I've been an Airbnb host since 2013 in a market where nobody ever heard of Airbnb (at that time), I was the one doing "crazy" things like the following:
- leaving a welcome basket with local cheese, wine, baked sweets.
- my place is high up on a hill, the road is steep and unpaved. I always recommend people to hire a 4wd, but when they don't, I'm always available to pick them up from the main road. This is not funny, especially when guests arrive in the middle of the night on a terrible snow storm. We've been often called "the heroes of the trip" by guests in need.
- we always offer to light up the fire in the fireplace. We offer firewood at no extra charge.
- the kitchen is always stocked with cooking oil, spices, teas, coffee, sugar, etc.
- guests will always find dishwasher tabs and laundry powder in the house.
- as soon as I receive a booking, a send out a file with useful informations about the place, the surroundings and how to get here.
- for Christmas I always decorate a tree and the chalet, this way guests can trully experience a magic Christmas.
- I tried to offer flexible checkin/checkout, but it didn't work well at all. My place is way too big and it takes time to prepare it for the next group. The demand is also huge lately, so I cannot afford to block a day after each checkout, we're struggling to get the house ready in 4 hours. The biggest struggle is to get people to respect the checkout time.
All in all, Airbnb works great for me and its guests are my favorite by far. It seems that Airbnb makes it easier for the guests to appreciate what they're getting. 30% of my bookings come from Airbnb, but this percent kept going up every year. I'm looking forward to the day when it will get close to 100:)
Ema