No bookings at all! Please help :)

[Krista76]

Hi all!

I'm a fairly new host. Created my listing in the winter and ran it for a couple of months. I just relisted it last week and have been trying a few techniques to get bookings but wondering if I'm missing something on my listing because I haven't gotten a single one. Here is my listing:

https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/12127106?s=51

Could anyone offer me some advice? Would be greatly appreciated!!

Thank so much!

[Paul1255]

@Krista76 your listing looks really lovely! Your pictures are well staged and gives a great impression of your space and as a potential guest I can see myself eating at your dining table, sleeping in the beds and so on 🙂

(unrelated, but you have an image of the front of your building with a very visible door number, I would perhaps remove that for safety/security reasons)

The body of your listing text sounds inviting and you give ideas about what guests could do in your area.

You have 6 strong reviews which is great and your price looks good too, so I can’t spot anything you might be missing.

Could it be the time of year that means bookings might be slow in your area? 

If you wanted to appear in more searches you could always drop your minimum night stay from 2 nights to 1 if it would still be worth it for you?

Best wishes for now.

paul 🙂 

[Krista76]

Thank you so very much @Paul1255! This is really excellent, thoughtful feedback! I hadn't thought of the issue with posting an exterior photo showing the house number. Great note! 

I think I will try your suggestion of reducing my minimum stay to 1 night for a while until I can generate some more bookings. I think you're absolutely right in saying it is mostly due to the time of year. It's a bad time to start out with an empty calendar so some 1 night bookings might help to get me on my way!

Thank you again for taking the time to have a look and provide such helpful feedback!

Cheers,

Krista

[Paul1255]

You’re welcome @Krista76 !

Some one night stays may help- you have a cleaning fee there so that will up the price of your one nighters if do get any in.

Also once you start to get some bookings in you’ll start to appear higher in the rankings when guests search your area- listings where a guest has made a recent and successful booking may be looked at more favourably by the Airbnb algorithm.

Also I’ve just remembered but couldn’t check to see if you are doing this or not as I’m on the mobile- updating your calendar daily may also make your listing appear more active, and therefore a safer bet for a booking and therefore may appear higher in rankings- so a quick daily update to a price or opening a day and closing it back may help too 🙂 

[Lisa723]

I agree that it's probably the time of year; with the holidays coming up most people have already made their plans through the new year. I also agree that lowering your minimum stay (temporarily) would be a likely way to get last-minute bookings.

[Pete28]

Try reading this - if your price is high compared to other with cleaning fee then you will get no bookings 😞

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Pricing-on-Map-View-Recent-change/m-p/868023#M213669

[Kostya0]

Same problem here, except in my case, I've started hosting a year ago, when I was away on vacations, then had a break for a year, and now back to hosting. Unfortunately, now that the time has past, Airbnb removed "new listing" status for me, so I don't have that bump in a rankings and without it, I can't kickstart my listing again: no views and no bookings, no reviews as a result. And without reviews, no appearance in search. Setting low price, well below the average for my city does not helps, even though on long term market I would easily rent it out for 2-3x of what I am asking for.

Here is the listing: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/21042863

My last resort would be to hire the photographer from airbnb (even though I already have photos from 3rd party photographer), but is there anything else I can do to get it going? 

* the avg nighly price for my city for this type of property is 54 USD, my nightly price is set to 12,20 USD

[Paul1255]

Hey @Kostya0 your space looks nice and your photos aren’t bad at all- there are some lovely highlights on particular touches which is great!

If I was being really detailed I might suggest you make the bed look more inviting- maybe adding more pillows, some throws and so on so guests can more imagine themselves in the space.

In some of the pics I can see a vacuum cleaner and foldable bike, maybe you could move those to make the space appear more guest friendly?

I wouldn’t say hiring and Airbnb photographer would be much help- you won’t have any input into what photos they take, they’ll be uploaded for you and all you’ll be able to do is re-arrange them or delete them as you see fit.

It could be hit and miss with the photographer Airbnb send to you- so if you did want to invest any more money I’d suggest finessing your space and then photographing yourself.

If you have friends on Airbnb you could ask them to send an enquiry to you to answer, get them to add your listing to their wish lists- traffic to your listing and views will help ranking.

Making daily updates to your calendar and listing will help too.

You could drop from a 3 night minimum to 1 night if that works for you to appear in more searches in the short term?

I don’t know about pricing in your area, but sometimes dropping your price very low to encourage bookings can have the opposite effect and make potential guests think there may be something wrong with your listing or it may be “too good to be true” so bear this in mind too 🙂 

[Kostya0]

Wow, Paul! Thank you for a thoughtfull review! It never crossed my mind that vacuum cleaner and bike might shy away people. Few other things noted as well (e.g. decreased the minimum stay length to 2 nights).

Yeah, I was hesitant to put a night price too low, but Airbnb kept recommending me to do that

[Paul1255]

You’re welcome @Kostya0

I don’t follow Airbnb price tips or recommendations as this usually means a race to the bottom where no one ends up winning.

Do some searches around your area and listing, check other listings calendars to see if they’re getting booked, how much they are booked and how far out they are booked to give you an idea of what you should be charging, and then adapt this to your listing- taking into consideration your location and amenities and so on 🙂 

[Kostya0]

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@Paul1255 wrote:

You’re welcome @Kostya0

I don’t follow Airbnb price tips or recommendations as this usually means a race to the bottom where no one ends up winning.

Do some searches around your area and listing, check other listings calendars to see if they’re getting booked, how much they are booked and how far out they are booked to give you an idea of what you should be charging, and then adapt this to your listing- taking into consideration your location and amenities and so on 🙂 

---

That is actually the way I started after the break, but then two weeks of "silence" and this tips from Airbnb convinced me to decrease the prices. I see that listings around my location are having some attention and are getting booked, but in their case they have a lot of reviews, whereas I only have 1 review and I missed that "honeymoon" period with Airbnb completely. 

[Krista76]

Thanks for your perspective @Kostya0 ! Very helpful as I think we both are suffering from a similar issue where our listings look nice and are priced fairly but after being off the market for a while, we have fallen to the bottom of the list on the Airbnb algorithm.

I'm not sure how to remedy this other than to wait it out until we've gathered a few bookings and fresh reviews. Perhaps it might be even worthwhile creating a brand new booking and canceling the old one to obtain "new listing" status?? I don't think I will go this route as I already have 6 reviews which I don't want to lose. 

Best of luck! Your place looks lovely!

Cheers,

Krista

[Elena87]

@Kostya0

As a SpB host, it's a bit of a tough time in the low season, even in the city centre.

Hotel prices are pretty much rock bottom now.

Guests tend to only look at suburb listings during the high season or unless there is some local reason for going there, as there is much good affordable availability in the city centre.

Lots of places newly listed for the World Cup and the market seems saturated now to me, look around Ladozhskaya station; the newly build blocks have in the last two years for example produced 66 new listings from zero. Airbnb still want more listings as well. A lot of these Ladozhskaya places have pretty much empty calenders.

I know a couple of people who have thrown in the towel recently who removed their units and returned to long term renting which although unexciting is more predictable and reliable. Too many foxes - not enough rabbits now.

Probably you should notch a booking or two for the January holidays, so hold you nerve with the prices.

Price tips are unreliable - don't bother with them. Airbnb market trends tell me as a host that viewings are down by x - available listings are up by y compared to last year; drop your price  - but if you search as a guest they will tell you that bookings are up by z ; this can't hold true, it's manipulation.

Certainly you can freshen up your photographs - get shot of the clutter, plump up the cushions and dress your kitchen table like it's at Zara home instead of ros-al's counter.

[Maina2]

Hi Krista, I have almost the same problem as you. My house is in Kathmandu, Nepal. I listed my home in Airbnb last year August and I got only 4 bookings in a year 🙂 I keep wandering about why I am not having bookings. For location we are not bad, just around 7 kilometers from city. My house is a new house and have the facilities of comfortable bed, quiet clean rooms and hot shower and spacious balcony with good view. I also have made my price level to the minimum price that Airbnb Tips keep suggesting :). I got 4 reviews from my 4 bookings and they are perfect ones but still no bookings 🙂 My listing is https://www.airbnb.com/manage-your-space/20631790/details

[Paul1255]

Hi @Maina2 there are lots of things you could be doing to increase your activity on your listings.

I would say the first thing you should do is to update your calendars- looking across your 3 listings they haven't had an update in 2, 5 and 10 months.

If you open and close a date on each of your listings this will show Airbnb that you're an active host of an active listing. Try and do this every day if you can! It may help you appear higher in rankings when guests search in your area.

You also could fill-out your listing text in more detail- you offer lots of things above the norm on Airbnb- airport pick up, hikes, cooking and eating with you etc- make more of this in your text so guests get a great feel of why they should book with you and why you are the best option! These updates may also make your listing appear more active, and therefore a safer bet when guests look for somewhere to stay.

If you know someone with an Airbnb account ask them to send an enquiry message to your listings, this will increase activity to your listing too.

Best wishes

Paul 🙂