Novembers, Decembers and Januaries have been typically almost dead for me in the 5 winter seasons that I've been hosting, but this winter season November and December my booking were considerably better, and even this January was better, but still almost dead. Nevertheless, the few bookings I have gotten were not as much via Airbnb but via Vrbo, Booking.com, and people who found my website via Google.
But I what keep hearing from other hosts in my city indicates to me that they have always done a lot better than me in the winter months, a number of them claiming that they have been totally booked. And now with January coming to a close I am starting to panic because I have been getting zero bookings.
For a while I have been thinking that it is because of Omicron, that people just aren't traveling as much as they were before it started raging. But today I took a look at my views on Airbnb, and I am shocked to see that they are way, way below the views of similar listings in my area.
I am a superhost with a 5 star average rating, and all my reviews are glowing. So why am I not even getting views?
In the past when I have conducted a simple map search in my city I have usually found that my listings don't show up unless I zoom in as far as possible over my block, and even then sometimes they still wouldn't show. I would call Airbnb and ask what was up and even got the tech people on it and they all said that there was nothing keeping my listings at such low visibility.
However, it has always been a total mystery to me why my listings are consistently hidden way down at the bottom somewhere when others are always way up at the top. My places are in one of the most ideal locations a guest could ask for, and are beautiful, unique and charming, professional photos, all good amenities and checked, and basically doing everything in the list you're supposed to do, so it hasn't made any sense.
Despite that, I had a very good 2021 overall. I use OwnerRez channel and property management system, which is amazing, and allows me to manage my listings on other channels including my own website, and I also use PriceLabs to set my minimum and maximum rates. The rates I've been getting using PriceLabs have definitely been in the higher range, but until this month that has worked well for me, as I earn more income with fewer nights booked than with lower rates and booked every night. And that gets me higher quality guests giving glowing reviews.
Right now my lowest rates are the lowest I am willing to go, as I have learned that when I lower them any more, I get low quality guests who give bad reviews and also tend to be messier and stain linens.
I understand I need to work more on getting more direct bookings, but now that I'm getting almost no views on Airbnb and thus no bookings via Airbnb, I have to wonder if something isn't amiss. One of my listings, my most popular, shows a decline of views from 12/27 of just a tad below average to the next day of pretty much no views and staying that way since.
I would attach screenshots to this post to show that, but when I click on the camera icon, I get a strange interface that gives me no ability to upload any images, and when I try to paste one in, I am told I don't have permission to add an image.
