Attracting Long Term Guests

Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Attracting Long Term Guests

Hello, I was wondering if anyone had tips for attracting long-term guests, including ideas for additional marketing that would draw them to my listing. By long-term, I mean between one and six months.

 

I currently have two rooms listed in my home that get pretty much booked back to back by short-term guests and another room where I currently have a long-term lodger. His lease is up later this Summer and, while I'm reluctant to have a third bedroom with short-term guests (too much for me to handle, plus I like the security of having at least one long-term person here), I'm also reluctant to get another lodger because they pay much less than Airbnb guests but usually make more mess/ignore house rules, and this effects my business as a host.

 

So, I thought a long-term guest would be the ideal solution. When I first listed a room, I had a few of these (between one month and four months) and everytime it worked out brilliantly. These were people coming to London for work, study or internships. I don't get them anymore because the rooms are booked up months in advance by short-termers.

 

My problem is that the room that I want for long-term guests only barely gets any views at all because the calendar has been blocked since last Summer. I have opened up some dates now, but the room only has a handful of reviews (100% positive) from the brief period I hosted guests in it while I was inbetween housemates. Any ideas on how I can get the listing noticed/attract the long-termers without having to use Instant Book? I have thought about approaching universities, but other than that, I have no idea...

54 Replies 54
Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Oh, and here is the listing in question: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/13917843

 

I already offer a 15% monthly discount on it.

@Huma0

We have also started to welcome "longer" short term guests (from 1 month to 4 months typically).  There were many reasons but we found this was a better fit for us.  If you choose to do that then you need to search for them.  Our favorite type is the traveling medical guests.  They are usually 13 to 26 weeks.  There are sites that you can go on to find them and promote them to look at your Airbnb page.  Also, large businesses where they have employees stay for extended periods of time.  We contacted the Human Resource dept of the companies.  Most of our long term people have said that searching on Airbnb can be misleading and fustrating.  But when they are directed there by you (via Facebook page or group) they trust it.  Good luck,  Nancy

@Robert-And-Nancy0that's very useful, thank you! I will certainly try your suggestions. I know tha there is nearby temporary housing for people on long work trips. While I'm not planning on stealing their business (it helps to fund a local school), there must be a market for that kind of thing in my area. I might ask around amongst some of my friends in case their companies are looking.

@Huma0

Oh I just looked at your listing, it is beautiful!!!!  One thing that also may help is if you can get one of your long term guests to mention it in the review it may help guests who are searching.

@Robert-And-Nancy0

 

Thank you! Unfortunately the room doesn't look quite like that right now because my lodger NEVER cleans and has accessoried it with some very random stuff. I have given myself a whole weekend after his departure to get it back to rights though 🙂

 

My long term guests did leave reviews, but they didn't stay in this room unfortunately, so their reviews are on my other listings or way down on my profile as those stays were quite a while ago now.

David126
Level 10
Como, CO

Long term guests are tenants and you would still need a lease.

David
Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@David0

 

I'm hapy to do a lease if necessary. I'm used to dealing with those as I've had lodgers for more than 10 years in this house and my previous home.

Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

PS I should hade mentioned above that, actually, in the UK, long term guests renting private rooms in your primary residence, where you live, are not tenants at all and no lease is required. 

 

They are lodgers or licensees and the laws are quite different. They do have some rights but nothing like tenants' rights and you can ask them to leave at the end of the booking or, if they are breaking your rules/not paying etc, earlier as long you give them reasonable notice, which is usually taken to mean a payment period, e,g. if they pay weekly, you can give them a week's notice, if they pay monthly, you can give them a month's notice.

 

Unlike with tenants, you do not need to take legal action nor obtain any kind of court order to evict them. You can even change the locks if you need to. If you change the locks, you must give them the opportunity to collect their stuff, but you don't have to keep it indefinitely. You just have to give notice and evict 'peaceably'. 

 

More information on that here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/housing/renting-a-home/subletting-and-lodging/lodging-index/what-r...

 

Of course, you can have a rental agreement (this is not the same as a lease) if you want to, but you don't have to. The guest effectively enters a contractual agreement when they book on Airbnb and this includes agreeing to your house rules, cancellation policy etc. I have not found a separate contract to be necessary with long term guests, but of course there is no harm in doing one if it gives you peace of mind.

 

I originally started this thread four years ago. After that, I switched all three of my rooms to long term, so have hosted many, many long term guests since then. I've never had a guest not pay nor overstay or refuse to leave. There has only been one guest who was asked to leave early. I simply called Airbnb, explained the situation, they checked the message thread to verify what I was saying and then called the guest and told her to leave. I offered to refund the remainder of her stay, even though CS told me I didn't have to. She was gone the next day.

 

I'm not saying things can't go wrong, but I can say with 100% confidence that, in my situation and my location, long term guests absolutely do not have tenants' rights. The law might be quite different in other countries.

@Huma0

Hosting long-term guests! Welcome to the club~!!!

 

I agree that if possible @Robert-And-Nancy0's way is probably a good start. You could try to obtain information about when certain internships start/end, or semesters at nearby schools start/end and then set your min requirements so that you are open to accept ONLY those types of guests. One thing to remember is...... this will mean that the # of inquiries will drop to next to nothing since you are targeting a very small pool of potential guests. 

 

For example for the upcoming summer semester, I got a 2 inquiries (in Feb and Apr) then an IB  at the start of May which was cancelled by the guest 1 week later (change of mind- she wanted to stay in the dormitory with other classmates). Luckily the room got booked 5 days ago. On average, for each semester I get 1~3 inquiries before a reservation is made. In case of my current guest, she was my 1st inquiry for the 2018 spring semester which immediately led to a confirmed reservation in July 2017 (7 months in advance!) 

 

What Henry and I did when we decided to focus on long-term guests was to look up all the academic calendars of the schools near us since we decided to target exchange students. Based on the orientation date for exchange students we set min stay rules according to the school calendar. 

 

As an example, here are the requirements I've set for this year 🙂 

 

During February 15, 2018 – June 29, 2018, guests stay for minimum 110 nights.

During June 30, 2018 – August 1, 2018, guests stay for minimum 28 nights.

During August 24, 2018 – December 30, 2018, guests stay for minimum 110 nights.

 

Also, I have a higher per night rate and have higher weekly/monthly discounts to offset the prices so that my listing is more attractive to long-term stays and I do not bother with a cleaning fee since most of my guests stay at least 1 month. 
 
This is all I can think of now...... I'm not sure how helpful my experience/ideas will be for you but I will write again if anything comes to mind and please keep us posted on how things proceed~! Good luck~
 

@Jessica-and-Henry0

 

Thank you for your advice. The Autumn term or Semester here usually starts in September/October, so that's handy as the room will be available from September onwards. 

 

I'll certainly look into your suggestions. I have kept the nightly price lower than my other rooms and I also offer the monthly discount. I could increase the latter though if that helps. 

 

I am sure you are right about the number of enquries decreasing too. I did have a few of these for other rooms early on when I still had lots of availability, but since those rooms are always booked up in advance by short term guests, I have no idea what the interest would have been from long term ones had they been available. I do remember though getting three almost identical enquiries for a room for the same few months starting in February. Two of these were from The Netherlands, where apparently it's normal for students to complete their degrees by spending the last two semesters doing an internship. So, maybe approaching Dutch universities might be a good idea...

Pete28
Level 10
Seattle, WA

Atleast in the US craigslist still owns the longer term business - kind of a different market I think from Airbnb.

Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Pete28

 

Thanks for the tip. I'll look into that.

@Pete From the nurses, doctors and radiology techs that we have had long term, they have told us that they are being scammed on Craigslist. We have used Craigslist to advertise but refer to our Airbnb site in the ad for them to book.  

 

@Jessica & Henry We prefer medical staff doing a temp. assignment in a hospital over students. Although we have had grad students doing internships, we find they don't want to pay the fees so try to ask us to rent out of Airbnb site which we do not want to do. I also find they are not as great of a guest as the medical staff. Nothing bad, but just not as clean.  

 

Also, with medical staff, all of the ones we have had so far, have residences. So there has not been an issue with them not wanting to leave. Sometimes they are asked to extend their contract longer at the hospital but they all have a permanent residence to return to. This summer our "regular" June-Aug guest had surgery and is not coming. I put our listing  back on Airbnb and started to fill with a week here and there. Then the beginning of May we had over 15 requests for full summer rentals (some private referrals). People so desperate they were willing to pay almost anything.  I am sure it can depend on the demand for this type of rental.

 

 

@Huma0

@Robert And Nancy

I agree about situation depending on the demand. I stick to hosting "international" students who are in Korea for a 1-semester exchange program. I target a very specific type of guest because it's easier and the schedules line up well. The pattern I have is a long term guest (4 months each) for the spring and fall semester and one for the summer semester (1 month). If I were able to get some intern or on assignment for a similar period then that is fine but if I had a 4 month reservation from June~Sept that would mean I would mean the pool of exchange students are no longer potential guests. So I guess when you want to target multiple long-term stays, how you decide to break up the year is also pretty important. Henry and I prefer to have the house to ourselves during Christmas + New Years since we have lots of friends and family visit and Henry especially needs a break from hosting once in a while so we are comfortable with an 80% occupation rate with vacancies in the winter. 

 

And like @Kelly mentions, I agree that the listing description should be tweaked a bit since people looking for a place to stay for 2~3 months will have different priorities than a tourist who is staying for a couple nights. As you can see in my pics, my guest room does have a bit of a "dorm room" feel 🙂 and I make sure there is plenty of available space for the guest to personalize the space and store their own knick knacks. 

 

In terms of pricing, the way  I went about it was..... I researched what it costs to stay in a dorm, at goshiwons (micro-rooms), and the monthly rent for a small private studio to decide how much I wanted to make per month. I also have a higher nightly rate for July~Aug with th same monthly discount because people take more showers and the AC is on non-stop so you may want to also consider fluctuations in your utilities when determining prices.