Airbnb Must-Haves for Successful Hosting

While turning your property into an Airbnb is a great way to earn additional income, getting started may feel overwhelming. In addition to providing all the necessary supplies and amenities for guests, a significant amount of preparation is required to manage the daily operations of your Airbnb.

To help you set up your short-term rental, we’ve created a post with tips on Airbnb must-haves that you must take care of before you start welcoming guests.

Airbnb Must-Haves for New Hosts

There’s a lot to consider to ensure you can provide your short-term rental guests with a memorable experience. Here we’ll go over everything you need to become a successful Airbnb host, including must-have items for your rental and things you can do to better manage and streamline your day-to-day operations.

Equip your rental with essential items and amenities

The quality and types of amenities that your Airbnb offers play an essential role in creating the perfect experience for your guests. No matter whether you’re offering a private room or a luxurious vacation rental home that boasts an exquisite design, you should provide these must-have items that travelers expect to have for a comfortable stay:

• Toilet paper
• Hand and body soap
• One towel for each guest
• One pillow for each guest
• Linens for each guest bed

You can decide whether to make a bed for each guest or neatly stack the bed linens. Still, Airbnb encourages hosts to ask travelers about their preferences in messages during the booking process. This way, you can demonstrate to your guests that you’re a responsible host who prioritizes their needs and wants.

Although communicating with guests via messages can be time-consuming, you can automate this process using short-term rental software like Hospitable. Our STR super app can automate 90% of your guest communication with the help of AI, saving you a lot of time.

If you want to message a guest manually, you can use Suggest with AI and Improve with AI features available in your Inbox. They enable you to quickly draft and refine detailed, human-sounding responses to any guest message, tailored to the message context and booking details.

Remember that most travelers consider amenities a top priority for a perfect trip, especially when searching for longer stays. Many travelers apply filters to view only those short-term rentals that offer the amenities or features they want. That’s why adding popular amenities to your listing will help you attract more guests and get more bookings on Airbnb.

According to Airbnb, travelers often search for properties that offer:

• WiFi
• A pool
• A kitchen
• Air conditioning or heating
• A washer or dryer
• Free parking
• A Jacuzzi
• Laptop-friendly workspace
• Self-check-in
• Pets allowed

Airbnb also recommends that you include the following items to ensure safety for your guests and your home:

• Carbon monoxide alarm
• Smoke alarm
• Fire extinguisher
• Emergency plan and local numbers
• First-aid kit

Check out our blog article for a detailed checklist of Airbnb essentials to help create a welcoming atmosphere for your guests and ensure positive reviews.

Choose a dynamic pricing tool

Price is one of the primary factors travelers consider when selecting a place to stay. No matter how wonderful your rental space is, you may miss out on bookings if your price is higher than in comparable properties nearby. That’s why it’s essential to set your pricing strategy wisely and regularly update your prices based on travel trends and market data.

Continuously monitoring your competition, tracking market data, and manually adjusting prices to ensure they are competitive is very time-consuming and costly. You should opt for a dynamic pricing tool that can help automatically optimize your STR prices and maximize your profits.

All dynamic pricing tools utilize machine learning algorithms to analyze real-time fluctuations in market supply and demand. They can provide tips on the best rates for your vacation rental business based on different data points, including historical performance data, special events, and local holidays.

There are numerous third-party dynamic pricing tools available that can automatically adjust rates based on real-time data and market trends; however, they are not free. Still, if you opt for Hospitable, you’ll be able to use our built-in Dynamic Pricing, which is included in Host, Professional, and Mogul plans at no extra cost.

If you enable our built-in pricing engine, Hospitable will combine your settings with real-time market data to automatically adjust your rates, maximizing revenue generation for your properties.

Hire professional cleaners

Airbnb guests have high expectations regarding the cleanliness of the rental property they book. Guests expect perfection from every angle, so you should take the utmost care in your turnover cleanings.

Of course, you can clean your property yourself after your guests have left to save money, but depending on the size of your property, you may spend a considerable amount of time on it. That means you won’t be able to devote enough time to your main goal—growing your STR business.

Hiring professional cleaners for this job can be a game-changer. It will save you hours of precious time and help ensure a thorough and consistent turnover each time.

Opt for short-term rental software

Stocking your home with the necessary items, setting your pricing strategy, and outsourcing your cleaning to professionals are the most apparent aspects of starting a vacation rental business. However, STR hosts have numerous other essential responsibilities, so running an Airbnb often feels like a full-time job.

Luckily, there is short-term rental software like Hospitable that can help make your life easier. Hospitable is a property management system with comprehensive features that can help automate almost all your routine tasks, putting your business on autopilot.

Hospitable is also Airbnb’s 2025 Preferred+ Software Partner. This top-tier status signifies that we have exceeded Airbnb’s technical, foundational, and performance standards as a connectivity partner.

With Hospitable, you’ll be able to keep various aspects of your STR business under control and set it for success, taking advantage of the following functionality:

• A unified inbox and automated, AI-powered guest communication tools that ensure perfect communication with your guests across all your channels.
• Review management can help you garner more positive reviews by taking care of follow-ups with guests and publishing your reviews at the right time.
• Team collaboration and task management to share necessary access and assign tasks automatically to your team members.
• Channel manager to sync your calendars and reservations across all OTAs, protecting you from double bookings.
• Dynamic pricing solution that can help you automatically adjust rates on your connected channels, including Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and your Direct booking website.
• Hospitable Direct to build a fully functional direct booking website using easy-to-customize templates and accept credit card payments safely
• Smart device management to automate messaging smart lock door codes to guests across all your booking channels and remotely control your property’s temperature using our integrations with smart thermostats.
• Copilot is an AI assistant that helps you gain actionable insights and manage your properties and operations efficiently. Just type your question, and Copilot will analyze your account to provide relevant information.

Final Thought

Setting up a vacation rental requires careful planning, thorough preparation, and diligent work. As a host, you're not just providing a place to stay for your guests; you’re shaping their entire experience. We have provided you with tips on Airbnb must-haves, but you can also consider offering something extra, like a welcome basket to wow your guests as they enter the doorway.