Airbnb meets Penang 2016! The first meetup in Penang on year 2016! When is our next meetup?

[Superhost-William-and-Sh0]

Dear Airbnb Superhosts and hosts at Penang!

It has been a while since our last meetup on end of May 2016! That is the first Airbnb meetup by the Airbnb team from Singapore where our community engagement leader, Francis Foo and the Airbnb Market Expert **bleep** Superhost, Wisutta flew to Penang to share with us their extrremely useful insights to assist the Airbnb community in Penang. 

Thank you for reading this post! For those who have missed out our first meetup session in Penang, please continue to read on. 

For those whom I met at this meetup session, please add more comments in this post. The Airbnb community is still new and you might heard that some of the Airbnb hosts at Penang has received fines from the local council. If you have any questions, please message at this thread and we are here to assist each other. 

Airbnb Staff, Francis Foo kick-started the first meetup session. 

Date: 28 & 29 May 2016 

Location: Kaffa Café, Georgetown, Penang 

A lot of you might have a lot of questions on your mind now. 

We have covered most of your questions in our first meetup session. 

Let me provide a high level overview on what we covered on the first meetup. 

We touched about what do guests look for when they scroll in the Airbnb   website or mobile app? Location? Price? Reviews? Price?  How can I write an attrative yet short descriptions? Some customers might have different expectation when they book your place. How can we manage their expectation? We also covered why does serach ranking matter to you? Why my listing is not in the top 20 lists? Why my search ranking is low? Why the request of my listing is so low? Why search ranking matters? What makes search at Airbnb unique? We talked about host guarantee vs host protection insurance (HPI). They are two different things. 

1. Tips 1: For the photos, remember to capture your photos in lanscape format. 
2. Tips 2: Guests tend to give better reviews to spaces with detailed description of at least 150 words. Please include your neighborhood, transit directions and level of interaction in the description too.  
3. Tips 3: Disappointment = Expecations - Reality. The higher the accuracy of the listing, the lower the disappoipment of your guests. One of the supershost shared that if you disclose too much in the Airbnb, there will be no more surprise for customers. Think of how can you give the best surprise to your customers. Eventually, it will help you to become a superhost! 
4. Tips 4: House rulse set guests expecations. Keep it clear and simple for the house rules. 
5. Tips 5: Quality of listing, ease of booking and guests preferences are the factors that we can control to boost our ranking. 
   • Quality of listings 
   • Ease of booking 
   • Guests preferences 

Last but not least, it is the sharing of the superhost journeys by Eric, Sapur, Daniel and Wisutta.  

  

1.   

There are too much to write in one post. We have too much fun in Penang! I will share more in the next post. 

Do you know that we have a Whatsapp group for Airbnb Hosts in Penang? It is a private Whatsapp group where we share and help each other to grow.

Wanna to be part of the group? Give this post a LIKE and leave your message below and I will add you into the private group. 

Regards

William Chan

Community Leader of Penang 

Wondering where is my listing? Here it is 

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12978779

[Jern0]

Hi @Superhost-William-and-Sh0, Good Day!

As you mentioned at the beginning of the post, MBPP started to take action to issue fines to the hosts at Time Square.  So which means all the airbnb hosts need to stop their hosting now?  Or what can we do right now?  Can you please advise on this?

Secondly, could you please add me in the whatsapp group? Thanks!

Cheers

Jern

[Superhost-William-and-Sh0]

@Jern0, currently, there are no rules for homestays or short term rental (less than 6 months) in Malaysia. We live in a grey area enviroment. Politician and local councils are issuing fines of RM250 per home if they found any homestays customer staying inside. According to a few hosts, in which I have agreed on their opinion, they said that our local councils won't be so proactively in raiding the homestays. They act reactively instead of proactively. That means that there are a lot of complains from the residents to the local councils where the local councils have to take action to issuing the fine to those homestays in Times Squre Penang. As a host, we need to be more careful in screening our customers. Some bad customers may bring trouble to you as they might not behave well and eventually will lead to complains by your neighbours. You may want to explain to your customers to observe the house rules and respect the local community and local culture. You can add my Facebook at www.fb.com/williamchan89 and I will add you to the private whatsapp group. 

[Jern0]

@Superhost-William-and-Sh0

So basically as long as the neighbours not complain then it is ok?  

If yes, then hosts need to make sure that the guests obey the house rules.

[Superhost-William-and-Sh0]

I found out that most of the guests did not read house rules before booking. Maybe they are too happy until forgot the house rules? Haha. Make sure you screen your guests and try to identify those problematic customers in advance. For me, instant booking is not working as I can't screen my customers. 

[Francis3]

@Superhost-William-and-Sh0 @Jern0 Hi both, it's interesting to read that you're both discussing a topic that one of our Penang hosts, @Ciern0, shared in another post in the Community Center. In that post, she talked about her issue with getting guests to observe house rules. Check it out here, and please share your experience in getting your guests to read and observe house rules 🙂 

[Ciern0]

@Superhost-William-and-Sh0 Hi Superhost, nice meeting you! thanks for sharing this post and I can't wait for the next meet up again! 

[Superhost-William-and-Sh0]

Looking forward to meet you and Raymann soon. Both of you are super superhosts, wanna learn from you guys.  

[Ridzuan1]

Awesome guys 🙂

[You-Von0]

Hi William , Just found this  conversation thread . I would like to check if you are getting a meet up in Pennag this 2018 ? I am an airbnb host and would love to meet up with the rest of you to share and to learn . Please notify me at h.youvon@gmail.com or the whatsapp , zero one six , two two nine , zero seven three six . the system censors all numbers o i have to do it this way to circumvent , ha ! 

[Gilbert110]

Hello You Von 🙂

[Jeannie29]

Hi William, kindly add me to the private whatsapp group..

Thks in advance

[Gilbert110]

Hello Jeannie 🙂

[Gilbert110]

Hello William!

Kindly let me know is there any up and coming meet up?

Do add me into the group as well.

Thank You 🙂