What percent of your bookings comes from Instagram?

[David8879]

Was wondering if anyone has stats on bookign sources - I saw breakdowns on VRBO, booking.com and such, but what about social media? Facebook? Instagram? (I m not on neither so just wondering if it worth the efforts to create accounts)

[Richard531]

This is a great question and I'd love to hear how others are fared on this also. 

We initially put a lot of effort into Instagram in an attempt to gain traction (maybe ~2 years ago when we had just 2 listings).  A handful of people found us on there, mentioned it on IG, and may/may not have actually booked from it.  I dunno. . .  For our listings, (higher end, near perfect reviews, amenity focused - but by no means OMG or prototype "Category" listings), it doesn't seem to do much of anything.

We also are constantly imploring our guests to post fun pic/tag us, etc.  Then, we'll often find them bragging about their time at our listing (with fun pics), but not tagging our IG!  What's that about?  

I'd say 95% of our bookings are from conventional Airbnb search (we don't host on any other platform), 4% from word of mouth/return guests, 1% from "other" leads, which would include Instagram.  

Our IG handle is @socalstr.  My wife works maybe 15 mins a week on it.  I'll take any advice!  

We have also hosted "influencers" at the home a few times (2M subscribers on YouTube, 500K followers on IG, that sort of thing).  They made some cute videos/great pics, etc.  Did it equal more bookings?  I'd say a pretty definitive "no."

"We'd love to create some great content at your listing" is code for "we want a free place to stay, and we need to create 'content' anyway since we're running out of drivel to film/talk about."  Don't get me wrong, if Lady Gaga wants to stay at one of our listings for free in exchange for bragging about it, I'm game!  But short of that, we've found the return on investment with "influencers" to be very, very low.  

[Huma0]

@Richard531 

I've had 'influencers' stay here and post videos/photos of my listing but not tag me or even mention the airbnb in any way. 

I would never offer a discount, let alone a free stay, to an influencer, but I probably would to a professional interiors photographer in exchange for images that I can use to promote the listing.

[Ted307]

@David8879  I agree with @Richard531  -- when we shared our link on facebook, and booked one of our cousins at a very cheap rate, it did not do much for our bookings. Right now, if we did not have loyal returning guests, we would not have any bookings.

[Inna22]

I get a lot of phone calls from google. I went through a lot of trouble to remove my listing from there because it is not allowed by the city of Chicago (go figure) yet people still find me and call. I direct them to Airbnb and it usually ends there

[Sudsrung0]

My husband is the one who does any promotions, he says IG has never worked for us and we do use FB to drive traffic to our listing on Airbnb he says recently we have been getting a lot of views on Airbnb as you can see how many views you get.

The point he make is you cannot see where them views are coming from, ie, which country.

I did ask the question on here the other week and somebody said they would forward it on to Airbnb,

On FB the trick is to join many groups and just post in the groups say once a week dont do to much you will get banned.

[David8879]

To sum it up:

FB and IG are waste of time. (glad I never had any SM accounts)

Google - some visits, no bookings.

Personal website properly done - some bookings and better ROI

Note to myself: stay with "bad" airbnb until ...

Thanks folks

[Helen3]

no not necessarily -  its like any marketing channel it's how you use it and whether it's one your target audiences use @David8879 

[David8879]

@Helen3 sorry, I am not clear on what you are saying 

[Ann783]

.@David8879 - on your personal website can guests book directly or does it link to airbnb?

[David8879]

@Ann783 why would MY website drive business to AirBNB?

I can not go into details here as it will be in violation of business laws, but it is quite easy to setup website.

What IS difficult is to have enough visitors and no matter how hosts might dislike certain situations - ABNB is  a Booking Monster ... well - WAS a Booking Monster .

But  as your Moma told you "never put all eggs in AirBNB basket" 

[Gillian166]

We have an instagram account, i'm building it up slowly. I do think insta could bring in more guests if done well, and if you have the type of place that photographs well, and attracts people who want to put their holiday on insta or tiktok. there are quite a few places that are "insta famous" and I suspect they get heaps of bookings from their insta exposure.  I personally have a bit of Insta-fatigue and whatever they did in the latest update has made it even more annoying to use. I tend to only post 1-2 times per week so it's not a huge drain on my time (and I have it set up to auto-post the same thing to facebook, which i never look at). 

[Laura2592]

@David8879 our bookings increased quite a bit when I started an IG account. It got confusing as I would be talking to someone on IG, a booking would come through with a different name and I would later realize that it was the partner of the person I had been speaking to. I don't have any true data but we absolutely got a bump when we started posting pics there. Now that I don't host anymore I still have a lot of people asking me when I have availability on IG. So it did something for us.

[Gillian166]

@Laura2592  there are some really amazing Instagram profiles for STRs out there, and i'm sure some of them must be getting bookings that way just based on the engagement I see. people love to stay in "famous" places.