amenities among Airbnb guests, so they're more likely to book your property if you offer it.
Keep your place clean
Your Airbnb rental should always be spotless for your guests. Maintaining a constant routine of turning your space over between guests can be rather tiring, so we recommend seeking professional help. Hire a cleaning service specializing in tidying up vacation rental properties during each turnover to ensure you're always covered. You can also add a cleaning fee to your listing to offset the cost.
Make sure to create a comprehensive cleaning checklist to help your team keep your property guest-ready and ensure that they have covered everything, leaving no spot untouched.
Provide your guests with a house manual
Provide your guests with as much information as possible before and during their stay to ensure a seamless experience. Create a comprehensive house manual for your guests, detailing everything they should know about your home to stay comfortable, including where to find things they need and how various systems work. A good idea is to give your guests recommendations for sights to see, places to eat, and things to do in your city.
You can create an in-depth digital guidebook that includes all the important information—tech-savvy guests are sure to appreciate that they can easily access it using their smartphones. However, having a beautifully designed printed copy on your rental property may also be a good idea. Print off a hard copy of your house manual, and leave it where your guest won't miss it.
Your guests will appreciate that you've provided them with clear instructions for everything that might need explanation. And don't forget to write a good welcome letter to make a great first impression.
Another nice touch can be to stock your vacation rental home with books, tourist maps, or guides on the area. This way, you'll help your guests experience your area like a local, and that's what they're looking for when they choose to stay in an Airbnb.
Airbnb Host Tips: How to Run Your Business Smoothly
Many people new to the industry are unaware of the amount of work required to run a successful short-term rental business. Some consider Airbnb a side hustle and are surprised when it evolves into a full-time job that requires a significant amount of time, energy, and effort. However, there are ways to make the hosting process more enjoyable, and hopefully, these Airbnb host tips will give you a great start.
Get help to make hosting easier
Airbnb hosts have to wear many hats. Many lighten their load by sharing responsibilities with their teammates—manager, co-host, cleaners, maintenance staff, and laundry team. Create a team and work together. Ensure that all your team members get quick and convenient access to the information they need when they need it.
Your job will be to send reminders to your team members to ensure that all tasks of running and operating your property are completed on time. These reminders are time-sensitive, but by using Hospitable, you can automate this process entirely and manage your team hassle-free.
Make sure you create a comprehensive cleaning checklist that will help your team keep your property guest-ready and to ensure they have covered everything and no spot is left untouched.
Provide your guests with a house manual
Offer your guests as much information as possible before and during their stay to ensure a smooth experience. Create a comprehensive house manual for your guests to tell them everything they should know about your home to stay comfortable finding things they need and how they work. You can create an in-depth online house manual on the Airbnb website, but having a printed copy on your rental property is always a good idea.
Print off a hard copy of your house manual, and leave it where your guest won’t miss it. Your guests will appreciate that you’ve provided them with clear instructions for everything that might need explanation. And don’t forget to write a good welcome letter to make a great first impression.
A good idea is to give your guests recommendations for sights to see, places to eat, and things to do in your city. You can use the Airbnb guidebook feature to make this information available to your guests online.
Another nice touch can be to stock your vacation rental home with books, tourist maps, or guides on the area. This way, you’ll help your guests experience your area like a local, and that’s what they’re looking for when they choose to stay in an Airbnb.
Get help to make hosting easier
Airbnb hosts have to wear many hats. Many lighten their load by sharing their responsibilities with their teammates—manager, co-host, cleaners, maintenance, and laundry team. Create a team and work together. Ensure that all your team members get quick and convenient access to the information they need when they need it.
Your job will be to send reminders to your team members to ensure that all tasks of running and operating your property are completed on time. These reminders are time-sensitive, but by using Hospitable, you can automate this process entirely and manage your team hassle-free.
Take your team management to the next level
Price your listing competitively
Setting competitive prices that reflect seasonal variations and demand is vital to maximize your earning potential. Do market research and consider your location and amenities. You must regularly check and update your prices in accordance with market trends and optimize them according to seasonal fluctuations.
Being intelligent with your pricing strategy will positively impact your success as an Airbnb host. And if you opt for Hospitable, you can take advantage of our built-in Dynamic Pricing feature. Our solution will automatically optimize your listing's rates to maximize revenue and occupancy based on market demand, seasonality, and other factors while you maintain complete control over your pricing strategy.
Select a pricing strategy that aligns with your revenue goals (conservative, recommended, or aggressive), and then set your minimum and maximum price limits. Once you activate the dynamic pricing tool, it will adjust your prices in real-time based on millions of data points.
The best thing is that Hospitable's Dynamic Pricing is available to all users on Host, Professional, and Mogul plans at no extra cost. Check out our help article to learn more about how this feature works.
List your property on other OTAs
If you're new to the short-term rental business, Airbnb is the ideal platform to get started. As your business evolves, you must optimize your occupancy rate and list your properties on additional platforms. The top choices here are Vrbo, Agoda, and Booking.com. Be sure to check out our extensive guide on hosting on Booking.com.
You should also build a direct booking website to drive repeat direct bookings—this will allow you to reduce your dependence on OTAs and save on their commissions. Having listings on several channels will help you improve your visibility, reach more travelers, and increase your chances of getting bookings.
But the problem is that when you get more bookings, you have less free time if you try to personally handle every aspect of your Airbnb business. Still, there are ways to manage multiple listings on several platforms, allowing hosts to minimize effort and maximize results.
Automate your hosting routine
Being a short-term rental host doesn't have to be stressful, so many hosts opt for automation to streamline their daily operations and take the hassle out of hosting. Using short-term rental software like Hospitable, you can automate all repetitive tasks, including guest messaging, managing your team, updating calendars and prices on multiple channels, and many more. Hospitable has a comprehensive set of features and can save you time and effort in running your STR business.
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With Hospitable, you can scale your STR business faster, like an Airbnb Plus Superhost Quynh Vu. Quynh and her husband managed their first property entirely through the Airbnb app, which proved to be very challenging due to the constant guest messaging and management.
However, when the couple switched to automation with Hospitable, they were able to automate various workflows and enhance their overall efficiency. That allowed them to focus on growing their STR business, enabling them to purchase more properties. Today, they own and manage six rentals across three states.
You may want to check out our blog article to learn more about Airbnb automation and find tips on automating different aspects of your business.
Final Word
Becoming a successful Airbnb host isn't just about creating an attractive listing and landing a booking. The competition in the vacation rental industry is high, so as a host, you must strive to consistently deliver unique and memorable experiences for your guests.
That means you must invest time and commitment to the process to make your guests feel welcome and happy with their stay. Then, your guests are more likely to leave you positive reviews and perhaps even return one day.
These are just a few Airbnb hacks to simplify your hosting routine, saving time and energy without compromising the quality of customer service. Use our tips to increase your Airbnb income, impress your guests, and save time.
Experiment with different Airbnb hosting tips to find out which works best for you (it will depend on your lifestyle and your listing). Just give it some time, and you're sure to discover the best approach for you.
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