Day 14: A host who enriches passion by hosting an Experience.

[Nutth]

Hello everyone, my name is Nutth I am a fulltime host. I moved from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and renovated my family’s house to a homestay.  It has been nearly 2 years since I joined Airbnb. My listings are private rooms so I meet my guests in person including spending time with them in the kitchen or at restaurants nearby. After I finish checking in my guests, I always have some spare time left so I decided to join Airbnb Experiences.

The differences between hosting guests in your home and Airbnb Experiences is that to be an Airbnb Experiences host you have to submit an idea and the Airbnb team will look into it and approve your photos and the activity you would like to lead. I joined the first group of Airbnb Experiences hosts when they just started in my city. It took about 3 weeks before I got an email saying my experiences will be live! (Nowadays it only takes 2 days to get verified )

I host 2 Airbnb experiences. Firstly, "Follow a Monk's Trail to the Sunrise" which is a hike in my backyard that covers a mountain. Secondly, "Snap Chiang Mai with a Vintage camera" an introduction to analogue photography. The idea comes from my previous guest who enjoyed taking pictures in my garden. I host this experience at a time when my Airbnb guests go to explore the city. I then turn my garden into a studio and at the same time also introduce the participants of my experience to the neighbourhood which has the reputation as an artist area. Besides all the experiences that I host, I also enjoy spending some spare time doing some sports with my partner. 

Hosting Experiences does not just offer me extra money but it's a great opportunity as nightly rates in South East Asia are very low compared to the USA. Booking a room in my home and hosting experiences is quite similar but with experiences, I get to charge per person and not per night. It feels like I get more reservations without having to build a new room.

I get to learn a lot of things that help me improve my hosting skills because of the short timespan of each experience (only 2-3 hr.) I learned how to read the mood of people, and taught them how to be open-minded to each other in a limited amount of time. Luckily, most Airbnb experiences guests are friendly. After 5 months of doing this, I have found people who appreciate what I’m doing in daily life. The replies that I receive also ignite my positive hosting perspective again.

Just look around your home or your own daily activities and maybe you'll find inspiration into creating your own idea for an Airbnb experience :-)

Me and my co host with Airbnb experiences guests

[Rachael]

@Nutth

Wonderful article! I loved hearing how you developed your experiences- and what a fabulous idea of using a vintage camera and analogue photography!

Great thinking and I wish you every success.

Best to you and your partner :-))

Rachael

[Nutth]

@Rachael Thank you very much, the Snap Chiang Mai experience also let me meet some incredible guests and a professional photographer who only use a digital before :)

[Clara]

 @Nutth Terrific post Nutth and a treat that you share all about the development of your experiences. And so nice how you paint a very encouraging picture for other hosts to also work to discover and make their own experiences with Airbnb. Thanks for sharing and many blessings, Clara

[Nutth]

@Clara So glad to know the words can inspire you. Just looks to your daily activities it may be someone interesting too.

[Ria]

@Nutth That’s such an interesting story of how you started up your experiences on Air.  I’ve thought a couple of times about doing one but never completed the online paperwork ;) 

[Nutth]

@Ria I totally understand you but let me more inspiring you. After you summit a idea they will be a stuff contact and help you rewritten. Try it and you may found it more easily than you think.

[Cathie]

So pleased @Nutth that the hosting and the “experiences” are positively working in your favour. May I just say that Chiang Mai is one of my favourite cities. 

[Nutth]

@Cathie Thank you very much. It was so glad to know this small province is in your favorite list.

[J Renato]

@Nutth

Thanks for sharing you story.  I loved reading your post! 

I still have no idea to create an experience! However, I will think about it!

[Nutth]

@J Renato Sure ... Sometimes Idea come with a wind!

[Sarah]

@Nutth   Lovely post. I love it when people think outside the box. In the small tourist beach town I live, there are about 350 restaurants. People come here, fall in love with the place, wonder how they can make it work to move here and earn a living and 9 times out of 10 they decide to open a restaurant, a surf shop or a golf cart rental. Many of them fail after not too long. 

I looked around and saw that no one here was providing upholstery services and with all the constant new homes going up or being remodelled, hundreds of people need this. I started my business, which just consists of me doing the work, no employees, and I'm swamped with work all the time. I've been doing this for 15 years and am still the only one in this town with this business.

And there are plenty of other things this town could use, but most people just don't seem to be able to look around and come up with anything original.

Your experiences sound awesome.

[Nutth]

@Sarah wow you are a real “Businesswoman” who saw something other not! 

[Sarah]

@Nutth  Actually, I'm not a good businesswoman at all, I never charge enough for my services, I always undervalue myself. Probably because I've always been on a low-income scale and charging more seems like too much :-) But I did have sewing skills and had been sewing all my life and had done some upholstery work before, so when I saw a nice empty shop space for reasonable rent, I opened on a wing and a prayer. I used regular domestic sewing machines for years, then finally bought some industrial machines and now I can't believe I actually did all that work on home-style machines, the industrials are so much faster. I gave up the shop space 3 years ago and built a little shop on my property- I never got much walk-in business- it was mostly referrals and now my client base is big enough that I don't need to have a visible location, they come to me or I go to them.

[Nutth]

@Sarah Wow ... it already over a job is become a joy :-)