How can I get more bookings?

[Susan17]

The current incarnation of Superhost has only been around for 19 quarters, so nobody has reached 20 yet. 

19/19 here too. Not that it's worth a tupenny d*mn. Still can't get bookings on Airbnb for love nor money, no matter how hard I try. (And at this point, there's nothing I haven't tried). One of my listings has had 3 bookings since last August. That's the reality of hosting on Airbnb - the longer your service to the company, the more they'll try to push you out. 

[Ben551]

Hey @Susan17 - want any help?... from a slightly SEO obsessed guy who has spent possibly far too much time researching it? (I probably answered my own question there lol)

[Susan17]

Aw thank you so much @Ben0 - that's very sweet of you, I appreciate the offer! I have had several super-techy guys  (and girls!) try to help already - to no avail, sadly - but I'm always open to new suggestions. I know at least 7 or 8 other long-term hosts who are in exactly the same position as me though, so I'm pretty sure it's just that our market has been grossly over-saturated for a very long time now, as it is in many cities. Everyone is picking up bookings on the other sites though, so at least there are options now 🙂

On top of all that though, our new regs come into force on June 1st  (allegedly!) so It's probably curtains for us on Airbnb here anyway. Thanks again for your very kind offer 🙂

[Ben551]

Ah bugger, sorry to hear that @Susan17 ... that’s a real bummer. Sing out if you change your mind, but as you say if the tech-savvy have looked already there’s probably not much left to try. Offer stands though. Hey maybe the regs will thin your competition out!

[Sue410]

Hi Ben I would love your help if possible? Sue 

[Susan17]

@Ben551 

At one point, one particularly helpful young CX guy did mention that the recurring disappearances of my listings were possibly related to some geocode thing, or something like that. I didn't really grasp what he meant though. Does it make any sense to you? (I think he said there was a "dot" there that shouldn't have been there, but he might as well have been talking Swahili to me, for all I understood!)

[Robin4]

@Susan

I was puzzled why you can't get bookings Susan! You are a great host...your reviews are stellar and your property/s is/are presented just perfectly. Where the hell is the glitch here?

I just did an incognito search and Susan your listings are not showing up no matter how much filtering I put in place. I can zoom down to your specific area and still.....nothing!

I get one listing for the page, and it's not yours

I would generally say that you are the subject of bad hosting, but that is not the case, you are an exemplary host.

I am clutching at straws here Susan but your posts have become very toxic towards Airbnb....could it be that you have been placed on a 'black-list' of sorts?

It staggers me that such a fine host has such a low public profile! Maybe we collectively need to push your barrow for you and try to get some visibility back. You are never going to get bookings if nobody can see how bloody good you are!

Cheers.....Rob 

[Susan17]

@Robin4 

I just wrote a long response to your commennt, and as usual, it disappeared into thin air before I could even finish it. I'll try again later, when I can face typing it out again. 

Thank you for confirming what I already knew - and what Airbnb CX repeatedly denies - though. Much appreciated. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry. 😞

[Robin4 · Accepted solution]

@Susan17 

I am struggling to work out what is going on here!

I used everything I could, to find your listings a couple of hours ago Susan and no matter what filtering I used I could not get a result.

I just did another incognito search to double check what I had done before, but before I did it I closed all pages I had open and opened another incognito search for Dublin homes, the only filter being 6 guests....... no Superhost, no dates and this is the result I got!

Your Chic 2 listing came up at 23 out of 246 homes and your Chic 4 came along at 46 out of that same 246 homes.....one listing on page 2 and the other on page 4.

I will swear they were not there a couple of hours ago, but they are both visible now!

Have you taken any action......refreshed them, or been onto CX again Susan?

I can't understand why they have both suddenly bobbed up again, and with minimal filtering!

It seems you have been given a new lease of life!

Cheers......Rob

[Susan17]

@Robin4 

Yeah I've been back on the phone to them again Rob. Getting all sorts of weird and wonderful excuses from them, as I do every single time I have to call about this (and I'm not exaggerating here, I've had to call them at least 30 - 40  times about this very issue over the years) At one point, Brian Chesky himself even escalated my account to the top tech guys in SF for urgent appraisal. 6 weeks later, they got back to me telling me everything was perfectly fine. It was - for a short while. Then before long, it was back to business (or no business!) as usual. Believe it or not, I didn't even get a booking for St Patricks Day for our place. That's just about as bad as it can get!

Losing the will to live here. We have less than 6 weeks to go until the new regs kick in, so we have more than enough to be worrying and stressing about without all this sh*t too. It never ends. Shoot me now... 

[Susan17]

PS Thanks for taking the time to have another look Rob! You're very good. At least it's cheered me up a bit that my listings can be seen again. For the moment, anyway... 😉

[Robin4]

@Susan17 

This is terrible, I hate the fact that they can 'play around' with your livelyhood like that.

I would possibly have a chat with local media, tell them what is happening and ask them to keep an eye on your visibility!

Susan, I was very thorough,  the only search criteria I didn't involve was your hair colour and your shoe size but, I drew a blank first time around.

With my second search I was prepared to involve 'hair and shoes' but, bingo, there you were as prominent as hosts who have guest after guest every week.

Gee I find this disturbing Susan (in a sense for myself) but I also find it disturbing because you are becoming bitter and cynical, it is showing up in your posts. You were such a fun host but over the last 6 months your outpourings have induced a level of sadness.....at least for me. I wish somehow we could get this monkey off your back and get the hosting bus rolling along again for you!

Get our old Susan back again.......

Cheers......Rob 

[Ben551]

@Susan17 I should have guessed it was a geocode glitch. Unbelievable...

What it means is, their map pinning software has failed to translate the latitude and longitude coordinates of your listing correctly, to pin point it on the map and include you in search results. The only way to fix this is by editing the”lat-long coordinates”, but only a technician can do that. Regular Airbnb CS staff will have no clue. Also, anytime they refresh their map information (I believe this is weekly), your coordinates will probably need resetting... the issue is most likely persistent because the source of their map information is flawed.

I have seen this issue precisely twice before and on both occasions the host was using a suburb name that didn’t match their street address. They wanted to appear in the results of the neighbouring upmarket suburb, so had forced the issue by manually entering an address the system didn’t recognise. I helped one to fix it, but the other refused to make the changes... said she’d rather cancel her Airbnb than admit it wasn’t in the beach district.... nothing I could do to reason with her...

Anyhoo, all this to say - does Dublin put you in the cusp between two suburbs, by any chance? It might be that, through no fault of yours, their geomapping considered you as being in a different district to what you listed as when you started. Sometimes it’s as sensitive as a “single street” from north to south.

The good news is, you can test this for yourself. The way I suggested to others was to play around with making a “new” listing, but don’t take it all the way to the end. Just go up to the point where you can enter your address just to see what the system recognises today vs. what you entered as your address when you first created the listing. If you see anything odd, like having to force it to recognise your suburb...seeing your address differently in the drop down list... report back.

Great detective work @Robin4 !

[Michelle-And-Michael0]

@Ben551 @Robin4  Unintentionally, you have both addressed a very frustrating issue that we encountered when we tried to join the Homeaway platform about a year ago.

When I put in our listing address.... (we live in a suburb of the Wollongong, Illawarra area called Mt Keira) Homeaway's map pinned the Mt Keira 'Mountain' which apparently falls under a totally different area called The Southern Highlands.
Mt Keira is a big mountain.... we are located at the underside of the mountain. Not the top, where in fact there are no homes or residential areas for miles.
When people were searching our area through the Homeaway site, they would search under Wollongong (our nearest biggest town centre.... just 5 mins away) or the Illawarra area. Very rarely would anyone put Mt Keira in their search engine.
On Homeaway, if you searched Wollongong or Illawarra, we were completely invisible..... nothing showed up.
However, when searching for the Southern Highlands..... there we were! Not ideal as we are a 40min drive from our closest towns in the Southern Highlands. Anyone searching for the Southern Highlands area would not want to stay 40 mins away!
I spent quite a few hours via emails and phone calls overseas that cost me a small fortune trying to explain and rectify the situation, to no avail.
They asked me to provide proof that our address was actually a part of the Wollongong, Illawarra region. So I sent rates notices etc. that confirmed everything I was telling them.
The only answer they gave me was that they couldn't do anything about it because it was just the way the mapping site that they were using was recognising our address, and they couldn't fix it. Basically they blamed google maps!
I even tried changing our Address to Wollongong, instead of Mt Keira, but once it was listed it wouldn't accept an address change.
Needless to say, we gave up on Homeaway. There was no point!!

Susan (sorry, can't tag you) I really hope you have better luck than we did with this issue.
Somehow it seems like something similar has happened to you!
I have to add, we didn't have any issues with Airbnb map pinning.... go figure!

I have to say, that I really can't fault anything Airbnb has done with our listing, or us to date.
Any of our dealings or concerns have been handled to our satisfaction so far.
However, I see that others haven't been so lucky here, and I'm also not a fan of some of the new changes taking place..... especially the guest profile photo scenario.
But, unlike others that threaten to switch platforms..... that's not an option for us apparently!

Cheers,
Michelle 🙂

[Ben551]

 @Michelle-And-Michael0  - this is a great example of what can happen when a geocode goes wrong!  It's sometimes hard for people to know what or why this happens to their listing, so yours is a great example and easy to follow.  I'm always on the lookout for this type of glitch, because it has such a HUGE impact for people's business, and doesn't take much of mine or anyone's time to diagnose.. thanks for sharing 🙂

PS:  I'm actually quite hopeful that this is the cause for @Susan  because if it is, then we can work the problem and fix it... it's low hanging fruit on the scale of problems.