Hosts with multiple listings

[Short-Term-Stays0]

Hosts with multiple listings face unique challenges as they grow. This thread is open to discuss these challenges and share tips and tricks to grow using systems to automate the processes from booking to to check out.

I have 13 listings and growing and have dedicated staff to manage my units. I also get bookings from many sources other than Airbnb and have automated calander syncing, automated guest messages for check in instructions and automated cleaning schedule notifications.

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Looking forward to hearing about challenges hosts with multiple listings face and learning from others.

Regards,

Ricky
https://www.airbnb.ca/users/show/9095685

**[Link removed due to safety reasons - Community Center Guidelines

[Short-Term-Stays0]

 *from booking to check out.

[Trisha0]

@Short-Term-Stays0 Thanks for sharing your insight and experiences. It's always good to hear how other hosts are operating either with one or two or larger portfolios as you are taking on right now. It's definately not an easy task to look after so many, coordinate these to be a seemless flow of guests arriving, checking out and keeping guest relations positive. Great work!

[Lynn53]

Hi Ricky,

I am wondering if you can help me. I have been using Airbnb (and other booking sites) for one property for over four years now successfully. Recently in the past few months my bookings have gone from fully booked to zero bookings. I am not sure why.

Also I have been trying to add two additional properties to my Airbnb account unsuccessfully since last August. I have asked Airbnb to help on numerous occassions, asked the help center etc and to date still can't publish either additional listing. 

I get to the publish the listing and I get a respnse that somethin is wrong with the internet connect and it won't publish.

Can you sugggest anything?

Hoping you can help me as I am completely frustrated and feel AIrbnb is happy to take my money but make it impossible to help when absolutely necessary. Obviously you have manged to creat numerous listing so I should be able to too!  

It won't be long (August) until one year has passed trying to bring these other two properties online!!!

P.S Love your philosophy!!!

Cheers

Lynn

[Min28]

Hi Lyn, I feel like you need to explain your situation and what you're going through in more detail. It seems that you may want to contact the airbnb directly through telephone to find out what's wrong. 

[Truly-CL0]

 Hello Ricky!   My name is Trule (pronounced Truly)   Can you help me grow my Airbnb business?  

I have one listing that I just raised to SuperHost Status.

I want help setting up my next 10 listing.

[Keith1]

I can't really tell if this is genuinely a thread about people with multiple listings or if it's an advertisement for your product.

It seems more the later, however....

One of the biggest complaints to airbnb so far around this issue is with multiple listings for various rooms in a single house (or houses that are connected in some way).  

The ideal for a guest is to look for the number of rooms they need for their party.   For example, parents with a kid or two, might want 2 bedrooms, but they don't care if they're in a shared home listing or a whole unit.  
As it is now, you can only look for a 2 bedroom whole home, not 2 rooms in a home... This usually leaves them with more expensive options for their travels.

It has been requested of AirBnB, and I belive this will come in 2016, a "Linked Listing" feature.   Here you'll be able to tie rooms/listings together so that they can be booked as a block potentially, but moreso when one is booked it can block out another.

In my case, I have 3 bedrooms, a sofa, and a whole house listing.   when someone books a room, I need to block out the whole house, when someone books the house, I need to block out the rooms and sofa.

On the search side, people would ideally be able to choose the number of rooms and whole house becomes an optional attribute.  

[Short-Term-Stays0]

Hi Keith,

My company does offer services to hosts with multiple listings so I like to stay engaged with my target market to learn their challenges to see how we can help and to learn what others are doing. So I would say the thread is two fold.

Your scenerio is one that I have never came across and I can see how the airbnb platform can have your space under utilized. A simialir scenerio would be a hostel that books at the room and bed level.  Maybe your setup can be a fit for http://www.hostelworld.com I have seen listings for houses and apartments.

I would think that the ideal model for airbnb would to allow guests to book out beds in a room within a house.  This would accomdate the scenerio where you can accomodate the guest that only needs 1 bed in a room that has 2 beds and doesn't mind sharing the room.  This would also allow the familiy that needs 2 beds in 1 room to book both beds.

Does the bed model make sense to you vs the room model?

[Roisin1]

You could set your house up as multiple listing. One will all the bedrooms and then other lisitngs of the different bedrooms seperately or a combo of 2 bedrooms. Then you sync the calanders to each other. This is what I do. So if someone books all bedrooms the other listings automatically get blocked. If someone books just one bedroom the all bedroom options gets blocked but the other bedrooms are still availalbe for rent. Good luck.  When I set it up you could only sync one way and then had to manaully block bookings after that. Ie the 3 bedroom listing can block the other listings but not vice versa 

[Lia---Garry0]

@Keith1 I love hearing about a possible feature to link listings. I think this will benefit many hosts. Personally, I rent 3 rooms in the home where I live. Each room is a separate listing and it works well because my house can accommodate three separate sets of guests.

However, in the photos for each room listing I also show a photo of the other rooms I have so that a guest might see if a different room is more suited to them.  The linking feature would be great for families pr grups traveling together who don't necessarily need a whole home.
 -- Lia

[Rachel204]

Hi Lia/Garry, 

How do you make sure that guests know that you have multiple listing for the same house and that other airbnb guests might be in the home at the same time as their stay? how do you ensure that they are comfortable with the people staying in your home at the same time? 

[Christine9]

Hi Keith,

OK reading your post is very informing.  I love being an airbnb host , feeling they've covered everything, until I tried to book multiple rooms in one listing...then uh oh....I moved.

Outside of just changing my photo's and my address it seems I had to create a whole new listing.  Which I did then discovered I was loosing all of my reviews.  My location, be it only 2 blocks from the previous, was the same basic destination only with a different property. The property is actually the exact same set up.

What I've had to do is continue with my first listing and address the move with new bookings at the time airbnb sends them the address.  Also I moved the map pin really only slightly to show the new location.  Also I have an extra room for more guests in the same location, as you said for friend or children, but I can't seem to do that either without creating a whole new listing and making my calander confusing.

As a host with just about all 5 star reviews and working hard to get those reviews, I feel the reviews should follow and the guest should be able to comment on the new location and or extra room all the hosts listing.  If I had multiple locations running all at the same time I can understand separate reviews.  Loosing any review definetely hurts.

I would really like to figure out how to address this....!

Thanks for reading

Christine

Saratoga Springs NY

[Christine9]

@Keith1

OK reading your post is very informing.  I love being an airbnb host , feeling they've covered everything, until I tried to book multiple rooms in one listing...then uh oh....I moved.

Outside of just changing my photo's and my address it seems I had to create a whole new listing.  Which I did then discovered I was loosing all of my reviews.  My location, be it only 2 blocks from the previous, was the same basic destination only with a different property. The property is actually the exact same set up.

What I've had to do is continue with my first listing and address the move with new bookings at the time airbnb sends them the address.  Also I moved the map pin really only slightly to show the new location.  Also I have an extra room for more guests in the same location, as you said for friend or children, but I can't seem to do that either without creating a whole new listing and making my calander confusing.

As a host with just about all 5 star reviews and working hard to get those reviews, I feel the reviews should follow and the guest should be able to comment on the new location and or extra room all the hosts listing.  If I had multiple locations running all at the same time I can understand separate reviews.  Loosing any review definetely hurts.

I would really like to figure out how to address this....!

Thanks for reading

Christine

Saratoga Springs NY

[Jennifer-And-Brian0]

Yes.  I have two rooms in my house available but I can't offer two rooms in the same listing.  This makes no sense at all.   4 guests should be able to search for two rooms without having to book a whole house.   

Hope they fix this.