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The ultimate guide to hosting on airbnb
How to be a great Airbnb host?
3 years ago you could Airbnb any property and it would be a success. Hosts were making cash money!
But there has been significant growth in Airbnb host numbers on the platform, and a reversal in Airbnb’s focus.
Airbnb now has more homes than travelers. The focus has flipped so that hosts are now paying 100% of their commissions to Airbnb.
The bottom line is the market now is more competitive. This means guests have way more power!
We are also starting to see a downturn in booking lead times and rates in line with the global economic recession. It is going to be the survival of the fittest.
So why do hosts fail?
Well, the main reason is that to be good at Airbnb you need to do a lot of things well and consistently. Both on the day-to-day operational side as well as the online side of the job.
And it catches people out and doesn't ever stop. 24/7...365....You get the message.
Running a hospitality business single-handedly was never going to be a walk in the park. Don't get me wrong, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get it right.
But it is a business. And you need to treat it that way.
DO NOT PANIC!
So here is how you too can be super awesome at Airbnb and dominate your local niche.
And if you try it and it isn't really working for you then always remember that Guested is here to help.
What kind of Airbnb host are you?
To forecast and meet your objectives, you need to start within. Be realistic about what kind of host you are likely to be.
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How passive does your additional income need to be?
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Is the property a side hustle or a full-time money spinner?
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How much do you want to do yourself?
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Do you have a granny annex and are happy to clean it twice a week?
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Or do you plan to use a co-host, linen service, and cleaning firm and put your feet up and get away for the weekend?
You can make 60% more by fully managing everything from the cleaning to the washing. But this takes time. On average 2 hours per clean and 2 loads of laundry per checkout. If you start to get highly occupied then these hours start to add up.
We managed everything ourselves before our team and business developed. This was also before realizing that our little washing machine was going to have a seizure. Along with my wife.
Start by really understanding who is your target customer. They focus their efforts on building an offering for them.
Who is your target customer?
For the Airbnb properties that we manage ourselves, my focus is on 2 audiences. Contractors during the week and then weekend warriors.
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My contractors arrive on Monday and leave on Friday morning.
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They travel with 2 or 3 trades in the van and park outside.
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They travel light.
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They want somewhere to work, order stuff, submit expenses, invoices, and the like.
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They like takeaways and a local pub.
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They watch action films
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They like a big bed.
Then from Friday, I have couples and families visiting friends or family in the Bristol area.
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They arrive at 6 pm Friday.
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They drink wine and head out into town.
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Or they head over to Dad's house for a family get-together.
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They eat out for dinner.
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They go to events.
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They have a lie-in and watch Netflix.
So once you have nailed your ideal customer persona you must focus your attention on the little things that these different types of customers are looking for.
Craft your listings around them, and do everything you can in your copy to speak to that person.
Ask also for feedback from guests when you speak to them in person to find out how to keep improving.
What research should I do for Airbnb?
An essential factor in short-term rental is the location of the property. Again this is largely linked to the target audience. You need to understand what kind of hot property you are working with.
Who is your target market? And how does your property align with that demographic? What is going to differentiate your property online?
Location-based Research.
It is important to determine if your property’s location will be attractive to renters.
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Is there a demand for short-term accommodation in your area?
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What is going to bring the punters to the door?
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Are you a tourism hotspot, a holiday retreat, or a city break?
Scout the area as well to know what can be added to the listing to attract your target market.
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What do I have as a rental property - a house, apartment, cottage, or room?
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Where is the property located - town, city, countryside, residential, office, or beachfront?
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Is the property in a tourist-friendly location?
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What are the local attractions?
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What experiences can you recommend?
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How many hotels are located near the property?
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Does the property have good local amenities?
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Are there any supermarkets?
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Does the property have good restaurants and bars?
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What are the transport links?
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What are the major employers in the area?
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What event locations, sports grounds, hospitals, offices, and universities are there?
How to understand your competition on airbnb.
As a professional management company, we get access to some pretty cool technology. We use this to get a better picture of the local Airbnb economy. If you can use these then great but it's not essential.
You can try the following tools to get a feel for what is going on in your area;
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Air DNA
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wheelhouse
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Pricelabs
It's really important to understand this;
You are not competing with every property in the whole of your city or an area. Your competition is with the 5 or so similar properties that cater to the same customer that you do. So there is no point in including all properties in your comparison data set.
Know too what other properties in your area offer and at what price points. Use this information to improve your property and set you apart from the competition.
When you are doing your competitive analysis you are trying to understand if this is a good market for you to be able to win. It will provide insights as well on how to target search and do proper pricing to be better guested!
Start doing competitive analysis on Airbnb if you don't have any fancy tools to use. Set up a shortlist and filter properties like yours in the area.
Here is what you need to know:
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How many properties are for short-term rental in my location?
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Are they managed professionally?
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Again, how many professional competitors are there?
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How booked are they? Check the calendar. If they are all full that's a good sign.
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If they are not, then why do you think they aren't?
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Is this because they aren't being managed well?
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Is there too much competition?
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What amenities do these properties offer?
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What is the average rental rate per night?
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What are the unique selling points of my property?
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What are the reviews on properties similar to yours?
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What is the standard of the competition compared to you?
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Where is the gap in the market for you to be successful?
If there is low demand, then is there a real market? Or is this because they are not doing a great job? In most cities, there is significant demand but this is competitive. So how can you win?
All of this info should help you decide your average nightly, and how busy you are likely to be.
Sometimes the answer might be no to some of these questions (that's okay too BTW). This can mean that there is too much competition, the standard is too high, or the prices are too high or low.
You need to ask yourself also why your ideal customer is going to stay with you rather than the competition.
Each city, county, and country will have different laws and regulations on short-term rentals. Know the details to avoid encountering problems and having to pay penalties and fines.
There is a global trend toward licensing short-term rentals due to the impact on the local housing market. So be careful.
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Are you required to secure a business license and special permits?
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What are the building and housing standards of the local government?
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What safety measures are required by law?
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Do you need to pay VAT? Are you under the thresholds?
How to compliant as an Airbnb host.
How to understand your Airbnb costs?
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How to build a simple cost model or business plan?
Making business plans will help identify not only the goals but also the risks involved. It will also help track performance and improve continuously.
A business plan is important as this is your guide to running a business. Fail to prepare and prepare to fail.
As you get more experienced, your costings will be more accurate and this will become second nature. If you are setting up a new property from scratch then this is even more important.
Take note that it costs around £1000 per room on average to fully furnish a mid-range Airbnb. Here are other factors to consider when you come up with the cost model:
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What renovations are needed to make the property aesthetically appealing?
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Does the property need repairs to keep it in good working condition?
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What furniture and appliances are required?
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What is required from a design perspective to stand out?
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What cleaning is needed?
So you need to build this into your models to get an accurate view of your returns. If you are looking for a detailed breakdown of everything you need to get started, check out these awesome checklists for Asana and Excel. You can download them here https://www.guested.io/airbnbchecklist
How to calculate your Airbnb's cash flow?
I regularly speak to hosts who have realised that after 1 month of hosting they are not making as much money as they thought. They are having second thoughts about whether their short-term rental property is viable for the longer term.
Save yourself the pain of having spent £5000 on furniture by building a spreadsheet tool to fully understand your cost base.
Or you can download ours https://www.guested.io/airbnbchecklist
SPOILER ALERT!
Do not think you are going to be 100% booked from day 1 and benchmark your performance at that level. Build some risk tolerance into your occupancy figures and be realistic.
Try to operate occupancy at different levels - 50%, 60%, 76%...Are you still making money?
What services can i provide?
As an Airbnb Host, you can opt to offer other services to your guests aside from laundry and cleaning. Offer services that will make your property more appealing to travellers. Also, you can command a higher price for amenities like free parking and free Wi-fi on your property.
For local travellers:
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Does your property have available parking space? You can specify this when listing your property so guests know that they do not have to look for parking.
For international travellers:
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Are you willing to offer pick-up service to and from the airport?
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It was easy for us to set up a partnership with our local taxi supplier to offer this service.
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Do you provide simple things like plug converters for guests?
For families with kids:
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Do you have extra safety measures at your property?
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What amenities will be available - Costs, Cribs, Highchairs, stair gates. Baby monitors?
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The fewer items families need to cram in the car, the better.
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Kids' dinnerware, cutlery, cups, etc. are a saviour at dinner time.
For pets:
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Consider the pros and cons of having a pet on your property.
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This will attract more guests but pets can do damage. What precautions will you have to keep your property in good condition?
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Our experience is that we have rarely experienced issues with pet owners.
For business travellers:
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Does the property have free and fast Wi-Fi?
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You should have space for a remote office set-up.
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Can you offer 24/7 check-in services? Business travellers can arrive beyond regular check-in hours. So key boxes are essential.
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You need to be able to offer invoices as the online travel agency (OTA) doesn't do this.
What house amenities are important?
The general rule is the more that you can tick the better for your results in the search. I will explain the search in more detail later. The most important amenities are as follows:
Comfy Beds
Don't skimp on the Mattresses. Also, additional sleeping spaces add value.
Workspace + Wifi
This opens your place out to business travellers
Bathrooms
More bathrooms means more £s
Great coffee
People love coffee and so providing this is a great differentiator.
Pools
Maybe not so much in the UK. But pools are a top seller. Maybe a bit more glamorous than this one.
Parking
Parking is a cost and convenience save and big win.
You need to follow Airbnb's policies regarding parties in properties unless you want to be suspended or removed from its platform.
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Airbnb has had a global ban on parties and events with more than 16 guests since August 2020.
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It also prohibits disruptive parties.
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Our experience is that parties are very disruptive but not common.
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In the last 250 stays, we had around 4 significant noise issues to manage.
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You can allow small events at the property and there is a growing trend towards providing properties specifically that cater to rowdier guests and won't upset the surrounding neighbors.
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These can charge high premiums. But that comes with a level of risk.
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In general, however, If you are residential or in apartments this should just be a flat no!
What about parties on Airbnb?
Airbnb Noise
You need to come up with a plan on how to manage noise issues. It is part and parcel of being a responsible host. It will impact hosts in central city locations more than others and will also be aligned with events that take place.
To deal with this, we actively monitor noise levels in all of our properties with cool tech from https://store.minut.com/. It's non-intrusive and alerts you if there is unacceptable noise.
Knowing about an issue is one thing. But being able to deal with it are 2 very different things. Hence guested.io have launched our monitoring service with plans to add a response element to this.
Insurance for your Airbnb.
Before you rent out your property, make sure you have the right type of insurance.
Home insurance covers the cost of damage repairs caused by fire or natural disasters.
It also covers in case someone gets hurt while on the property.
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Does the property insurance cover vacation rental or home-sharing?
Properties used as full-time short-term rentals that are generating income are typically viewed as a business. Sometimes this means that the homeowner's insurance does not cover this.
Here are some extra types of insurance.
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Business Insurance - gives protection for losses due to events that can happen in the normal course of running the business. This includes coverage on property damage, protection from lawsuits, and disputes on contracts.
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Landlord Insurance - covers losses on instances that the house and other structures like the garage and shed are damaged due to fire and wind.
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Renter’s Insurance - As a short-term renter, the coverage of this insurance includes losses on the property, liability claims for injuries incurred during the stay on the property, and living expenses if losses are incurred.
To avail of any of these insurance policies, do consider the following points:
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What is the total value of the furniture and appliances?
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Are there any expensive items on the property?
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Is the property located prone to natural disasters that can cause damage to property or injury to the occupants?
Do take note that Airbnb has Host Protection Insurance of up to $1 Million in liability. This covers bodily injury to guests. Damage caused by guests to the property, common areas of the property, and neighboring properties are covered as well. This insurance, however, does not cover damages due to the host’s negligence.
In addition, some of the other platforms are not as forward-thinking in protecting hosts.
Preparing your Airbnb for Guests
OK, so you think that host life is for you? Once you make the choice, the next thing to do is prepare your property for short-term rental. You have to do a lot before welcoming your first guest.
I would also try to do everything you might want to before guests arrive. Maintenance and upgrades during the guests' stays are disruptive.
Essentials
Ensure that guests have everything they need for their stay with you. It's the little touches that go a long way.
A welcome pack with a gift and note, milk in the fridge, and salt and pepper in the cupboard are things that your guests will appreciate.
Also, toothbrushes, tampons and medicines, and fancy shampoo make a difference in reviews.
We have made the ultimate list of things you need for every single room in your house. We use Asana to tick them off the project plan for every setup we do.
You will end up developing your suppliers for every item. We ended up creating a list by the store to make ordering easier.
You do need to cut this to the cloth of your budget. If your place is a cheap weekend break pad. Then don't spend £10 on Luxury soap.
Property Access
You need to provide access to the property at all times. The options are to either use a key box or a keyless access system.
Ensure as well that the property has multiple boxes with key spares. This allows cleaners and contractors to have access to the property if required. It is unavoidable as well that guests will lose keys and lock themselves out.
I don't like getting out of bed at 2 am to let people in. So, locate other areas around the property for key boxes.
How to win at Airbnb SEO.
Being on the front page of the search is really important in order to get booked. We made some painful errors early on in our Airbnb journey and actually had to delete our VRBO account and start affresh. How do you dominate search?
Professional photography is essential.
Yes, this will likely cost you around £150 but the difference that it makes in elevating your listings cannot be measured.
Preparing your profile and listing
Profile
Firstly, go ahead and set up your profile. Your profile is important as it gives additional credibility to your listing.
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Use a happy and smiling headshot photo.
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Be friendly, honest, and respectful whilst giving the backstory on you as a host.
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Go ahead and create a guidebook for visiting guests that tells your guests why staying with you and in your area is a great place to be.
Listing
To appeal to the most possible people, you need to understand how people search.
It's really important that you take time and carefully fill out every detail within your Airbnb listing.
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Your listing is your main tool to sell your property online to potential guests.
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When you are crafting the listing, you need to be mindful of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Think about Airbnb as a search engine for available properties. Your performance in search is directly correlated to your listing.
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Have you ever noticed how search filters work in Airbnb?
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Recently they have chosen to redesign their interface around experiences. So you can book properties that are cabins and castles or spaceships!
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Most hosts do not live in castles, but you may have some special characteristics to highlight.
Airbnb Photography
Professional photography in my view is essential. Yes, this will likely cost you around £150 but taking photos yourself pales in comparison. The difference that it makes in elevating your listings cannot be measured.
Use the best camera to take photos in landscape orientation. It would have a natural line in the room showcasing the best features, amenities, and views of your property both inside and out.
Prepare the property
Sharing here the preparations I make before the photo sessions:
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Clean and tidy your property.
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Plump those pillows in the living room and bedroom.
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Make the bed extra special and inviting.
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Come showtime, bring in natural light to make the rooms look airy and natural.
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Set up the dining table with the the good plates
Photos Tips
Check out the expensive hotel listings to give you an idea of how to take photos as well as choose the best ones.
Remember that your best 5 photos are the only ones most people will see when browsing.
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Make sure these are light and airy.
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You need to pick the photo that differentiates you the most in a crowded marketplace.
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You should give a feel for the best aspect of the most unique element of your home.
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Get some close-up and arty shots that give a more professional hotel feel.
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Cover the main areas, bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, lounge, front, and outdoor,
SEO for Airbnb
As you delve into the filters you will start to realize that these correspond to the information fields of your listing. Guests start to filter out properties as they search for what is suitable for their trip requirements.
The search is narrowed down to amenities, instant booking, check-in, cancellation policies, and accessibility. All of this directly impacts your visibility in search as well as the Hosts’ spoken languages and whether you'll have the whole place to yourself.
I think this is the area where other people get the most wrong on Airbnb. It requires a level of understanding of how SEO works, how Search works, and how you can improve your impressions and ranking.
It is a little technical. For the non-technical Hosts out there, this feels scary.
But don't worry, I got you!
Follow the rules you will young Jedi
I am not actually a Jedi.
The 6 commandments of Airbnb.
1 / Fill out your profile and listing.
Every box and Tick.
Completeness is sweetness.
2 / Get 5* reviews quickly.
Consider being extra competitive to begin with.
3 / Be active in updating your profile.
This mean small and ofter changes to stay on top
4 / Be responsive to messaging and enquiries.
Your response rate is an important metric
5 / DO NOT CANCEL
This will tank your SEO
6 / Get booked early and frequently.
This will set you on the path for long term success.
Communication with Guests
You may think that you are just renting your home out online.
But really you are in the hospitality industry now!
You need to offer the best customer service to get top reviews and respond quickly with answers to any questions.
Automated templates
You will find that you get the same questions from guests time and time again. Prepare a set of answers to simplify and streamline this process as much as possible. This saves you some time to address specific guest questions.
Take some time to make a set of automated templates for guest inquiries. These templates are set up so that it is automatically sent to guests to respond to the most common requests received.
This will allow you to respond quickly and consistently to requests.
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Early check-in
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Luggage storage
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Late check-out
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Parking
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Arrival logistics
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Key collection
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Welcome messages
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Thank you messages
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Recommendations - restaurants, supermarkets, attractions, etc.
What are your house rules and policies?
You need to set out consistent rules and house policies for guests. These need to clearly outline your policies around things like noise, smoking damages, etc.
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Extra guests
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Are extra guests allowed to stay in your Airbnb?
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How many?
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Are there any measures in place for approving extra guests? Will it cost extra?
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Noise
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What is your noise policy?
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Do you monitor voice or video?
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What are the implications of breaking the noise policy?
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Smoking
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Is smoking permitted in your Airbnb?
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If yes, where are the designated smoking area/s on the property?
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Is there an off-limits area?
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Eating
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Are guests allowed to eat in all areas of your home?
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Are there any food-free zones?
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Cleaning and laundry
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Where does the rubbish go?
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Should guests recycle plastic, glass, cardboard, and organic waste?
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Where are the cleaning materials stored?
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Should they wash the dishes?
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Can they use the dishwasher?
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Can guests use the washing machine?
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Should they wash towels and sheets themselves?
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Gatherings or parties
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Can guests invite visitors for a round of dinner, drinks, or even parties?
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What is the maximum number of people allowed?
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Do they require your approval beforehand?
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Quiet hours
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Are there any quiet hours for your block/street?
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Be considerate to your neighbours and follow any norms to avoid any disputes.
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Pets/animals
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Will you allow your Airbnb property guests to bring their pets?
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Will you charge any extra deposit for pets?
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Damages
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What is your policy on the damage done to your property, furniture, or appliances?
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How will you assess the cost of the damage?
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We have continued to refine our policies as we identify issues and gaps. These need to be open and respectful but without wiggle room for interpretation.
How to improve your revenue managment
Now you're finally online and visible to the Airbnb guest community! Woop!
Success on Airbnb is harder than ever with more competition entering the short-term rental marketplace.
So how do you win?
It is now down to how we can manage your listing, pricing, calendar, and guests for the long haul. Maximize your revenue online with some tricks and tips. This helps smash the competition, maximize your occupancy, and outperform the marketplace.
Get ready for the launch!
The launch of my listing is super important. I give you an artificial boost for the first few weeks on the platform. This helps you to legitimately compete with established and high-performing listings.
Here is a reminder of how Airbnb ranks your listing…..
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Completeness of your listing
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Reviews
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Availability
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Instant Book
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Pricing
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Conversion
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Activity
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Response times
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Cancelation rates.
So, it's really important to get off on the right foot. Getting reviews and bookings quickly in the early stages of your listing help create a foundation from which you can grow on Airbnb.
To achieve this, consider the following strategies.
Launch strategies.
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Reduce the minimum stay lengths during the first few weeks.
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Do shorter 1-night stays in the first few weeks.
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Reduce your pricing in the first 30-days to attract people to book more frequently.
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Get great reviews during this period by offering awesome service. This should give a search boost and get Airbnb pushing its algorithm in your favour.
The first 4-weeks are the most important period in any listing. It can be a real upwards battle moving forward if you get the first one wrong.
Multi Platform
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This may be surprising, but Airbnb is not even close to being the biggest online travel agency. Booking.com is by far the largest (they are a whole new can of worms).
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The reality is that if you're not showcasing your listings across a number of the biggest partners in the travel industry, you're only going to be showing your listing to a reduced percentage of the available marketplace.
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All professional co-hosts will ensure that your listing is available on the biggest online travel agencies globally. This creates an opportunity for you to get noticed.
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Managing pricing and calendar across platforms is a double-edged sword. This gets complicated as a single operator. If you want to sell out your listing unfortunately this is a must.
This infographic shows the major OTA visitor share in May 2022.
How to get started manually.
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You need to start by identifying your baseline price. This is the price that you expect to be booked out on average throughout the year.
You can determine the baseline price through competitive research.
Once you understand your baseline price, the trick to success then is really about how you can vary your price. This is to maximize your revenue and occupancy levels based on current demand.
Start by pricing on the lower end and then increasing the price until your booking velocity drops off.
Pricing is impacted by seasonality and local events. You need to be able to respond to these.
It's also important to consider the type of utilization in the property that will work for you most as a host.
Ideally, you will have longer bookings at better prices with visibility into the future.
This can be achieved manually but as you start to operate across multiple platforms it gets difficult.
What you’re aiming for:
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Increase your average stay lengths
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Increase your Time to Booking
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Reduce gap days
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Discount gap days to achieve max occupancy.
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Avoid short last-minute stays.
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Increase your prices on weekends and at peak times.
Time Until Booking
Your time to book (TTB) is an important metric to monitor on Airbnb. It shows you how far into the future people are booking.
Your goal should be to increase the time to book as your calendar gets busy. Leave smaller chunks of availability within 6 weeks.
If your TTB is declining, it means your booking velocity is too slow. So reduce your prices or come up with a plan to get the ball rolling.
Typically, give discounts to last-minute bookings to ensure you maximize your calendar revenue opportunity.
Blanks in your calendar get zero points.
This will damage your overall nightly averages. A longer booking further out at better prices is the game plan.
Revpar
Revpar is defined as the average revenue that you achieve per room. So you need to get every last drop out of the stone.
You need to consider that 100% of nothing is nothing. So it's much better to have 80% of something and then average the night rates out.
This way of thinking ensures that you book your rooms at better rates and discount aggressively when required.
Technology for your Airbnb.
There is a huge market for hospitality software tool sets for everything from pricing to key locks.
As soon as you wish to grow your business then technology is a must to build automated processes at scale.
But take some time to evaluate your needs and the costs. One thing I underestimated is how ingrained within your business they become and so these decisions are pretty important. So don't make them too early in your journey.
The main areas that I am going to focus on initially are pricing management tools and channel management tools. These are the foundations of your operating processes.
What are pricing tools?
These tools offer dynamic pricing based on policies, analytics, and demand data.
They allow you to analyze, manage and automate pricing decisions in real-time.
As you scale, changing pricing and staying consistent becomes important.
Pricing management tools should almost eliminate errors, miscalculations, and missed opportunities based on market fluctuations. But they do require active management and need ongoing refining to be optimized.
They tend to be priced in either one of two ways:
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A percentage of your booking revenue,
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A fixed per listing ranging from £20
So you need to just do the math and what works well for the type of functionality you need. All of these will offer:
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Analytics
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Reporting
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Weekend rate adjustments.
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Gap day mgt
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Min stays
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Far out pricing
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Last minute pricing
What are channel management tools?
Channel management tools are required for more complex operators or hosts with multiple listings that are looking to use a cross-channel strategy.
The operational overhead of maintaining calendars, pricing, and policies across so many different platforms starts to become overwhelming.
I'm sure that the majority of beginners may not require this and you need to bear in mind the additional cost of using these tools.
There are a significant number of channel management software providers out in the marketplace. They all have slightly different features and integrations.
Airbnb Operations
Providing great service in your first months is exciting and fun! But as you get busier, it's important to maintain the same standards.
Be consistent in delivering the things that are especially important to guests like communication, cleaning laundry, maintenance, and customer service.
I find a lot of hosts underestimate the effort required to provide a consistent level of service around these elements. This is where a 3rd party service can start to add value. Staying on top of standards every day is hard on your own.
A few tips:
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Finding reliable staff is the key.
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Try to automate repeatable tasks.
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Do what you're good at.
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Let go of the things you don't enjoy.
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You will need to be committed.
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Enjoy the little wins!
Getting and managing reviews.
Reviews are extremely important in the ongoing success of listings across all platforms.
The power here is firmly within the guest's hands when staying at your properties. Remember you need to focus on customer service above everything.
Sometimes you will get difficult customers. You are going to have to manage this carefully to make sure that you protect your ratings online. It's just the law of averages that not all the guests are going to be lovely.
However, receiving a 1-star review can tank your SEO.
Things are going to go wrong yesterday. It's your job to do everything you can to turn the situation around and maximize your review potential.
Remember Airbnb favors listings with great reviews and requires its super hosts to maintain a 4.8 Score across that review period.
If you do receive less than a flattering review try to address them transparently. We have received reviews that are full of lies and plain unfairness. In some circumstances, you can have them removed.
Even guests that organized a party and ruined the sofa can leave you a review when you claim their damage deposit. It sucks.
But it's best to try to avoid those guys altogether.
Dealing with the most common issues.
Issues will of course arise in the delivery of any service. In the hospitality industry, your no. 1 job is to make sure that the customer is happy.
The worst issue by far is a double booking incident.
We have encountered this due to technical errors with our Channel Management System. It can happen too if you are running more complex setups.
If you are just running one Airbnb, you shouldn't experience this. You need to be very careful in managing calendars to avoid this.
The impact is likely to be guests arriving with nowhere to go. You will need to rehome them and will likely lose your ratings.
It’s an added cost to you as well. Your booking platform will penalize you. You have to pay for alternative accommodation for the guests too. It's very BAD.
The most common issues are:
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Booking Issues - Guests book the wrong dates and either turn up early or late. Do your best to accommodate changes where there are problems if possible.
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Guest Misconduct - Smoking, Parties, Damage. You will need to get familiar with the policies in the resolutions center.
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Damage Claims:
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My general rule of thumb is to claim for things that are negligent or malicious.
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But where accidents happen and guests fess up. I'm more inclined to let things slide.
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Be sure to take plenty of photos and get receipts if you need to claim.
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Apply some common sense and try not to get too emotional about things. ( Which sometimes is difficult if guests have been disrespecting your home)
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Take a deep breath and call them to understand what's happened.
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Noise - It is super important to stay on top of this as it will impact you and your neighbors. You need to sleep well at night and so does everyone else!
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Key Issues - Guests regularly lose keys so make sure you have spares at the property in the 2nd lockbox. You will thank me later.
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Maintenance Issues
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Things will break due to normal wear and tear. Guests may report these to you.
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You must act quickly where possible to resolve these problems.
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Sometimes you will need contractors and there are lead times involved.
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Communicate this to your guests and try to have a list of people you can use in advance.
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You will need to prioritize issues based on safety and guest comfort.
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Cleaning issues
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Sometimes cleaners miss things.
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Make sure you have checklists that they use to make sure you maintain standards.
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Schedule frequent deep cleans to capture the extra stuff that goes beyond the checkout turnovers.
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Summary and conclusions
You need to try it out and see if you are happy with the guest dynamics, work required, and returns.
One good alternative option is to use an Airbnb management partner to help with the day-to-day grind of delivering your Airbnb.
You can expect to pay anywhere from 10 to 20% per month. But, experienced co-hosts should significantly increase your revenue and reduce any operational logistics involved in hosting.
At guested, we offer both short-term flexible and full-time contracts from 3 months up to 36 months. So that you can get the best of both worlds. Our experience is that most hosts don't need another job on top of the existing day job.
The operational elements that we've discussed to be successful can take over your life and leave you not getting the best out of the platform. If you're interested and find out more please feel free to get in touch.