Inviting a management company to manage an existing listing via Teams

[Nick11]

I'm hope my fellow Airbnb hosts have been able to figure this out.  I, as many of you, am a Superhost.  Our family owns a large vacation home in a resort town that we successfully list and manage on Airbnb.  We successfully manage our own bookings through Airbnb, and then we hire a local company to do our cleaning/maintenance and be our local contact for our guest.

This company also offers full management where they help out with bookings and guest communications.  And this is very enticing to me.

Airbnb has an article linked below explaining their concept of a hosting team.  This is exactly what I am looking for.  The article explicitly states "

Anyone who has a listing on Airbnb can invite their existing rental management service to access and manage their listings on Airbnb on their behalf."

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/970/what-is-a-hosting-team

The problem is that I cannot find anywhere in my settings where I can invite my management company's airbnb team to help manage our listing.  Airbnb support also looked and they cannot find it either.  Has anyone figure out how this works?

Airbnb also pointed me to the article below where my management company's airbnb team can send me an invitation to join their hosting team; however if you read the second paragraph, it states "You can join a team with your existing Airbnb account as long as you aren’t currently hosting" which contradicts the first article and of course doesn't help me invite a management company to help me manage my listing.

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2515/how-do-i-join-a-hosting-team-on-airbnb

My question to all you hosts out there is, have you ever hired a management company to manage an existing listing, and if yes, how?  I don't want to deactivate my listing and cancel future reservations.  I simply want to invite their team to help me manage my listing.  Thoughts?   

[Carey75]

I had a seperate management team, a company that offer full service management and cleaning, but my advice would be avoid! If you are used to doing it yourself, you will have a much better relationship and feedback from your guests. I found myself babysitting the management company, constantly correcting their messages, saving bookings and even re-cleaning the property. They will take a percentage plus VAT for doing what you can do yourself - but worse!

[Nick11]

Hi @Carey75,

I so appreciate your thoughts and candid feedback on this.  As I'm a remote host, I've been using this company for about 5 years now, but only to do my cleanings and to be a local contact for my guests, as required by local ordinances.  It's not a hassle for me, but as any Superhost knows, it does take a true commitment and considerable effort to ensure you are on top of it so that guests have that awesome experience.  This company does a respectable job with cleaning and maintaining our home, plus when a guest contacts them for anything, they have been very responsive.  They showed me all their other listings on Airbnb and they have all 5 star reviews, so I'm confident they treat the guests well.  I even spoke to some of the owners of the other homes and they are happy with them.   The owner of the company approached me and told me that he can take the bookings and communications aspect off my hands (for an additional fee of course) and if I'm willing to try out their premium management service for a year, he's confident he'll be able to increase my bookings with more proceeds in both of our pockets due to the extensive advertising and search engine optimization they do.  

The difference between his other clients and myself are that I'm already an Airbnb host who only uses them for cleaning and as a local contact.  All his other clients started from scratch...they hired him from the very beginning to manage their homes so they were never Airbnb hosts to begin with.  The property manager setup the listings from scratch under his own account, owns those listings, and has his Airbnb team manage those listings.  Because I have an existing listing under my own account with multiple future bookings already on the calendar, they only way this would make sense is if his team can help manage my existing listing, and not let them create a new one from scratch (I wouldn't dare inactivate my listing and cancel on all my future guests who have already made travel plans).  So I was just trying to figure out if it was even possible for an existing management team who is managing other listings to also manage my listing.

[Carey75]

Hi @Nick11

I'm also a superhost but I'm based in London UK, and like you had an existing listing which I paid a management team to operate remotely for me, including the cleaning. Sounds like the company you already use are better than mine. I've had a so called UK/  international company working remotely from an app, and you can never spreak to anyone directly. I found that when they took over the booking side, I ended up having to apologise to guests when they were given incorrect local information from a suport team that was based elsewhere and working remotely, and I lost a couple of bookings due to ridiculous automated replies and other errors.

The anser is yes, you can have an existing managememt team take over your listing, you just need to add team and share a login-in. I would imagine in your case they would just have a login-in to your listing and interact with guests as the Host Support Team. However, if you are used to montoring your own account and want to connect with guests directly, you may find yourself having to correct their messages. The idea is that you leave them to it, but then you end of losing control of your bookings. My advice would be to try it for a couple of months before comitting to a whole year - particularly in this economic climate. You should really only be asked to give 1 month's notice if you are not happy.

[Carey75]

@Nick11 

1. Go to your Account
2. Choose Privacy & sharing
3. Below connected apps click add accesss for your new managememt company

They should be able to do this themselves with your permission, and if you have issues go to the Help Chat on Airnb

[Robyn351]

Hey @Nick11 - another option that could work for you is to add your management company as a "co-host". This allows them to message your guests, manage your bookings, see your calendar, etc. and the listing remains in your name with all the reviews you've built up. Any new reviews will be tied to you and your new listings, despite your management company managing those bookings. 

If you want to add them as a co-host click on your Listing and scroll to "Co-Hosts" then click "invite a friend" and choose their AirBnB profile.

I run a management company in Victoria, BC called Host Happy and this is how I like to do things 🙂 Hope that helps!

[Carmel459]

Hi @Robyn351  , even with the ‘co-host’ can you make someone in full control and not just a co-host?

[Robyn351]

@Carmel459 I’m not sure what you mean by “full control”, but they can set prices, message guests, etc.

[Jeremy244]

Nick? Did you ever find a solution to this?