How to MAXIMIZE your occupancy rate

[Rishabh10]

I started hosting with Airbnb just over a year ago - August 2018. 

The first couple of months went pretty well, but then December hit and occupancy rates went through the roof. Once it hit January, the festive season was over and occupancy shot back down. That's when I realized that an empty apartment adds no value to me so I had to come up with a strategy to maximize my occupancy rates, and it worked!

On average, I am now always at least double the average market occupancy rate. These are some of my strategies: 

Smart Pricing

The power of smart pricing is highly undermined. The ability to adjust your rate to fit the demand and supply of the market is a great tool. There are genuinely times I get a booking with a rate about 10-15% higher than I was expecting because the smart pricing took effect. For the most part, though, I have set my minimum rate as a fairly high amount so it does not usually go higher than my minimum. 

Price Tips

The price tips essentially tie into the smart pricing. For the most part, my occupancy rate is quite high competitively but I always want it higher! So whenever a date is approaching and my calendar is available for that period, I turn off smart pricing and just follow the price tips. Airbnb claims that it is 4 times as likely to being booked if your price is within 5% of the recommended price. Not sure about the exact percentage, but it definitely helps by slightly dropping your rate to get a booking. 

Booking Settings

The number of bookings you get surely depends on you as a host and your rating, but your booking settings play a big part in this. What is your minimum length stay? What is the latest time a guest can check-in? Imagine a guest who wants to stay 2 weeks but intends on checking in really late, if you can't host a late check-in then you've lost that reservation. Also, imagine there was a guest who wanted to stay 3 nights but because you allow a minimum of 4 nights, the guest does not even come across your listing as an option.

While all hosts have all kinds of restrictions, it helps to be as flexible as possible when hosting a guest.

Calendar Rule-Sets 

This is my favorite one lately... I personally set my minimum to 2 nights so I can host almost all guests (except 1 night because I personally find it not as worth it with the fixed cost of cleaning, etc). However, I do have certain situations when I have two guests staying with a 1-day gap and since I have a minimum of 2 nights, it's impossible to fill that in. 

Well, it isn't... this new finding has genuinely generated a lot of revenue. Basically, you go to the calendar tab and select the specific available date and a rule-set for that date. That basically means that this rule-set can allow you to deviate from your booking settings for specific dates. For those empty days, I just put a rule-set of minimum 1 night and chances are it's gonna get booked if it's not too last minute. You could also potentially lower the rate a bit to promote the booking. 

Conclusion

All in all, there are many tools to help with maximizing your occupancy. Some others include faster responses, a higher acceptance rate and more additions of your listing on the guests' wishlist. I am not going to dive into these since they are frequently spoken about on forums. But if you'd like some tips

on that, please let me know 🙂 

75% occupancy (3X the market average)98% occupancy across 8 properties.

[Rishabh10]

@Sarah977  Now I understand why most don't like it...

[Sean433]

@Rishabh10 

I have tried all that you suggested and much more and even with me pricing it lower then many other properties where they don't use professional photos and don't showcase their place to full potential, i still find I have too much vacancy during the worst months.

I even started dropping the price of Sundays to an extremely low amount because this is usually the most common day for vacancy since the most popular check-in and check-out is friday check-in and Sunday check-out. I also kept monday very low in the hopes to get the business travelers to book through the work week which is the lowest demand days.

Just as an experiment, I even lowered one of my listings which is a 4 bedroom home to $100 per night on Sunday and Monday to see what would happen. NOTHING. It is very strange because although it boosted how many views I was getting, I am not getting many bookings. And its a beautiful house. A run down tiny hotel nearby costs the same amount so you would think that even if its just 1 or 2 people in the group that they would prefer to rent a huge 4 bedroom beautiful house for the same price as a small 1 bedroom crappy hotel nearby. I really don't get it.

[Rishabh10]

Hey @Sean433 thanks for the input. 

Yeah, I actually face the exact same issue you do. From what I have seen, once you are able to get the guest through your door, he/she will keep coming back provided they had a good experience. The main issue is getting them to come that first time. You could potentially include a short note of that in your listing description in a comic way. Something about being bigger and better than the local competition. 

Thanks for the feedback again! 

[Ann72]

@Sean433  That sounds frustrating!  It sounds like the one thing you haven't done is to raise your price by a LOT.  After my first season, I raised my prices by 50%.  I only got 5 more bookings than the year before, but my annual income went up 70%.  You clearly value your home - signal that by higher prices and you'll get guests who value it as well.

[Sean433]

@Ann72 

Our prices vary drastically depending on the season. We have one weekend in August where our 4 bedroom house is $850/night and it gets booked. Then during this time of the year, it is a struggle to get it booked for $140 a night. I tried keeping the price up even during the slow season and that did not work because the competition is pricing low and those that price high are empty. There is so much competition in my city and it is because there is no rules set in place yet. Even though we are better then the average listing, a lot of the nice listings are operated by wealthy land owners and so they really make you work hard to stay competitive.

I think it is largely dependent on the market. I know that in New York, STR is heavily restricted and that has pushed a lot of hosts to deactivate their listings, thus lowering the supply of homes. At the same time, demand is super high. That is the best combination for hosts to be able to charge a premium.

[Ann72]

@Sean433  I overlooked your tough competition in a market like Toronto!  I hear you.

I live in New York but my listings are in highly seasonal Maine, where 25% of this year's revenue came from July alone.  I don't expect much in the off-season, but last winter I got more than usual.  I think that's because I set up Smart Pricing using my usual high price as the minimum.  Then I would periodically get messages next to my calendar asking if I wanted to send out a discount offer for upcoming dates covering a period of 10 days.  I almost always agreed because Airbnb sends this offer by email to people looking at listings in the area for related dates.  I didn't get a ton of bookings from those offers, but I got something worth more than that:  free direct-marketing and many more clicks and eyes on the listings than usual.  This in turn raised my places in the rankings, and my summer was booked far earlier, at higher prices, than ever before.

[Lisa723]

@Rishabh10 @Ann72 @Sean433 

I have smart pricing turned on, but it’s never actually in effect as every night’s price is overridden by Wheelhouse. My revenue more than doubled after I signed on with them. Prices vary a lot depending on season, day of week, local events, and lead time.

[Ann72]

@Lisa723  It kills me that Wheelhouse isn't available in Maine.  Grrrr!  Even so, my revenue this year is 50% over last year's, so Smart Pricing has worked well enough.

[Lisa723]

@Ann72  You might also look at superhosttools. I use it for automatic messaging but it also has a utility to adjust smart pricing by a set percentage.

[Ann72]

@Lisa723  Thank you!  I hadn't heard of that - going to look into it right now!

[Susan151]

I am going to be honest. I don't want to maximize my occupancy; I want to maximize my income!

I am, for the most part, booked every night from April until the end of October. November is 85% booked with some random single open nights which I won't try to sell. Then winter comes and it all slows down. This year, I am not dropping my prices as much as in the past and am still filling in dates in December. Last year I "closed" for six weeks during January and February to do some maintenance [my tile grouting skills are now excellent] and may do the same again this year. Or I might stay open with high-for-winter rates and if I get booked, great. Otherwise, I will sand and stain that desk.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Rishabh10 

I also have min 2 nights stay. To avoid 1 night gaps in between bookings I just add a rule sets: No check in the second day after previous reservation and No check out the last day before the next reservation. This way I either get back to back bookings or 2+ days gap.

[Ricardo85]

@Branka-and-Silvia0 

Do I need to create a diferent rule set for every day of the week to accomplish this?

Ricardo

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Ricardo85 

I set it manually for both days and for every new booking.

If, for example, I get a booking from Monday to Wednesday then I set no-check-out on the previous Sunday and no-check-in on next Tuesday.

For example, it looks like this:

SATURDAY

SUNDAY - rule set - check out is not possible on Sunday

MONDAY -guests check-in (previous guests can check-out)

TUESDAY - guests stay

WEDNESDAY - guests check out ( next guests can check-in)

THURSDAY - rule set - check-in is not possible on Thursday

FRIDAY

I have 3 linked listings and I use a multi-calendar view.

[Douglas201]

@Rishabh10 I will check out Price Tips from time to time; but, I have never actually priced my 4 bedroom at their suggested price which seems, in my rental region, more in line with a shared room rental.

But I do like very much Airbnb's last minute discount feature! It's effects over a recent week were nothing short of remarkable! My place was booked three times for the same 4-5 days:

Guests#1 were cancelled last minute because of nonpayment due to a lost credit card and they were not monitoring their Airbnb urgent notifications.

It was re-booked with 12 hours by Guests#2! But, two days later they cancelled the morning of their arrival because they just had a baby! (Whereas they were not entitled to a refund, they shall reschedule within six months when mom and baby are good to travel.)

This same weekend was then unblocked by Airbnb but subsequently re-booked a third time just 6 hours later; Guests#3 said it was because of the discount and their original booking was cancelled by their host last minute due to lingering electrical power outages from a Nor'easter.