By The Hospitable Team
While turning your property into an Airbnb is a great way to earn additional income, getting started may feel overwhelming. Along with having all the necessary supplies and amenities for guests, there is also a lot of preparation 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 important 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 show your guests that you’re a responsible host who cares about their needs and wants.
And although communicating with guests via messages can be very time-consuming, you can automate it using vacation rental software like Hospitable.com and save a lot of time.
Have conversations with your guests even when you sleep.
Remember that most travelers consider amenities a top priority for a perfect trip, especially if they search for longer stays. Many travelers apply filters to see only those short-term rentals with 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 should 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.
Hire professional cleaners
Airbnb guests have high expectations regarding the cleanliness of the rental property they book. In fact, 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 some money, but depending on the size of your property, you could be spending a ton 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.
You may want to check out our article to find tips on choosing a cleaning company for your short-term rental.
Choose a dynamic pricing tool
Price is one of the main things travelers pay attention to when choosing 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 use machine learning algorithms to analyze real-time market supply and demand fluctuations. 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.
Opt for vacation 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. But STR hosts have a lot of other important responsibilities, so running an Airbnb often feels like a full-time job.
Luckily, there is vacation rental software like Hospitable.com that can help make your life easier. With comprehensive features, Hospitable can help automate almost all your routine tasks, putting your business on autopilot.
All your STR business in one convenient window
Start now with a 14-day free trial.
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 messaging that comes with ChatGPT’s advanced natural language processing capabilities ensure perfect communication with your guests across all your channels.
- Review management can help you get 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 and protect you from double bookings.
- Pricing sync that comes with PriceLabs and Beyond integrations that help you automatically push dynamic pricing to multiple channels.
- Hospitable Direct to build a fully functional direct booking website using easy-to-customize templates and accept credit cards payments safely
- Smart lock integrations to automate messaging door codes to guests across all your booking channels, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and your own website.
Final Thought
Setting up a vacation rental requires planning, preparation, and hard work. As a host, you are not just providing a place to stay for your guests; you’re shaping their 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.
Airbnb Automation: 7 Ways to Streamline Your Business
Airbnb automation can help remove the stress from the equation of managing your STR business and give you more free time to focus on providing exceptional guest experience and increasing profits or spend this time on things you care about.
Airbnb Host Checklist: Setting Up for Airbnb
Planning to start a short-term rental business on Airbnb and are looking for an Airbnb startup checklist? In this post, you’ll find an Airbnb host checklist of essential things you will need to invest in for the greatest experience for your guests.
Airbnb FAQ for New Hosts
Thinking about creating a listing on Airbnb to rent out your property short-term and earn extra income? As an aspiring Airbnb host, it’s most likely you have tons of questions about hosting on this well-known platform. In this article, you’ll find answers to the most common questions that potential Airbnb hosts may have.
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