Lower Booking Requests For Second Year

[Daniele331]

Hi everyone,

I have my listing since last year.

Last year, in this period I received a almost an over booking for the many requests I had, but this year I have much lower.

I have many reviews and a very positive score!

do you have any suggestion? It seems that the platform promotes the new ones and not the existing ones after the first year?

[Matthew285]

@Daniele331 the problem usually isn't so much the promotion of new listings (that is always going on).

The bigger problem that causes slower business for hosts is the number of listings in a city growing faster than the number of guests traveling to that city.

I don't know how many listings there were in your city last year, but currently there are over 20,000 Airbnb listings in Barcelona. That is a lot of rooms to fill, and there might not be enough new Airbnb travelers to go around.

In our city (San Francisco) like many cities, there has been an ongoing effort to regulate Airbnb listings. (This being Airbnb's home city.) Eventually, the city did manage to gain enough leverage, and it caused half the Airbnb listings to be eliminated. This, of course, was very bad for the hosts who lost the ability to host.

The silver lining is the remaining hosts have a much easier time filling their rooms.

If Barcelona is experiencing an explosion in Airbnb listings, but the number of guests who use Airbnb does not grow by the same amount, hosts will see lower business. It is the nature of competition.

And competition can be brutal.

If you have a lot of good reviews from happy guests, you have an advantage that new listings cannot match once their month of extra promotion is over. Keep your price competitive, offer something special, and keep being a great host. That is a sensible answer to competition.

But it will be very tough until the number of travelers grows to match the number of listings. (Or enough hosts remove their listings due to insufficient business.) Eventually a balance will be achieved, one way or another.

[Maurice77]

I have noticed that this year in particular in our area, which is quite rural that many tourists are looking for the cheaper units that offer one night stays rather than the ones that are looking for bookings for two or more nights.  Also, the newer hosts seem to want to offer cheaper accommodations...for example....offering a house that can accommodate 8 to 10 people for less than $150/night.  In addition, the number of Airbnbs are constantly rising and unless the number of users rise to fill all of these places, there will always be empty rooms.  It is what it is.

[Letti0]

@Maurice77   It's easier to see the numbers on HA/VRBO. When I started in March there were less the 2400 homes. Now there are over 2900. On both AirBnb and HA/VRBO there are homes that sleep 10-12 or more listed for $79-$136 with no extra guest fee's I am competing with I am $179 weekdays and $229 weekends with $20 extra guest fee over 8. There calendars are booked solid, while my stays open until last minute or 3-4 weeks out as I'm all that's left.  I have about a 60-75% occupancy rate per month. It's growing as the reviews come in. People do not read the listings, so they immediately compare my price to the others, usually ruling me out ASAP. Big mistake! I have cable, high end linens and towels, my kitchen is gourment stocked, I don;t supply 6-8 standard kid size bunk beds, my amenities are great and a ton of other differences that set us apart from them. You get what you pay for. You'll pay a lot more to stay with me, but you get your moneys worth.

The current guests that check in today for 4 days booked well over a month out. They read my listing and opted to pay more. Also have a 9 day booking that booked well in advance for the end of the month that read my listing. How do I know they read my listing? I know because they booked in advance when cheap places were still open and chose me over them without the unending questions from people that didn't read anything. I am not about to join the others in a race to the bottom. I made over $6,000 for July so far while the cheap places were probably lucky to bring in $3,000.