warning about taking time off from hosting

[Kurt-and-Anna0]

A quick warning to hosts looking to take some time off from hosting: your listing won't be found in search results when you come back online.  We just had a baby - and decided to take 3 months off from hosting.  I put my listing as active again 2 weeks ago, lowered our price to lower than price recommendations, and we still don't show up in general searches.  Our listing is in the database - but clearly the search algorithm is weighted towards recent activity, rather than rating, tenure, etc.  I called customer support and they offered no better advice.  We're now on page 5, previously we were consistently page 1, even at a higher price.

Good luck!  

P.S. yes, I'm now dual-listing on Homeaway.

[Dev4]

Hi @Kurt-and-Anna0

Congratulations on the baby.

I would recommend that you make minor tweaks to your listing everyday. Essentially you want to bring your listing to page 1 or 2, so that it gets booked. I am facing a similar challenge with a new listing that no matter what I do is not getting booked. It shows up on page 5 of search results. So there are no booking whatsoever, despite the attractive rates. 

[Cynthia-and-Chris1]

Not sure this is true...

I snoozed my listing for about a year while we had a long-term tenant and when I unsnoozed after he left, we had reservations coming in immediately and have been regularly booked ever since.

It's a good idea to go in and update the wording on your listing, refresh your pictures, and make sure to tweak some of your calendar - this should help you get further up the search results.

[Robin4]

@Kurt-and-Anna0 @Cynthia-and-Chris1 @Dev4

Hey great news about the baby. Now the hard work starts hey!!!

About your listing, I spend almost half the year away from Airbnb hosting in other directions and I snooze my listing for up to 6 months. As soon as I wish to make my property visible again I change the profile picture, maybe put in a few more, add to the house rules....I freshen up the listing, and it springs back to the top of the search page again.

Preference is given to certain search criteria including 'Instant Book', Superhost, and recent activity, and you have to give the software some reason to promote your listing. If you simply set from 'snoozed' to 'listed' this does not signal activity, it just signals a change in status.

Cheers.....Rob

[Dev4]

@Robin4

Thanks for the suggestions. I will be following those soon as one of our listing will come online in the summer time. 

Cheers

[Marisa182]

@Kurt-and-Anna0 

Congrats on the new baby. I snoozed my place for almost two months after an unpleasant experience with a guest. It wasn't all that bad, but he did not deserve a good review and did not get one from me. He wasn't happy about it and carried the thing on way longer than necessary, and that drove me to just shut down for a while. And that actually turned out to be a very good thing.

I got back on at the beginning of September feeling refreshed and ready to go. I immediately got a booking, and then another, and then one that I could not accept because it was right in the middle of the other two allowing me no time at all to get the place ready for the next guest. Anyway, I highly recommend taking time off, and I hope your bookings will very soon come your way.