January Bookings

[Gail959]

Hi everyone.  Is anyone else experiencing an extremely slow January?  Based in the UK.

[Zheng49]

It's slow for me personally, but I see it working out for some listings with good recent reviews, good booking success, and convenient location. 

It seems to be picking up momentum though, whereas it was slower a couple of days ago. 

[Liberty2]

Same here only one guest from December  until now. I’m in Belgrade, Serbia. 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Gail959 Last January was slow for us - This January is no different. Lets hope it picks up in Feb as it did last year.

[Helen3 · Accepted solution]

I'm in Bristol and have bookings through to May @Gail959 I'm not booked up solidly but certainly have the amount of bookings I need to hit my income targets.

Have you looked on Airdna to get an idea of demand and supply in your area @Gail959 . Many areas now have oversaturated markets coupled with falling demand. 

Who do you as your target guests for your listing? Are you marketing your listing through all available relevant STR listing channels? Have you considered taking direct bookings? 

Quite a few of your listings have what Airbnb considers low ratings ie under 4.6 and this is likely to be affecting how highly you are placed in the rankings . Have you done an analysis of your guest reviews and how you can address the issues raised? 

[Gail959]

Hi Helen!  We are very quiet for January and picking up towards March.  I have not used Airdna so I will look into this, thank you.

We try to advertise upmarket stays as opposed to budget, but the area is overpopulated with hotels who can afford to offer much cheaper rates so I wonder if this could be having an effect.  But if we drop our prices, we don't make the money needed to cover our costs.  Currently we list on Air BnB and BDC, and we do advertise on social media for direct bookings too although we receive very few of these.

We have Superhost status so generally appear fairly high in listings, however our scores vary between 4-5 so I suppose this could have a reversible impact on this?

Thanks so much for your advice.

[Helen3]

Quite a few of your listings for example have been marked down for cleanliness so this is an area you can look at @Gail959 

Particularly if you are marketing your listings as upmarket this is an area that could be impacting on your bookings .