Not Showing on Map

[Tiffany585]

I have had my property listed on the Airbnb platform for the past 5 years, 113 reviews and a steady 4.98 stars as well as Superhost.  My bookings drastically dropped this past year. I have now logged in to confirm rates and my property is not even showing on the map!  This could explain a lot.  How do I get this corrected?

[Emiel1]

@Tiffany585 

No worries,

your property is in the search system:

Added: I noticed your listing calender has limited availibility this year

[Tiffany585]

Appreciate you looking it up!  Can you do me a favor and see if it shows up for the dates of Feb 8-11th?

[Emiel1]

@Tiffany585 

Yes, it does.

(please note: price shown in Euros)

[Tiffany585]

Wonderful!  Thank you very much for checking.  Not sure why it's not showing on my end.

[Shelley159]

Perhaps you have filters applied when searching that's preventing it from showing @Tiffany585 ?

You can change the browser to private mode to see the logged-out search results.

[Tiffany585]

I'll look into that as well.  Thank you!

[Joan2709]

@Tiffany585 

I took a look and I could not see your listing unless zooming waaay in on the map so your search rank is not good. Airbnb made some big changes in the algorithm recently.

Booking Recency

One big change is emphasis on booking frequency. It looks like you have had a big gap in bookings? Basically the algorithm scores you listing on how recent your bookings are; big gaps in bookings mean a lower score. This should be your busy, ski season? The algorithm is super sensitive to price as well. I think you might be priced a bit high in looking at your competition. I would add some Custom Promotions/Discounts and see if that boosts you in search rank and increases frequency of bookings. 

Professional Photos

I would try and get professional photos done by a photographer experienced with shooting Airbnbs (not a real estate photographer). Just do an internet search for "Airbnb photographer". You may need to look in Denver to get some options.  Many of your photos are not doing your place justice. All photos with the fireplace should show an fire going and if the TV is in the shot, it should be on with a mountain ski scene for winter and maybe a summer mountain scene in summer. Your best asset is how close you are to the slopes. One of your photos from the balcony shows what appears to be large HVAC equipment? That sorta ruins the balcony view of the mountain - can't really hide that, but many zoom in on the slopes and use the photo of how close you are to the chairlift. I would include the fireplace shot you have now in the first 5 photos, but the TV should be on. Your current living room photo is just ok, but I think you could find a better cover photo. You have alot of competition and you are trying to stand out.

Thats all I can think of at the moment...

[Tiffany585]

Hi Joan,

Appreciate your input on the specific photos.  I will look into replacing those.

In regards to bookings, it is our busy season and I have the majority of the weekend nights booked.  The majority of the reservations are now coming from Booking.com.  

I actually used the 'price analyzer ' tool through each platform and allowed them to adjust nightly rates derived by their algorithm.  I was showing much higher than my comps.  I have since turned it off and I am pricing manually again.  Honestly, I have lost a ton of faith in the system.

The algorithm is not going to know what to think, since my past year is mostly through Booking and this spring, I have a 45 night stay through Airbnb as well as a couple small weekenders.

Full disclosure... Getting really tired of playing the game.

[Joan2709]

@Tiffany585 

Understand totally. Remember, as you get more reservations on another platform, you naturally will have less visibility/availability on Airbnb. This lowers your chances of getting booked and subsequently the algorithm sees more gaps in bookings and lowers your search rank position.

I never recommend Airbnb's Smart Pricing Tool  - not familiar with Booking.com.

@Shelley159 does use Airbnb's Smart Pricing but keeps her prices high and then uses Custom Promotions to discount, so maybe she has some ideas? Airbnb does reward you for using Custom Promotions in search rank and strikethrough pricing (must be at least 10% discount). 20% discount gets you free email advertising to those searching your area for specific dates - we find this works well, especially discounting a few weeks - month out.

I also like that with Custom Promotions you can track how many views each is getting. I pair that with monitoring the number of wishlists additions the propery gets and can get a pretty good idea if there will be a booking. You might look into adding a length of stay discount for weekends to encourage Thur/Fri/Sat, or Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun bookings. You can do this by use Professional Hosting Tools and Rule Sets and apply the discount to only the dates you want.

Custom Promotions

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2982

I would not use Early Bird or Last Minute Promotions, as they will stack on top of Custom Promotions if the reservation dates apply.

[Tiffany585]

I've had success with some promotions and some not. 

The whole process gets really frustrating, to the point of wanting to leave the platform when I have been a Superhost for the past 4/5 years and then my listing gets penalized for the cycle of reservations that occurred last year.

Appreciate all your input and taking the time to reply to my message!

[Shelley159]

Yes @Joan2709 , I agree with all you've said.

I'm seeing a large numbers of new competitors (coming, going and then even more coming again), so lots of sustained downward pressure on prices in my area. When new listings join, they generally do so at low prices to get noticed. Some are inexperienced and get bad reviews, then respond by dropping prices even more.

I don't want to join the race to see who can charge the lowest price (which can sometimes also lead to a low quality of guest). I've decided to accept not having as many advance bookings as I used to, and to rather actively manage my calendar to attract guests closer to the time or last-minute at prices that are sustainable for me. 

I agree with you @Tiffany585 , it's quite labour-intensive to monitor, adjust and strategise around the calendar for the next few nights' upcoming availability all the time. I'm using it as an opportunity to learn as much as I can about how the search results respond to my actions and to see what approach works best and when. It's been sort-of-fun most of the time, but yes, plenty of effort!

[Joan2709]

@Shelley159 

I usually advise dynamic pricing software for Hosts, especially if they just don't have time to manually adjust their calendars to match demand. PriceLabs is the one I usually recommend. That said, even dynamic pricing requires monitoring and is not "set and forget".

Some interesting things have been happening related to Hosts who use Channel Managers and Dynamic Pricing software and how they are using markups in the Channel Manager to accomodate the new 15.5% Host Only Service Fee which is causing issues. But that is a topic for whole other thread 😉

@Tiffany585