Sending an Airbnb special offer is a great way to attract guests and increase occupancy rates. It can be instrumental during the shoulder and low season and help you keep your calendar booked evenly. Here you’ll find information about how special offers on Airbnb work and how to send one to get more bookings.
Airbnb Special Offer: How It Works
Airbnb allows hosts to run special offers straight from the platform. When a potential guest sends you a message before they book your place or submit a trip request, you can reply to it with an Airbnb special offer that includes a custom discounted price. You can also suggest different dates for their stay or another one of your Airbnb properties instead.
This special offer is limited in time. The guest will have 24 hours to decide whether they are happy with the price and accept your offer before it expires. Once they do it, Airbnb will automatically confirm their reservation.
Remember that you should send a special offer on Airbnb only if you are ready to confirm a reservation for the inquiring guest. And while you can’t send a special offer if a guest has already booked or requested your place, you can still discount them by changing the reservation details.
Special offers on Airbnb are a great way to get more travelers interested in your listing and drive faster bookings. This way, you can maximize your bookings and become a successful Airbnb host.
And although managing a lot of bookings manually can feel like a full-time job, you can easily overcome this challenge if you opt for vacation rental software like Hospitable. Then you’ll be able to streamline your operations and make your business more efficient.
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You can send special offers to different guests for the same (or overlapping) dates. If you do that, the guest who accepts your offer first wins. That’s why Airbnb recommends being open and transparent with your potential guests. Let them know that other guests may also be interested in booking the same dates.
How to Use Airbnb Special Offers to Maximize Your Revenue
Special offers are a simple yet highly effective tool in your marketing arsenal, but you should use them wisely to make potential guests feel special. If you would like to increase the number of bookings you get during a specific time, for example, low seasons, you could always offer special discounts on your usual nightly rate. You can make special offers to travelers looking for longer stays or repeat customers. It’s also an excellent way to secure a reservation for a last-minute booking.
People love discounts that allow them to save money, and if you offer them a “good deal,” it will help you gain their interest and increase bookings. But that doesn’t mean you need to offer a discount to every traveler who sends you a message before booking their stay. It could mean losing your profit. So it’s important to always see the bigger picture and consider your overall marketing and pricing strategies.
On Airbnb, the special offer can only occur in response to an inquiry from a guest, and it’s not a feature that hosts can initiate on their own, for example, to offer incentives to encourage repeat bookings. But you can create a direct booking website with Hospitable to build relationships with guests, drive direct repeat bookings, and save money on Airbnb fees. With Hospitable, you don’t need any coding skills to create a fully functional direct booking website within minutes.
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How to Send an Airbnb Special Offer
First, you need to ensure that your calendar is open and that you don’t have any pending booking requests for the dates in your offer. If there are such requests from travelers, you’ll have to decline them. Also, you must be entirely sure that you want to host the guest because their stay will be automatically confirmed once they accept your special offer.
Here is what you to do to send an Airbnb special offer if you access your listing from your desktop:
First, go to your Inbox and open the message from the guest.
Then click Special Offer.
In the Subtotal field, enter the price you’d like to offer for the entire stay.
After you have completed the form, click Send Special Offer.
Remember that the price in your special offer should include all nights of the reservation. You should also include any additional fees, such as a cleaning or extra guest fee.
But you don’t have to include taxes, the service fee, or the security deposit if you use Airbnb’s offline fees feature. Airbnb will automatically add taxes and service fees and handle security deposits separately.
If it’s a special offer for a stay of over 28 days, hosts can choose to offer a booking subtotal (the entire amount) or a monthly price. And remember to provide all the information required for your account and keep it up to date, or Airbnb can block your calendar.
As long as the guest hasn’t accepted your offer, you can change it if you open the message from the guest to whom you sent a special offer and click Review special offer. You can change the check-in and check-out dates, the number of guests, and the subtotal. You also have the option to withdraw the special offer at any time before the guest accepts it.
Final Thought
Sending an Airbnb special offer is a proven way to attract new customers and encourage them to book your listing. It’s also a classic technique helpful in retaining old customers and driving repeat booking. With the right strategy, this tactic can help you increase bookings and boost revenue.
