Very slow bookings

[Kamar0]

Last year around this time, I'd be booked out and receiving so many inquiries. I'm getting my property viewed and faved alot but not many booking for this summer period. I've been a super host from the beginning, instant booking turn on, along with great reviews.

Let me know what you think I should improve on. Thanks

[Lilian20]

Hello @Kamar0 i guess there could be some other change since last year, maybe

 - a lot new airbnb places in your area 

 - a change in guests habits 

 - a combination of the above

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Kamar0

the same thing is everywhere, number of hosts is going up and prices are going down...

[Jann3]

... @Branka-and-Silvia0 One thing all us hosts need to realize is that WE cause prices to go down. We control that aspect alone. AirBnB tries to take the pricing away from us with their "Special Pricing" or whatever...but notice there's no "surge pricing" to counteract that when there are special functions, seasonal, etc?

Take pricing back and we can all make more.

[Kamar0]

It's so sad. I've taken a break for few months and i'm now back. Things still haven't changed.

[Joanna85]

I have noticed a dramatic change in type of guest since I started hosting in March.  I don't think it's you at all.  As other hosts have said, more airbnb spaces are popping up, creating a drive down in price as well as a rise in increase of the guests' expectations for little money.  This will swing back to normal because hosting is not for everyone and there will evenutally be a leveling off.

[Jann3]

I totally agree with @Joanna85! Many people in our area are "trying" hosting...but I've talked to dozens in the last week *alone* that immediately stopped hosting. Conversations with them kinda go like this:

<BEGIN of snippet of many conversations people have had with me>

I guess there was a *reason* I didn't want a roommate when I rented my 2BR apartment (or house). When I rented it originally rents were cheaper so I could afford a 2BR over a 1BR. Now my rent has gone up and I thought I'd try AirBnB to help w/the money. 

WOW! Now I know why I didn't want a roommate! Some people are nice, but most of them recently really should be booking Hampton Inn or Motel 6! They want privacy, they want their own bathroom, they want no noise, they want this, they want that. THEN they leave a bad review cos they got exactly what I advertised-but not what they WANTED!

It may be better for me to find a 1BR for myself that I can more easily afford. AirBnB sounded great but it's too much work and/or it's too many people wanting things I never offered in my listing.

<END of snippet of many conversations people have had with me>

How's that for what many of us hosts are hearing from newbie hosts that didn't know what they are getting in to?

Things will flatten back out once people realize hosting really is a business. You need to spend time and effort in your hosting. You need to also realize it's not a money tree.

[Huma0]

@Jann3, I agree. Most of my friends would never try hosting in their homes and rightly so, because they would not be able to put up with it. You are also right in that so many of them think you must be making a fortune by doing it. I get comments about that all the time. Then they are astonished by the low prices I charge because I guess they are thinking it's not going to be that much cheaper than a London hotel. What they don't realise is that the guests pay much more with fees etc. so there is a limit to how much you can hike up your prices before a hotel starts to look like a more attractive prospect!

There is a financial benefit if you can get a steady stream of bookings and don't drop your prices to silly levels. I am better off financially for sure. However, it is hugely time consuming and takes a lot of patience too. I am a journalist, which is not a well paid profession, so perhaps I don't 'price' my time as highly as others might. For me, it is still worth it right now to have that extra income.

Also, I had years of renting to lodgers beforehand, so I was prepared in many ways. The friends who would not be able to handle it have also told me in the past that they didn't know how I had the patience to share my home with lodgers.

I don't have a choice. My job does not pay enough for me to afford to live in my lovely home, but I love my job, so I don't want to give it up. I do not want to give up my lovely home either, which means much more to me than bricks and mortar. The answer was either lodgers or Airbnb. So far, I have found that a combination of the two works best for me and I am not complaining. It's hard work, but then that's life, and I get to live somewhere lovely in London, which would be beyond my wildest dreams were I not doing this.

[Kimberly102]

Same thing in my area.  I live in a high demand tourist town and have hosted for 3 years.  My prices are very cheap and stayed that way as there is far more comptition. I am booked but only due to I have not raised my prices in 3 years.  If I cant raise my prices this year I will quit.  Not worth it.  Too many guest want something for nothing and complain about anything and everything.  Only people making money is Airbnb.

[Ann306]

I agree. I checked many in my area and so many more. Our prices are getting ridiculously low. Guests paying change but still want 5 star always. I checked booking.com for area. Prices much higher and they do well from calendar bookings. I might just rent rooms choosing very carefully

[Huma0]

@Kamar0 I'm sure the explanations by other hosts make sense re the market being flooded etc.

I was wondering though if seasonal trends have shifted also. I haven't been hosting for a full year yet, so I can't compare bookings for any given month to the year before, but I have been surprised sometimes by which months are busy. For example, I thought January would be dead, and yet I had plenty of bookings. I thought April would be busy with the Easter holidays, but it was one of the slowest months. Factors like the 'Brexit Pound' had no impact on my bookings at all as far as I could see.

I am also finding that while some guests still book very far in advance, I am getting many more last minute bookings at this time of year than I would at others.

I'm no expert on tourism trends. Would be great to hear from someone who knows more about it.

[Florencia0]

Yes, my bookings have been very slow too and as most of you I believe is due to the high increase of supply.

The thing is that there is no single information in Airbnb of how many listings are in your area, how many of them are active, what is the average occupancy they have and if they are underprice to achieve that occupancy rate. You can only see the first 300 of maybe more than 10K in your area. So would you invest in a well know market with only 300 listings? You can bet on that. But would you invest in a market with 20K of other listings as yours where at least half of them are very underpriced to get a good occupation rate? Well, let's take some time to decide. Am I wrong?

Therefore for the newbie deciding to invest into setting up an Airbnb listing is like throwing a coin to the roof. Some of them might have friends that already host in Airbnb and can warm them of the tiny income they are making for the ultra time-consuming job they are into. But for the ones that don't have anyone to ask for, the media is their best resource and you might want to look of that because, for them, hosts that listed on Airbnb are nothing less that huge money makers, which you know is very far from the truth. Added to this, new hosts get an extra push to get their first bookings for at least the first 2 years so you can get hooked with the system but after that time you are swimming in the same pool. 

I believe this is part of the strategy of the site which is reasonable to think that the main goal is to delivered ultra high-quality accommodations at the price of a cheap hostel, so they can aggressively compete with the hotel sector. Kind of the same Uber does.

In the long run, I believe that this strategy is totally impossible to follow. Those extra bucks you charge for your place are mainly to maintain it as nice as your guests want o you can meet their high expectations. So no matter how much psicology the site put into helping improve our service (like for eg Superhost), if there is money in the host pocket, then the quality of the accomodation will be affected, the guests won't be satisfied and eventually Airbnb will be seen as the place to get "cheap" quality accomodations for highly affordable prices. 

[Huma0]

@Florencia0 do new listings get a push for at least two years? My understanding was that it was only for the first month.

[Florencia0]

@Huma0 The precedence in the ranking isn't a 1 or 0. It is a curve from where you get boosted the first month and it will slowly be decreasing in time. 1 year, 2 years, 6 months .. it really doesn't matter how much it is and it will also depend on how saturated is the market you are listing on. The thing is that new hosts need to believe that this is a good business for them and the proof is that most complain associated to lack of bookings (in this community or external forums) aren't coming from new hosts but for the ones that have been listed for quite a while

I'm also seeing a change in the search algorithm which now seems to favor underpriced listings. Just tested a few random searches and the first listings that come up where the ones that offered the lower prices. I was surprised to see that even 4 or less starts listings are promoted first just because they have a better price to offer which proves my point that in the equation of quality of service vs price, the company now tends to favor more the second one.

[Huma0]

@Florencia0 Ah I see. I thought after the first month, new hosts were just chucked in to battle it out with the rest!

If what you have said is correct, then I haven't seen it reflected in my listings, which I put up 11 months,10 months and 8 months ago respectively. I don't see them appearing higher in the searches than listings that have been on for years.

For example, I have a room I put on Airbnb last August. For the first month, I had loads of enquiries. I blocked the dates after that for nearly a year as I had a long-term housemate and using Airbnb was just a stop-gap until she moved in. After she left, I unblocked the dates and... nothing. Hardly any views at all, even though I put it on cheaper than my other rooms despite it being the largest one.

The only way I started to get bookings again for this room was to offer it to guests enquiring about one of my other rooms. The number of views - and therefore bookings - seems to correlate much more closely to how many bookings/reviews I've got for each room than anything else, including price.

I haven't seen any benefit from the 'newness' of my listings except for in the firsst month.