listing improvement suggestions for B&B

[Celeste--and-Steven0]

hello community... first post.  looking for advice on ways to improve our listing https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14072393  , and also for comments on our general marketing approach.  we love airbnb, but don't get many bookings through them because, I think, we provide more service and charge a bit more than locally typical.  About half of our bookings are through Expedia, and pretty much the other half through direct bookings on our website.  For better or worse, we behave more like an old fashioned tiny B&B.  We've tried to make clear the various booking options and related costs, and that seems to have helped a bit with airbnb bookings.  comments welcome!  celeste and steven

[Linda108]

@Celeste0 & Steven1   What a beautiful home! 

Unfortunately you have not set up your listing correctly.  You should have a separate listing for each bedroom since you are willing to entertain separate parties.  In that case each listing would be for the individual bedroom with a shared bathroom.  Even though you have a description that the nightly rate is for a single room, according to this platform you could be held to a party using all three room for the stated nightly rate.  Air BNB would uphold any guest that complained.

In addition to 3 listings one for each bedroom, you could have additional listings that are for all three rooms or any two rooms for larger groups.  There are discussion posts about multiple listings at the same location that should be helpful for you.  When you have all these listing, you can sync the calendars with individual listings and the combined room listings so you do not double book.

Good luck with your new business on this platform!

[Celeste--and-Steven0]

thanks, Linda!  ...so, I changed our listing to make it clear (i think...) that it is only one room, although i still indicate other rooms are available with a request to the host.  then, i got pretty far at setting up a two-room option which is now listed as well, but there are issues.  first of all, the airbnb calendar only syncs airbnb reservations so if I make multiple listings, i still need to individually adjust all of them UNLESS i could sync with, say Expedia.  It doesn't look like I can, so I am tempted to just stay with the single room listing as modified.  more advice, oh sage and helpful advisor!!???  oh, and by the way, we do not want to rent to unrelated people and have them share a bathroom, so the multiple individual room listing option is not attractive to us.  and THANKS!

[Linda108]

Let me see if I understand what type of listing you want to offer.  You want to offer one, two or three rooms to the same party, right?  You are willing to allow a single party of 1 or 2 to block the rest of the rooms so you would not be available for larger parties, more rooms rented and more income.  Still right?  In terms of the search function, you need to be seen by parties from one to six.  Sooooo, this is a different scenerio than I thought.  

I have not had to sync calendars but Air BNB does sync calendars with other platforms and there are instructions in the Help Center articles.

I wonder if this idea would be a good compromise for you:  One listing for a primary bedroom with the option to add a secondary room.  This would appeal to groups up to 4 people or two singles who want separate rooms.  Then create a second listing for all three rooms for singles using 3 separate rooms or a larger group up to six guests.  Now you have only 2 listings.  As to pricing, you can have a rate for one guest and then an additional fee for additional guests over 1.  This way your revenue can go up according to the number of guests.  And this option is built into the Air BNB platform so as long as the booking guest enters the correct number of guests in the reservation request, the price will be automatically calculated and you are not having to request additional funds through a separate mechanism.  Thoughts?

[Celeste--and-Steven0]

well, thanks even more.  so, in order to avoid the calendar madness it would be great to just have one listing, so i'm going to try to figure out how to have the second room add option.  If the second room option was a choice of the other two rooms, i'd be able to justify including pictures of all three rooms, and i could indicate somewhere that we could be contacted for use of the third, and viewers would have the visual info they needed to tell what we were offering.

right now we manually sync one airbnb listing, one expedia listing and one freetobook listing through our website.  expedia and freetobook make it easier to list five options in one general listing:  your choice of each room, or two, or three.  i can't imagine syncing more!

thanks... now to welcome today's guests.

warm regards,

steven

[Celeste--and-Steven0]

hmmm.  don't know how to add a second room option!