Air BnB - Should I try harder?

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
Jenster
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Joined: Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:24 am
Location: Cornwall
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Post by Jenster »

I agree with coys and Louise, I have always found Airbnb to attract mainly bargain hunters. However, like rosebud I recently restructured my pricing to add a cleaning fee and dropped my price a bit and have just taken a week in early December, which I hav never had before (I don't generally seem to attract winter bookings being a beach apartment). Granted, the rate was low but it all adds up and a few bookings like that over winter would definitely improve my profits.
louiseddie
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Joined: Sun Aug 18, 2013 7:43 pm

Post by louiseddie »

Such a great tip re dropping the price by separating the cleaning fee.

However just went to do that and found another reason why we may not be getting enquiries - not sure when but since I last did a big price / date input they've changed their system so were showing weekly prices as multiples of the nightly prices, rather than the custom weekly pricing I'd put in ages ago. So our off peak weekly prices were showing as double what they should be!

This change is apparently because they're trying to encourage people to just have a % discount on nightly prices for weekly and monthly bookings. You can still set custom weekly prices for a year ahead but it's much more convoluted now.
rosebud
Posts: 625
Joined: Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:24 pm
Location: Steyning, West Sussex

Post by rosebud »

Just to say I have had the same experience with reviews.. Great 5 * reviews on OD and Trip Advisor.. 4* reviews on AirBnb..marking me down on price.

Interesting to see what happens with my 4 recent bookings.. The first 2 sets of guests who have already stayed don't appear to have left reviews.. However both looked after the cottage fairly well..

I'm testing the water with AirBmb and will only make the cottage available for up to 3 months..
Jenster
Posts: 454
Joined: Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:24 am
Location: Cornwall
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Post by Jenster »

louiseddie wrote:Such a great tip re dropping the price by separating the cleaning fee.

However just went to do that and found another reason why we may not be getting enquiries - not sure when but since I last did a big price / date input they've changed their system so were showing weekly prices as multiples of the nightly prices, rather than the custom weekly pricing I'd put in ages ago. So our off peak weekly prices were showing as double what they should be!

This change is apparently because they're trying to encourage people to just have a % discount on nightly prices for weekly and monthly bookings. You can still set custom weekly prices for a year ahead but it's much more convoluted now.
hmm, when did that happen? I took a week in early Dec at the weekend and the price quoted was correct according to my custom weekly price. However, when I accepted the quote the price suddenly jumped to a stupidly high figure. I'm guessing this could be why? I will check if the higher figure was based on my nightly rate.

Another thing I have done is put 'winter discounts, please ask' in my listing title, and correct rates in the first line of my description, to counteract high quotes for some short breaks based on my nightly rate, which is set correctly for 3 nights.

edited to add: I have just checked my ABB listing in search results and have found that the nightly price quoted included the cleaning fee, so not really sure what the advantage of separating it out is?

But the good news is, it is quoting correctly for a weekly break according to my custom weekly price.
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