Slow Bookings and Hot Weather in Texas - Any Similar Experiences?

[Elea0]

Hi Super Host Community,

Hope everyone's doing well. I wanted to see if the current booking situation during the Texas summer on Airbnb is slower. I've noticed things have been very slow lately, and to top it off, the weather is blazing hot with temperatures hitting 100 degrees. Wondering if any other hosts in Texas are going through the same thing?

Has the summer season typically been slow for Airbnb hosts in Texas? If so, how do you handle it and maximize occupancy during these tough months?

It'd be awesome to hear about your experiences and strategies. Let's share and support each other during this challenging period. Together, we can make sure our guests have a great stay, no matter what external factors we're dealing with 🙂

Cheers,

Elea & Dave

[Daniel10299 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Elea0 ,

I'm not from Texas so I cannot really talk about the weather. However, I took a few minutes to look for properties in Frisco and guess what? Yours was the second one to appear!

It looks like you have amazing reviews and that people love your place, which is great, however, something that got my attention is that at least on the first scroll of the page, your listing is the one that costs the more. I don't think that's bad, but my guess is that people could use your listing as the high anchor in terms of pricing, and then opt for any of the others:

That's not all though, when scrolling down the page, the next room that is similar in price... is also yours:

So my advice would be to try any of the following:

Option A

Lower the price of one of the two listings for a couple of weeks and check if that improves bookings. I would ideally match the one that's closer in terms of a price and ranking. If it improves, you could keep them that way, so that one works as the high anchor and the other one gets booked more often.

Option B

Lower the price of the two listings for a couple of weeks and see how they do. If they work... I'm not sure you would be interested in going back to your current rates.

I initially struggled with reducing the nightly price, but then ended up realizing that for me it's better to have guests that may be paying a bit less, but making sure that the cash is flowing continuously. After I did that, it took me like 2-3 weeks to see the impact and boom! after that, one of my properties is booked 80% of the month.

I hope this helps you, I think you have such beautiful listings!

Finally, I wanted to share that I'm working on a small research project and would like if you could help me answering one simple question. I'm trying to understand how hosts like you and me can get more bookings through Airbnb.

This is the survey

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfD2wo1zlpIsLRlyiQ5KMvCbHIy6UBaTegftMSRfMLHa5FbbQ/viewformh...

Thank you very much!

Daniel

[Virginia305]

I’m going through the same thing. How do I get people to not book only the weekends. I have day before and 1 day after each booking WHEN I have bookings to clean the house. I have minumum 3 days and when they book the weekend it ruins the beginning of the week. Please help. 

[Daniel10299]

Hi @Virginia305 , are you really interested in people being able to book Mondays? If so, I'd either reduce the number of days people can book your place, so maybe 2 nights max? otherwise you could restrict certain days for check in, therefore maybe people check in on Thursday and leave on Sunday. Does that make sense?

[Daniel10299]

Hi @Elea0 , I'm curious to ask if your Airbnbs did better? Did you do any changes on your listings and / or experienced a change on the number of bookings?

[Diane1470]

I am a host in central Texas. It’s not only the heat it’s just slow. The last 2 years have been very slow. I’ve been doing this now for about 15 years and this is the slowest year ever.
We have 10 units all caring sizes with great amenities on water but it’s just slow.I’ve heard this from many others as well. 

The consensus is that during Covid many ppl got into STR business and flooded the market. Now the economy is bad and too many ppl in this business.
Hope this  helps.  I looked into everything I could do to increase business but nothing much is working. 
In the same boat,

Diane