What We Learned About Being Good Airbnb Hosts in Nine Months
A month after moving into a two-room apartment that was over budget, my roommate and I in New York were looking for ways to make some extra money. We have used Airbnb as travelers and would like to become hosts.
This post was originally published on ValuePenguin .
I created our online profile, created a list and placed orders, and Michael did the actual hosting in the East Village, welcoming guests and pointing them to our favorite wine cellar. If we could lower the $ 2,525 rent by even $ 100 to $ 200 a month, we reasoned, our time would be well worth it.
Few (including us) would rent their room, apartment or house to strangers if it were not for such a reward. Since its inception in 2008, Airbnb has wanted it to be more than money – rather, a community where you treat travelers from near and far the way you would like to be treated on your own trips abroad. Hiccups, of course, do happen. The lack of air conditioning or a sparkling clean bathroom ended up costing us some of our early adopters.
However, in the first nine months, Michael and I turned minor complaints and honest reviews from 42 guests into $ 9,655. We received 30 (mostly positive) reviews from singles and couples who occupied my relatively large bedroom when I was out of town or staying with my girlfriend for the weekend. (We were also lucky because in New York City it is forbidden to rent out entire apartments, not individual rooms.)
The numbers seem flawless, but we’ve made more mistakes along the way. For a couple from Puerto Rico who had spent “the best vacation of our life,” a Chinese kid came along, painting colorfully on our walls; A couple from Pennsylvania, getting enough rest in my bed for the New York Marathon run, gave way to Southern California college girls who tried to trick us into free accommodation. The Airbnb hosting experience is fickle – it can also be rewarding, especially if you shorten the learning curve by looking at ours first.
Creating a listing – how to get started with zero trust?
The neighborhood, not even the Alphabetic City neighborhood in the East Village, is not selling itself. To persuade people to stay here without a single host name review (not to mention differentiate ourselves from the more than 11,500 rental properties nearby), Michael and I started with low prices. The cheapest hotel in the area, St. Marks, one mile west of us, asks for $ 140 a night for a no-frills room with a full bed. We charged $ 51 for our first guest, an international student named Bohan.
Like an overnight bid, the ad itself gave us the opportunity to stand out. As a first step, I consulted a variety of Airbnb online guides. Optimize your ad for site search as recommended in one of these guides by detailed description and keyword inclusion. We changed the title of our ad to “Large Private Room in East Village, New York” for a reason. (Interestingly, there are different opinions about including location in the ad title, as users are already searching by city.)
Airbnb’s guides, as well as research done elsewhere, have also confirmed a bigger idea: Customize your ad to appeal to you if you’re looking for a place to stay. Based on my experience with Airbnb, I knew I loved the hotel’s options: the Instant Book button, flexible cancellation policy, and no cleaning and multi-guest charges. We’ve also gone beyond traditional hotels to offer anytime check-in and check-out. These features have simplified the booking process, leading to an increase in the number of bookings.
It turned out that making reservations at low prices for single travelers is not difficult. But Bohan’s $ 51 one-night stay and the other days that followed allowed Michael and me to pocket only $ 15 each after taxes and fees. Reasoning that two people (a couple or friends wanting to share a full bed) would pay more than one for a room, we ended up limiting our availability to a few nights at a higher rate. Targeting a different type of Airbnb user came before actually training them to host.
Interaction with guests is now the hardest part, hosting itself
Airbnb’s next mission, announced in Los Angeles in November, is to combine every step of the travel process by adding flight booking (ultimately) and experience seeking to the simpler idea of being in a local’s space. Michael and I weren’t prepared to think other than welcoming guests to our apartment. After our guinea pigs took the jump and made a reservation with us, I called the Friday before Saturday when they were supposed to arrive and asked about their preferred check-in time; providing travel to the apartment; setting expectations for sharing space with Michael; and make sure they’re not crazy. A stinging speech spun in my head:
“Our address … There is a keypad in front of the entrance, and the building code … I will leave the key for you on the ledge above our front door. You can use this to get in and out of the apartment as you please during your stay … Once inside, you will see a closed door on the left – this is Michael’s bedroom … On the right there will be a door for the bathroom and a hallway to the kitchen. You will have access to both zones … Your bedroom will be on the opposite side of the apartment – I will leave the door open for you. Clean sheets and bath towels await you … Feel free to open or close the two large windows as you see fit … If you have any questions during your stay, you can contact me at this number … “
Eventually, I found out that this information is easier to convey to guests in templated messages on the Airbnb platform. However, this preparation was instead of actually greeting guests at the door, allowing Michael and me to continue our own days. We thought that the guests who really wanted to be accommodated would tell us about it, and they did it. A couple from France locked the door all the time; a couple from Colorado invited us for a drink.
But before the arrival of each guest, additional preparation had to be done. In addition to hiding my personal valuables (laptop and camera) in Michael’s room – our friends’ apartment on the Upper West Side was robbed – there was also a cleaning. I would survey the common areas of the apartment; Clean the bedroom floor; put clean sheets on the bed; and leave bath towels, toiletries, chocolates, and a welcome note outdoors. Okay, almost always. Sometimes, to be honest, I didn’t notice the dirt on the windowsill and the beach sand on the parquet floor. However, more often than not, guests noticed small spots of mold in the shower or the occasional cockroach in the kitchen.
Luckily, we never fried in our reviews, in part because we’ve always been outgoing and respectful towards our guests. Five-star ratings are in categories like Check In, Cost, and Location, even as our Cleanliness reviews began to deteriorate, dropping our overall rating to 4.5.
Ask for reviews – turn your first guests into a promise of more
An Airbnb guest who is happy with a booking may feel obligated to support the host’s growing side business. Someone who is upset may feel obligated to warn other users about the listing or host behavior. More often than not, the experience of homeowners is somewhere in between these extremes. Then why do they offer reviews and star ratings across six categories? Sending email reminders from Airbnb support. We found that 78% of our guests would leave us at least one word sooner or later.
Of course, a review is different from real feedback. In all the bends that came up – mostly after the end of the stay, but before the guest left a review – I reached out to guests looking for specific positives and negatives that we could bring to life. Here’s what our third guest, Maria, a young professional from upstate New York, told us about her stay:
Over the next eight months, many of our guests offered either these quick tips or just a few words of praise. But from time to time we received detailed reviews with tips. This was from Meredith, a middle-aged woman from Virginia:
Things we learned to fix thanks to guests
See your guests as your customers, who can give you feedback that reflects their point of view. This is valuable and should not be discounted. Here are some tips, ranging from simple to complex, that we received from visitors.
- Put a small trash can in your bedroom : We made the mistake of forgetting that guests will have garbage and that respectful guests will not be comfortable leaving it on the floor. After Bohan’s warning, we bought a small basket for $ 10 and now regularly fill it with small bags of groceries.
- Put fans in the bedroom: A couple from Austin, Texas, accustomed to dry heat, survived one particularly wet July night. They suggested that we stick to a one fan per guest policy. Their second night was cooler.
- Place the strip in the bedroom: Maria, our first guest techie, made this comment as she walked away. With only four outlets in the room, the power strip now gives visitors the ability to plug in up to seven devices. Electricity bills are rising, but so is their satisfaction.
- Wi-Fi information is provided in advance: our internet password is a nonsensical 16-letter string that is best copied and sent text messages. Unfortunately, it took half a dozen guests texting us upon arrival for us to finally get the idea. Providing a login before registering made it easier for both them and us.
- Details of the transport are included in the ad: we had guests in our own cars; guests who are confused by the New York subway system; and guests who did not trust Google Maps to get from the airport to the apartment. For each of them, we have provided detailed information on five different modes: Metro, Taxi, Car, Bus and Bicycle.
- Restaurant tips included in ad: Perhaps because of Yelp and the like, very few guests actually asked for this advice for locals only. To appease the few, we’ve included our favorite restaurants with 18 different cuisines, as well as the time it takes to get to each of our establishments.
- Clean the bathroom deep before you arrive. Several guests complained about the condition of our bathroom. To make them feel more comfortable – and, yes, to get more five-star reviews – we now make showering and wiping off toilet dirt a matter of practice. This is more work for us, but the guests appreciate it.
Being responsive to past guests improved the experience of the next batch. And getting a four- and five-star rating meant that Michael and I could start charging more by cutting our monthly rent.
Airbnb Hosting: What We Did Right and Wrong in the First Nine Months | ValuePenguin