What percentage of your month is booked?

[Mike77]

I was reading another message and the person wrote that there are many days in her month that are NOT booked.  

I was then wondering what is the normal amount of days for most hosts to have bookings?  

How many days a month do you have booked?  50%, 90%  100% ???  My guess is that some places are booked 100% of the days for a month, while other places get much less.  

I wonder how many places on AirBnb are getting much less than 100% bookings.

Is it a bell curve?  Or is it weighted to the US or no?

I think it would be interesting to see the stats on the overall bookings that a host has.  I guess it is possible to go to a host web page and click on the calendar to see how many days are booked, or at least blocked.  That does not mean they are booked though.

Is it that unusual to have a month totally booked?  July for me is totally booked, except for the days Janet and I have blocked out for our own use of the treehouse.  🙂 

Mike

[Michele39]

It's around 60% for me depending on the season. Right now no one wants to be in the infernal heat of New Orleans, so my place there is only at 40% for July. My place in Massachusetts, however, is at 75%. And during Mardi Gras season, the New Orleans place is at 90%.

Even with a great listing during a normal season, I think such a percentage would have a lot to do with whether a host accepts short bookings (1-2 nights) and whether the host blocks a day or two in between bookings. I have a 3-night minimum and I block a day between bookings, so even in a "full" month there are gaps of 1-3 days that just happen to fall between bookings. Thus the 60%.

[Mike77]

Do you keep the days between books so that you don't get bured out with too many bookings?  I am starting to feel that way with so many people wanting to stay in the treehouse.  I have to remember it is only for the summer months.  🙂 

Mike

[Robin4]

@Mike77

I don't at this stage of the piece Mike, but I am as busy as I want to be. I seem to be averaging around 8-10 bookings a month and that allows me to catch my breath and make sure I don't have to cut to many corners for the next guest.

What I do find interesting Mike is the ratio of bookings per views. It does seem to be very low and some months it is down under 2% but all the guests I get turn out to be wonderful people!

I am not in a major tourist area and this also may have something to do with it. I would be interested to know what others rates are!

Cheers.....Rob

[Susan1028]

I also have a low ratio of looks to books...and 99.9% fabulous guests, at 60-90% capacity, so I've actually been quite pleased, until the most recent policy changes, resulting in my listing being buried by the corporate listers.  I've had 3 repeat guests message me directly asking for dates saying they can't find me anymore : (

[Kate476]

What happened with policy changes and corporate listers?  I haven’t seen this yet. 

[Victoria57]

@Mike77, I agree that it would be useful on a listing to see something like "Hurry, only 3 days are still available this month". But of course, as you've said, it doesn't currently differentiate between booked days and blocked days but it would still  work and might trigger a reaction from potential guests.

We block off a lot of dates because this year in addition to AirBnB we also use another platform (so have instant bookings turned off otherwise it would be impossible to manage). The combination of the 2 platforms has meant that our bookings this year are June- September, 2 rooms, 100% booked - almost all 1-nighters so a lot of work on changeovers each day. April and May were about 50%. In our village in Scotland these figures are about normal. We close at the end of September and go on holiday throughout October 🙂

[Mike77]

Our treehouse is not set up for Winter, plus we sometimes get a lot of snow, so it would be a little slippery / icy on the treehouse walkways.  So that will be my "vacation time" from visitors.  🙂 

[David-And-Tona0]

Hi all, pretty new to the community. But I wanted to reply to the person who has their instant book button off. Did you know that you can sync your calander on other platforms and on Airbnb so that the instant booking are bloomed as we're and vise versa? 

[ThuHien1]

Hi David and Tona, I also have my house lists on Airbnb. Can you please let me know how can I sync my calendar on other platforms and on Airbnb? Thank you very much. Helen 

[Casa-Lodging0]

Tokeet is a great channel manager for additional platforms or just for a standalone for Airbnb.

[Ira4]

I have two listings. 

The first one (Diamond Penthouse) within its first week online got fully booked for almost three months. As I was new host, used the Smart Pricing and it made my prices very low. So, many people decided to book it. 

I then asked a friend of mine who is experienced in Airbnb for 5 years and he also gives seminars on the subject. He told me that the best way to know that I have the proper price for my listing is, when a month starts, to have 50% of the current month booked, 30% of the second month booked and 10% of the third month booked. If I have more, my prices are too low. If I have less, my prices are too high. 

[Taryn4]

Ira! Great tip on the 50%-30%-10% booking/pricing metric. 

We are at about 70% for August(pricing was way too low), 10% for Sept.(upped pricing, trying to find sweet spot) and 45% for Oct. (this is a festival month and feel pretty good about the pricing). 

We'd prefer longer listings but have found this to be a bit tricky (setting weekday prices low to encourage longer bookings has actually resulted in people shifting stays to start on Wed/Thursday and then check out on Saturday or Check in on Saturday check out on Monday.) And we don't want to discourage just the weekend warriors. Any thoughts? 

[Ira4]

@Taryn4 I am glad that could be helpful to you. 

As you said, of course, the price depends on special seasons or event too. But you can keep the same percentages by lowering and raising the prices accordingly. 

I usually do the following now: I raise the prices of the third month quite much and then if there are no booking, as the dates come closer, I might lower them. That seems strange because it is the opposite to what someone would expect (f.e. flights gets more expensive when you approach the date), but I think that's the best way for me. 

[Taryn4]

@Ira4 Thanks again for the tips! We're pretty booked for the next 5 months (Sept being the exception) so we'll try adjust prices and see what works. 

I have a feeling that we're entering the "No longer boosted by AirBnB" newbie blues. There are lots of great properties that have tons of reviews that deserve to be above ours though so we'll work through it. 

Quick questions to you all: We just added a 4th bedroom (more like cleaned out our junk) and added it to our listing. Now when we do a search for 3 bedroom listings ours disappears. Does AirBnB search not operate like 3+ bedrooms but only searches for the precise number you're looking for? 

Thank you! 

Taryn