Tools you can use for hosting longer stays

[Emilie]

Longer stays are one of travel’s latest trends, and we’re here for it. We’re also here to support you with welcoming guests for 28 nights or more.

As part of the 2022 Airbnb Summer Release, we’re rolling out more ways that guests can discover your space in their searches for great stays. The new features include nearly two dozen new Airbnb Categories of listings for guests to browse, and Split Stays, which lets guests divide their time between two comparable spaces on one trip.

We’ve also put together some tools—and a checklist—to help prep your listing, your calendar and booking settings, and your space for longer stays. You can find details in the Resource Center. 

What tools do you use for hosting longer stays?

[Anonymous]

@Huma0 Exactly. I think these combinations will just leave people shaking their heads - there's nothing intuitive about them. The way we intuitively process search results is generally that the relevancy only decreases as you scroll down. Burying a perfect match below some nonsense suggestions is not good for hosts or for guests.

What actually would be useful for hosts is if the split stay feature automatically paired listings owned by the same host. If you have consecutive 2-week vacancies in two different guestrooms, it would make sense for a 4-week search to show it as an option to move between the rooms of your house, which is a lot easier than moving luggage across London.

[Mark116]

@Anonymous  You're right about the behavior modification, Airbnb said as much, in that they're trying to showcase listings that they think the guest wouldn't have searched for, and which are out of the typical hot spot tourist areas.  I suppose, given that Airbnb has long shown that they believe they know better than the host about the host's own properites, it was only a matter of time before Airbnb also showed they believe they know better than the guest about what kind of trip they 'really' want and where they should stay.

[Huma0]

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@Mark116 wrote:

they're trying to showcase listings that they think the guest wouldn't have searched for, and which are out of the typical hot spot tourist areas.  

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Surely, they could have thought of a less clunky and irritating way to do this? We've been told that the categories only show up if the guest searches with "I'm flexible" for location, although this contradicts what's written in the help article, which makes sense if it's true.

However, when a guest is searching for a specific location and they are shown split stays in totally different cities or even countries, what does Airbnb think the guest is going to do? Are they likely to say, ah okay, I wanted to stay in Manchester, but sure, I'll split my stay between there and Lincoln even though they are nothing alike and it's super inconvenient, or I'll go and search another STR website or just book a hotel or hostel in the location that I want?

I just don't understand the thinking behind this. A split stay setting could be great if a guest is specifically looking to travel around and experience different places on a trip. They enter the dates and the type of listing they are looking for and, voila!, Airbnb suggests a lovely itinerary for them with some places off the beaten path. I could see that working maybe. But this?? Erm, no.

[Huma0]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What actually would be useful for hosts is if the split stay feature automatically paired listings owned by the same host. If you have consecutive 2-week vacancies in two different guestrooms, it would make sense for a 4-week search to show it as an option to move between the rooms of your house, which is a lot easier than moving luggage across London.

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Now, that would be really logical and actually useful. I have had guests split their stay between two different rooms in my house on several occasions and be very happy not to have to move elsewhere. Also, my rooms are very similarly priced, so that keeps them happy too.

One would think this would be quite simple to build into the algorithm, but no idea if it has been?

The problem with my listings is that I have a 28 night minimum on them, so if I had 20 nights available in one room and 8 in another, I'm guessing that would still never show up as an option, unless there was a way to override this when a guest's total stay met the minimum. Still, there are plenty of hosts out there who do not have such a long minimum that it would be ideal for. Also, I have had guests staying for a few months who split their stays between different rooms, so it would still work for me when guests are searching for stays of two months plus.

[Anonymous]

@Huma0  As far as I'm concerned, the more ways hosts have available to adjust, customize, and override their settings, the better. Same goes for choosing the targets in the Category search.

All the nerdy fine-tuning stuff isn't for everyone, so I'd imagine it being in an "Advanced Settings" menu separate from the basic listing editor. Maybe a host has to reach a certain level of experience to activate it. 

[Sharon683]

That is true.

[Stephanie]

I tagged you @Huma0 @Anonymous on another thread but just to ensure you see it:

I wanted to come back on some additional information I have gotten from the product team on Split stays and why it seems listings that are large distances apart are showing up on search. 

Split Stays are only shown if there are less than 300 listings within a specific geography. If there is no available listings within that search radius, the map will pull out until finds a listing that can be split with that chosen length of stay which is why we get some of broad distances (which we are by no means saying is a regular expectation for guest give the thumbs up to!)

Thanks again for all your valid and well constructive feedback,

Stephanie

[Huma0]

@Stephanie 

I haven't seen it myself, as no split stay options came up when I did some searches for longer stays in London. However, in his reply to you above, @Anonymous mentioned that he was getting split stay suggestions at the top of the search results, when there were also listings available for the whole duration of the stay. I believe this is also where he was being shown options to split the stay very far from the location he was looking at, when there were listings available in the location he wanted.

It makes sense that the split stays were showing because there were less than 300 available in the location @Anonymous was searching in and explain why I didn't see any, there being so many listings in London. However, I still don't think that Airbnb should be pushing the split stays at the top of the results when there are better options available. Another user saw them as additional suggestions at the bottom, which makes more sense, but I am not sure why this inconsistency in how the results are displayed.

[Annie1372]

Back to the topic « Hosting longer stays »

i don’t understand why AirBNB is pushing so much for host to accept animals.

unless Brian Chesky wants to visit every single one of us with his dog Sophie !!!

accepting animals has a lot of impact

on the wear and tear of the house,

on the land around if owner do not pick-up after its dog,

on the potential allergy a cat could  cause in the house,

on the noise level of a barking poney,

of the fear I would have if their snake escape his cage,

etc … you get the picture 

many host around me are accepting animals, I don’t. That’s it !!  My floor & myself will not change our mind.

actually the only time it crossed my mind after a long stay guest inquiry, I checked the « animal » fee on the Apps … I saw that the max I could charge for an animal per stay is the cost of one night, which is not enough for me to take the risk of a dog to scratch my recently varnish floor, to eat my beautifully selected cushions,  to ruin my lovely furniture or to pee (or worst) on my soft carpet …

if we do not accept animal, it is not because we have not seen the functionality on the website or because we forgot, ir is because we have good reason for it

[Kristina46]

Luckily in Hawaii you just can't bring an animal with you due to strict quarantine laws. And I never get requests from locals. So in all my years of doing this, have never had to deal with anyone bringing an animal. 

[Karen3051]

My community has laws regulating stays longer than 30 days. I need to provide a lease agreement and some disclosures to guests. It would be very helpful to have the capability to send these documents through Airbnb for review and signing.