It’s the ultimate dream if you’re a landlord—owning your own home, but leasing it out to guests for a fee. Sounds exotic and impossible, right? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll do as an Airbnb owner. But as is the case with all properties that are rented or leased, Airbnb properties are always vulnerable to damage and even destruction from their occupants. Since repair and cleanup can run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for the owners, it’s time to discuss some Airbnb tips for hosts so that you don’t ever incur costly expenses as an Airbnb owner.
Hosting & Listing Management
The Airbnb Host Tips process starts with listing your property. If you’re ever on many booking sites, here are some things you need to know. Since you’re essentially running a business, it helps if you hire someone who’s qualified and experienced in doing listings. That’s why it’s essential to use a channel manager.
You’ll find this advice useful if you’re new to the Airbnb scene and you crave Airbnb tips for beginner hosts. Hiring a professional channel manager will save you lots of time and headaches when listing, plus, you won’t be making costly mistakes by learning through trial and error. Channel managers can sync their rental calendars as well. So, you never have to worry about listing your rental twice on the same site. That’s embarrassing and negative PR!
Channel managers will list your rental(s) on all sites that renters visit. Not only will that save you precious time that you can be using to manage and run your own business, but it will make the entire listing process much more efficient. Your channel manager will take care of vital issues for you, like pricing, websites to list on, and commissions.
Cleanliness
You won’t be doing repeat business if your Airbnb is filthy and crawling with nasty pests. Your renters will probably be demanding a refund and be leaving negative reviews about your Airbnb on every website they can find if your place is trash. Believe it or not, the cleanliness of an Airbnb plays a key role in determining how enjoyable and pleasant your guests’ stay is. So, here are some Airbnb hosts tips that you need to know if you’re a newbie in renting.
You may be thinking of deep cleaning your Airbnb property yourself, but that can take hours and take a toll on your sanity and physical and mental health. Don’t risk it and wear yourself out. Shell out the few extra bucks and hire professionals to clean your Airbnb thoroughly. Besides, the pros have better cleaning equipment and stronger cleaners, so they can target spots that you may miss (due to human error!)
Professional cleaners also tend to be more thorough and do better-quality cleaning than most people. After all, they’re getting paid to do a top-notch cleaning job. The pros also adhere to very high standards. You may not be aware of those standards, even if you are excellent at keeping a property up. They will entice your guests to stay for longer (and pay more money) the minute they step on your property by creating an inviting and clean/fresh-smelling rental.
What Type of Cleaning Should Guests Be Obligated to Do?
All guests are not the same. If you’re a landlord, you’re already all too familiar with those guests who tend to keep a place looking more spotless than when they arrived. You also know about those guests who trash any property they stay in. Unfortunately, the latter type of renter may be more common, and those guests can do costly and real damage.
That’s why you need to give yourself a break and require your guests to do some basic housecleaning before leaving. That includes cleaning dishes and doing their laundry. You should charge a fee if you return to your property and find roaches in the sink because dishes with moldy and rotting food have been left behind.
Guests should be informed that they will be charged a fee if their pets soil the carpet or if there are piles of dirty laundry. It’s always best to post a few basic cleanliness and other rules that you expect the guests to follow to keep a basic standard of cleanliness in your Airbnb.
Stay Available for Guests
Having traveled frequently and stayed in Airbnbs myself, I thought I would impart some useful Airbnb tips for hosts. Some travelers have been on the road all day, literally. What they really want to do when they arrive at your Airbnb is meet the host, get a decent greeting and some hospitality, and be directed to where everything is.
Guests are people, so they crave the human touch. So, you’ll get much more referral and repeat business from happy clients and from the good reviews that they leave on various sites if you just stay up a little later and meet them when they come.
The same applies when they are staying. I understand that you may not always be available 24/7 because of a job or other commitments, but try to make it a point to be in your office for 2-3 hours a day. Guests will appreciate the personalized gesture and take it as a sign that you generally care about them and want to take care of them.
Screen Your Guests
You shouldn’t be an Airbnb renter if you aren’t going to screen your guests. No school or other institution or organization just accepts the general public, and you shouldn’t either. Here are some Airbnb tips for new hosts for vetting guests.
- Decide how risky the guest is. Some guests will leave a bad review even if they had a decent or even a great experience mainly because they’re negative nellies. You can easily determine how risky a guest will be if you evaluate him or her on the following criteria:
- The types of behaviors he or she displays, and whether they are acceptable, according to you.
- Your basic expectations of guests.
- What do you require of all guests?
If your potential guest doesn’t meet even one of these criteria, don’t rent to them. It’s that plain and simple.
- Be upfront about your security measures. Guests want to feel safe. Not only that, but they want to know what you expect of them before they stay in your place. I have read plenty of reviews from frustrated Airbnb renters about the seemingly large and unexpected laundry list of conditions and requirements that their hosts placed on them upon arrival.
Doing that will just guarantee that you get bad reviews. So, explain in advance what you expect of them and how you plan on making their stay as safe and enjoyable as possible. - Be transparent with their sensitive data. This measure could save you from costly lawsuits and it can protect your reputation as a new Airbnb owner. All industries are vulnerable to cybercrime and fraud–the rental industry is no exception. So, be honest and clear about how you plan on using their credit card and other sensitive information your guests may provide you. Also, reassure them that you won’t sell their data to anyone and that you will dispose of their information safely once their stay is over.
Offer Easy Self-Check-in
People are used to doing things independently in the digital age. So, make their lives more convenient by offering easy self-check-in options. You’ll get more guests. Instead of getting only vacationers, offering the self-check-in option can make your Airbnb more attractive to wealthy business professionals and those who prefer to do things virtually.
It’s a win-win situation. Guests win with a better experience from the beginning. You win because happier and more satisfied guests bring in more business–repeat, referral, and word of mouth.
Leave Guest Reviews
If you’re starting out in the world of Airbnb renting, it’s essential for you to allow your guests to leave reviews. That does more than boost the saleability of your Airbnb, it also helps you screen out problem guests better. Your guests have up to 2 weeks (14 days) after they check out to leave an Airbnb review. Interestingly enough, you should leave guest reviews yourself as an Airbnb host. I am going to explain why now.
When you leave good reviews, you not only build up a good reputation for your rental, but you get current and future guests to trust you better. Your current and future guests will be encouraged to keep your rental clean because they will be motivated by the care for your property that your good reviews project. Your rental will rank higher in Airbnb’s rental lists because Airbnb will take your reviews as a sign that you care.
Airbnb will understand that you actively manage your listing. It will likely reward you by promoting it more often. You’ll see the good results faster in the form of better guest experiences, which, ultimately, lead to glowing guest reviews.
Use Smart Pricing Tools
You want to be clever and smart when setting a price for your rental. Here are some invaluable Airbnb tips for beginner hosts. Use Airbnb’s smart pricing tools. You’re busy enough managing your rental and life. The last thing you need is to spend hours offline and online researching the best price for your Airbnb rental.
An Airbnb pricing tool helps you adjust your rates according to various factors. The tool is integrated into Airbnb’s website and takes care of the pricing work for you. You set a minimum price range, and the tool sets the perfect price based on your range and many other factors. It adjusts your rates as your occupants and their needs change.
The tool uses an algorithm that analyzes certain pricing metrics for your rental. It will spit out what it thinks is the best price according to the data given to it. Some data and factors that it considers include:
- Location, property type, number and type of amenities offered, and the number and quality of guest ratings.
- Intensity of search activity in your local area. That includes the number of travelers near your rental and the average number of people viewing your listing.
- Number of listings in your area, especially those that are like yours.
Adjust for Seasons
You must adjust your listings by the season. There’s substantial proof for that. The Weather Company’s most recent study found that weather affects how people behave and what they buy. They tend to travel more during the warmer summer months because that’s when people tend to vacation. People still vacation during the colder winter months, but they may choose different locations from the summer months.
You can capitalize on that by posting winter-themed pictures of your rental during the colder months and switching them over to spring and summer-themed pictures when the weather warms up. You can change the furniture and even the wallpaper themes in your rental to reflect the moods that different seasons bring.
Here are some Airbnb tips for new hosts regarding decorating your rental during different seasons:
Winter
The following elements bring on the winter theme and associated moods:
- Soft lighting
- Soft, flurry furniture
- Lit fires, especially in the fireplace.
- Comfortable rugs
- Dark browns, dark greys, dark oranges, dark green, and other wintery colors.
- More coziness and as little minimalism as possible.
- Fairy lights
- Candles
Summer
The following elements bring on the summer theme and associated feelings of space, light, and freshness:
- Minimalism
- Bright lights
- Big, open spaces.
- Simple furniture
- Light white, light blue, light yellow, light red, and other light and bright colors.
- Bright flowers
You can use image captions to describe your details better and make your rental’s ambience much more powerful. It helps to adjust the title for your rental listing as the seasons change to reflect the changes in travelers’ moods.
Allow for Long-Term Stays
If you have a renter who wants to stay in your place for at least 28 days, he or she is considered to be booking a long-term stay. Most people who book Airbnbs long-term are professionals who may tack a few vacation days on. They may also be people who are changing jobs and want to take a breather in a new place.
The latest Airbnb data states that more than 4 out of every 5 Airbnb hosts allow for long-term stays. You should join them if you haven’t already because it’s a guaranteed and steady source of continuous income. If you’ve been on Airbnb’s website recently, you’ve probably noticed the dedicated ‘monthly stays’ section posted there. It’s to help people who want long-term stays find their ideal rental.
You’ll also be renting to fewer people with long-term stays. That translates into less maintenance and upkeep work for you–it also means fewer of those associated expenses. Guests just want a place to stay, so they are satisfied with basic amenities. That means you’ll be spending less on extras and pocketing more revenue.
Another bonus of long-term stays is that they can boost your ratings by giving guests the opportunity to leave glowing reviews.
Long-term Airbnb stays have become much more popular recently. This may be old data, but in 2021 about 24% of all guests booked long-term stays. That was up five percentage points from 2019. But here are some Airbnb tips for new hosts if you are going to be offering long-term stays.
Discount the Rentals
Most long-term renters will book your Airbnb on the condition that you offer them a discount. You should oblige because you’ll make up for the lowered price you offer per night on your rentals with the increased number of nights that you’ll be getting a steady income. In March 2020, about half of all global Airbnb listings offered discounts for long-term stays and were highlighted for doing so.
Work Less and Earn More
Wouldn’t it be nice to work less and earn more? While that’s often an ‘if it seems to be too good to be true’ proposition, it’s spot on for long-term Airbnb stays. Since you’ll be having fewer guests checking in, you’ll be spending less time and money cleaning places up.
Long-Term Renters Tend to Behave Differently
Yes, long-term renters tend to behave differently from regular renters. Here’s an example. Guests who stay for a few nights will eat out exclusively or eat picnic lunches. A renter who stays for two months will likely want to cook his or her own food. That’s why long-term rentals tend to include kitchens, living rooms, unlimited utilities, and more storage space.
Don’t be surprised if your long-term guest brings his or her spouse, family members, or even pets over to stay. That kind of behavior is common with longer stays.
Network
Since long-term guests are more permanent, they may be looking to make friends with the Airbnb owner. Seize upon that chance by networking. Making friends with your guests is also a great opportunity to cultivate referral-based business. Forging relationships makes for more understanding guests which often translates into more favorlable ratings and reviews.
Short-Term Rental Agreements Work Wonders
You should have all of your guests sign short-term rental agreements, even if they are going to stay for at least a month. You’ll have your rental requirements, specifications, and an agreement in writing so you’ll have evidence to use in court if anything goes wrong. Short-term rental agreements protect your guests as well.
You May Need to Modify Your Payment Arrangements
Keep in mind that Airbnb will require you to collect one month rental payment upfront at the beginning of every month if you’re going to do long-term stays.
Cancellations Work Differently
Any stay that’s longer than 28 days will automatically have Airbnb’s Long Term cancellation policy apply. Here’s a summary of some of the main conditions:
- Guests will receive a full refund only if they cancel within 48 hours of booking at at least 28 days before starting their stay–otherwise, you will receive the entire deposit regardless of whether they spend a minute in your rental.
- Guests who cancel their booking during their stay will be charged for every night of their stay and an extra 30 nights.
- If a guest who has fewer than 30 days remaining on his or her stay cancels, you’ll receive full payment for the number of nights that are left for the stay.
You can go for a stringent cancellation policy if guests are going to stay for less than 28 days. These include the nonrefundable option or the Super Strict 60 Days.
Target Markets Are Different
Long-term rentals target different markets, mainly digital nomads, college students, and families who have pets and work remotely. Neat recently did a survey and found that 22% of American adults worked remotely in 2025. Airbnb did a five-country, three-state survey a few years ago and discovered that 74% of the respondents wanted to live away from their place of employment.
About 55% of long-term stays were either working or studying. Older adults, especially, love long-term stays. About 28% of those who book long-term stays are the elderly. Those in the 18-24 year age group booked about 25% of long-term stays in 2021.
Since long-term stay demographics and markets are diverse and different from short-term stays, it’s important to do niche marketing to attract the right consumers. You should do targeted marketing on niche vacation booking sites to maximize the number of bookings you get each month.
You’ll want to screen guests and check with local laws before doing long-term stays and the associated marketing.
Use Helpful Hosting Apps
Hosting apps take a lot of work out of your already cumbersome routine as an Airbnb host. I’m going to list some helpful hosting apps and their main features in this section.
Channel Management Apps
Hospitable.com
It’s a complete automation software platform. You can use it to stay on top of short-term daily rental management tasks. You’ll be able to link your Airbnb account to Vrbo, Booking.com, and other listing sites for better and more effective management. You’ll also be able to manage all of your accounts from a single dashboard which will make the entire Airbnb management process faster and simpler.
Hospitable.com allows you to update available rentals and their pricing instantly and easily. Its instant calendar synchronization prevents the annoying and potentially reputation damaging issue of double booking and overbooking rentals. The app integrates with popular pricing tools which let you price your rentals according to market demand across multiple channels.
You can filter and export operational and financial data to a variety of tools and use it there.
Smoobu
You can use this property management software to connect to various channels simultaneously to ensure that your bookings, prices, and calendars sync automatically and perfectly. Smoobu lets you view all bookings for all of your rentals, regardless of the channel that they’re listed on. You’ll get all listings in a neat and easy-to-read chart.
Smoobu also lets you view average occupancy and revenue stats for each of your rentals. That’s invaluable if you’re in an area with lots of Airbnb properties.
Rentals United
It’s a cloud-based solution that property managers with over 10 rentals use for short-term rentals. You can sync and update listings on many sites at once. Its toolkit lets you keep up on properties with its quality checker, advanced reports, guest planner, and that’s just the beginning!
Market Analysis
If you’re like most Airbnb hosts, you want to grow your business. You need to do research for that to keep up with market trends. Here are some apps that can help you do that job better.
Transparent
The app tracks more than 35 million listings on Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and Tripadvisor worldwide. Its goal is to give users data insights that can help them make smart and strategic business decisions. You can use the free version through its Smart Rental data dashboard. If you want more features, pay some money for the Pro data dashboard, which will give actionable vacation rental insights to help you make more money and generate more revenue.
If you’re a host, you’ll find this tool to be invaluable for tracking price, occupancy, demand, and competitor data for your rentals.
AirDNA
You can use the AirDNA app to analyze market data from more than 10 million short-term rental properties globally. You’ll receive data, analytics, and property forecasts for the short-term rental industry as well. Hosts and investors receive a complete set of tools that offer data to give them more insights as to how the industry is changing.
They can use that data to make strategic and money-making decisions. You can also avail many free resources, including educational videos, industry reports, blog posts, and case studies that will help make you more competitive.
Dynamic Pricing Tools
You need to get your pricing strategy right if you want to succeed in the short-term rental market. That requires that you take the time to watch what your competitors are doing to ensure that you’re always offering a fair price. However, dynamic pricing tools can help since you probably don’t have the time to watch rental markets constantly. Use them to keep your rentals constantly occupied by setting the ideal price each time.
PriceLabs
If you want a dynamic pricing tool for widely used rental platforms, PriceLabs is what you need. It works on Airbnb, Vrbo, and a variety of other platforms. You can plug PriceLabs into many property management systems. It’s invaluable because it uses a smart pricing algorithm to recommend the ideal prices for your properties by tracking and using data about local events, seasonal changes, trends, and holiday predictions.
You can use the advanced customization options to control the prices you set. That’s smart if you want to implement specific strategies to keep your rentals competitive. You can change your minimum price ranges for weekend rentals, adjust your last-minute discount rates, change rates according to how your rentals are performing, and the features don’t stop there.
Beyond
You need Beyond if you list short-term rentals on Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. Beyond relies on big data learning and predictive analytics to set prices for 340,000 listings in over 7,500 cities globally. You can use the tool to automate prices to make sure that all of your listings always have competitive prices. Beyond lets you sync prices across various platforms, and offers other similar useful features as well, like business insights and revenue forecasting.
Guest Communication
Here’s a list of tools that will help you communicate with your guests better, faster, and in real-time.
Hospitable.com
If you want a short-term rental app that lets you ‘talk with your guests’ across various platforms and manage reviews, you need Hospitable.com. You can use its preloaded messaging templates to automate and make all communication with your guests professional. Each template can be customized to each guest’s tastes and preferences.
You can use 50+ shortcodes and various conditions to trigger personalized messages that align with your guests’ styles. The app offers templates in 29 languages.
Its unique question auto-detection feature lets you answer guest questions faster. Hospitable.com uses AI to recognize and help you answer questions on over 20 popular topics. Guests always receive personalized answers. You can use the app for personalized proactive communication for guests on longer stays.
Host Tools
You can use Host Tools to automate guest communication and other aspects of your rental business. Use the messaging feature to send automated messages to your guests. The app even comes with customized messaging templates and versatile messaging rules to facilitate that. You can schedule check-in and check-out messages. You can also schedule customized messages asking for a review, and the abilities don’t stop there.
IGMS
It’s a guest communication tool that lets hosts and property managers manage different routine tasks. One of these is guest messaging. You can organize all of your guest messages in a central inbox so that they appear in a single feed. The centralized messages trigger automated messages. IGMS lets you turn regular replies into customized and automated templates in many languages. That expedites the communication process and makes it smoother.
Home Automation
You can use smart home tools to stun viewers and visitors when managing your properties remotely. You can use the following home automation tools to lower your utility bills and smoothen relations with your neighbors.
Minut
Minut lets you protect your properties by giving you solutions and insights. You’ll also be keeping everyone happy and safe by respecting your guests’ and neighbors’ privacy. The app works by detecting noise or crowding on your properties. You’ll also be alerted when the fire alarm goes off on any of your properties.
If you integrate the app with your smart lock, it will make check-ins and check-outs much easier, faster, and more convenient for your guests. You can even monitor and control your rental’s temperature and humidity through the app.
Rently
Rently Smart Home lets you monitor and control all aspects of your rentals remotely. You can use various smart home devices like keyless locks, smart thermostats, window and door sensors, motion sensors, and doorbell cameras to make life more convenient for your renters while keeping them safe and secure. Rently will also help you protect your properties from accidents and natural disasters. You can use the app in tandem with smoke/CO detectors and smart leak sensors for that.
You can even turn your air conditioning and heating systems on and off and set their temperatures remotely using Rently.
Housekeeping Tools
I mentioned just how important a neat and clean Airbnb is. I also told you that you should hire the pros to clean for more peace of mind. What I didn’t tell you is that professional cleaners who charge a reasonable fee and do a good cleaning job are hard to find. Fortunately, there are some apps on the market that you can use to help you find and manage your cleaning crew.
Turno
You can use Turno to find good cleaners for your properties. Turno is essentially a marketplace that lets you connect and place bids with local cleaners and cleaning companies. The app doubles as a centralized platform, allowing you to manage your cleaners, their projects, and communication with them in one place.
Turno will automatically sync all of your calendars from popular booking platforms into a single place. So, you’ll have an easier time automating all tasks–from communication to payment.
Lula.Cleaning
Organize and simplify the house cleaning process with Lula.Cleaning. You’ll need to use another app, like Turno to loacate and hire cleaners though. Lula.Cleaning is an organization and management system, and nothing more. It integrates and syncs with major booking platforms and lets you assign tasks to cleaners and schedule the times for them to come and clean.
Add A Co Host
Adding a co-host may be practical if you own and manage lots of Airbnb rentals and need an extra hand or two to manage all of them. You may find adding a co-host easier and more practical if you offer them a percentage of commission in exchange for helping you. You’ll benefit in the following ways:
- Free up time for doing fun things: Running and managing Airbnb rentals is time-consuming and stressful. You may find managing multiple properties simultaneously to be a Herculean (and impossible) task. That leaves little time for doing things you love. Give yourself a break by splitting the responsibilities.
- Enhance your management skills: It takes real skill to manage rentals successfully. One person can’t be a ‘jack of all trades.’ Increase your management scope and abilities by adding a helping hand. Hire someone experienced to handle customer service and communication, and watch your listings climb in SERP, the five-star reviews come rushing in, and your listings get booked almost immediately.
- Manage properties remotely: Managing properties in another state is very difficult. Make the task easier by hiring someone trustworthy locally, and give yourself peace of mind.
Use A Management System
Managing Airbnb vacation rentals is often like walking a tightrope. One slight misstep or slipup and years of effort and hard work often end in disaster. But you can minimize the risk of that with a reliable management system. You’ll join the 75% of property managers who use property management software programs to streamline operations.
It’s easy to update bookings and listings in case of cancellations or sudden bookings across multiple platforms simultaneously. Software management programs make it easy. The same applies to scheduling daily operations like cleanings and communicating with guests across platforms. Property management software systems also make it easier for you to scale your business quickly.
Create plans for sustained and strategic growth when you automate price changes in rentals, sync calendars, and communicate with guests. Automating these three tasks makes it easier to rent more properties faster and acquire more properties by creating memorable guest experiences across the board. You’ll also stay competitive in an industry that’s constantly evolving, becoming more complex, and becoming more competitive with technological advancements.
How Airbnb Property Management Software Makes Renting and Managing Properties Easier
The programs let you set dynamic pricing, often in advance and across multiple platforms at once. You can even use the programs to adjust your pricing by season, demand, or your competitor’s prices. You can automate emails and other forms of guest communication while making them personalized and giving them that individual, human-written touch. These simple gestures boost occupancy rates by showing guests that you care about them.
A great example of a messaging system is Hostaway.
Reasons Why You Should Use Property Management Software Programs
- Have more free time: Automation does routine tasks faster, easier, and more efficiently than you can. That gives you more time for you and to run your business better. Property management software programs can free up to 15 extra hours each month for you.
- Simplify guest messaging: Typing out messages on your phone manually is tedious and takes time, but necessary. About 69% of guest reviews come because of timely and professional communication, and when they do come, they are often good to excellent.
- Book more rooms: Did you know that you can book more rooms at any point in time just by using property management software because they are good at dynamic, flexible, and competitive pricing?
- Create outstanding guest experiences: Make guest stays excellent and memorable through automated, expedited, and quality communication.
- Manage teams better and easier: Coordinate and communicate with teams better, faster, and easier. Property management software programs have centralized calendars that simplify the tasks of managing cleaners and maintenance staff to ensure that rooms are always clean and organized.
- Make strategic decisions with real and powerful data: rely on property management software for easy-to-understand reports giving real raw data and valuable insights on key metrics like occupancy and conversion rates, and lead generation rates.
- Operate more efficiently and accurately: Eliminate the risk of human errors by automating tasks. Complete tasks faster and make better and more strategic decisions quickly with better quality data.
- Rank your properties higher: Have Airbnb rank your properties higher and faster with management software that operates and organizes data to boost the key metrics that Airbnb uses to rank properties.
Think Like a Guest
You have no idea how to run your Airbnb without feedback from guests. Unfortunately, many guests are tight-lipped and few leave reviews on any platform. That’s why it’s important to think like a guest. Here are some useful Airbnb tips for beginner hosts that I thought you might find useful.
- Understand what guests want in a rental: All guests say that they want an enjoyable stay, but boy, that’s pretty broad and vague. You’re most likely to have overbooked rentals if you provide exactly what guests want in a rental, perhaps scented bath soaps, unlimited towels, or laundry done daily.
You can go one step further by listing recommendations for local restaurants, points of interest, entertainment, and more in an easily accessible place in your rental. - Improve CRM: You hear about the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) all of the time in businesses. That applies to your business. In this case, thinking like a guest will create a sense of trust between you and your guests. They will be more willing to stay longer, do repeat business, and give you referrals if they trust you.
Guest Experience and Service
Guests will leave great reviews about your Airbnb if they have a great experience and enjoy great service. But, what does that entail? I have designed this section to tell you exactly what you need to do to give your guests great service that translates into outstanding experiences.
Deliver Great Hospitality
As corny as it sounds, the first step towards delivering great hospitality is to research your target audience(s) and learn exactly what they want and expect from an Airbnb stay. First, find out what types of travelers would be most likely to stay in your rentals. You can deliver the experiences they want by including the amenities they like once you understand all of this.
Here are some questions that you can ask yourself if you ever find yourself stumped during the research process:
- How many people will fit comfortably in each of your rentals?
- Where is your Airbnb located? Hint: you’ll have different needs if your rentals are in an urban versus a rural area.
- Who lives in your neighborhoods?
Now, it’s time to create guest personas. A persona is commonly used in marketing. Basically, it’s a fictional person whose demographics, tastes, and interests accurately mirror those of particular target markets. A persona lets you understand your target audiences better. It’s easy to create marketing strategies, plans, and decisions once you understand your target audiences better.
Familiarize yourself with these personas and understand exactly what their age ranges are. Understand what they do for a living, know what their hobbies are, and what they want to do while on vacation. You’ll be able to deliver great hospitality only when you understand the intimate details about your guest personas.
Focus on the Details
Details matter in life, and that’s especially true if you’re new to the Airbnb industry. Here are some useful Airbnb hosting tips.
- Make sure that your listings are professional and comprehensive. Also, make sure that all pictures are professional and updated. That means including:
- House rules
- Included amenities
- Prices
- Complete your host profile. Doing so will ensure that you’re constantly overbooked. You’ll need to include all personal information and have your profile verified by Airbnb.
- Be completely honest about your listings, including their nature, prices, and amenitites. Faking it until you make it with your listings will only backfire on you splendidly.
- Only book and accept payments through Airbnb’s platform.
- Read all reviews that guests have left for prior Airbnb hosts before booking a room for them. That reduces your chances of renting to a negative nellie who always leaves bad Airbnb reviews.
- Leave glowing reviews about your experiences with guests.
- Always give guests prompt service.
- Be professional.
- Respect your guests’ privacy.
- Keep your Airbnbs neat, organized, and clean.
- Remember that details matter.
- Keep your Airbnb’s interior and exterior beautiful.
- Only list an Airbnb if you own the property.
Respond Quickly
When you are prompt, you show your guests that you genuinely care about them. That tends to lead to positive reviews faster and increases the likelihood of you always being overbooked. Guests also understand that you pay attention to the details and can be relied upon when you respond fast. People who rent Airbnbs tend to have a different mentality from the rest of the population.
They may feel uncertain when renting an Airbnb because they may not be sure if a particular property can offer that ‘home away from home’ feeling that they want. Consequently, they tend to reach out to many renters simultaneously. You want to secure their funds by ensuring they rent. You do that by responding within a few minutes of them sending you an inquiry.
Responding quickly can also boost your Airbnb rankings. That means people are more likely to see your properties and profile first and reach out to you when they want a rental. Remember that prompt responses are an integral part of customer service.
Set Clear House Rules
You don’t want renters trashing your place since clean up and restoration can be time-consuming and expensive–sometimes it’s impossible. That’s why you need to set house rules. It does many things, two of them being protecting your property and keeping guests happy. House rules also set clear expectations regarding what you expect from your guests.
House rules also reduce the chances of disputes arising and help keep things civil with neighbors. Make sure your rules touch upon three vital areas: community considerations, guest experience, and property protection. Emphasize things like procedures for accessing your properties, who can access your properties, spelling out what guests can and can’t do, how you expect guests to maintain your properties, and how you expect them to behave around neighbors.
Spell out what you want in clear and easy-to-understand language and keep house rules small and simple. Make your rules eco-friendly by specifying when you want guests to use lights and when you want them turned off. Do the same for general energy consumption.
Pricing and Security
Be Honest With Guests
You must be honest with guests and transparent as an Airbnb owner. You’ll build trust when you are honest and transparent, and honesty leads to longer and repeat stays as well as referral business. Honesty and transparency also motivate guests to leave positive reviews. You’ll have a better reputation, which automatically creates trust and leads to more business when you are honest and transparent.
Watch for Squatters
We all know about a guest who needs a few extra days to get his or her life in order. But what happens when the guest stays for several months? Then you have a squatter. And that can be a problem, especially if the person isn’t paying for the rental, because you could be collecting revenue from someone else.
Squatters are a nuisance and even dangerous because they often exploit loopholes and gaps in the legal system to take advantage of Airbnb hosts. Fortunately, you can prevent that by spotting the red flags and taking immediate action. I am going to explain how you can do that now.
There are two types of squatters: opportunistic intruders and overstaying guests. The former breaks into unoccupied Airbnb properties that are transitioning between occupants. They tend to create fake listings or bypass conventional security measures to do so. The latter use tenant protections and other legal loopholes to legally justify overstaying.
Yes, you can take them to court, but that’s a long and expensive battle for you with no guarantee that you’ll get rid of the squatters. Squatters tend to leave the properties they occupy a mess and often do damage (that’s sometimes permanent and very expensive) to them. Additionally, they can tank your Airbnb reputation, which will negatively and directly affect your rankings and ability to rent to future guests easily.
The bad news is that the majority of these squatters are probably even more familiar with local tenancy laws than you are. So, they know how to exploit the 30-day occupancy threshold that many jurisdictions have. So, you could have a squatter on your hands if one of your guests does one or more of the following:
- Book under the tenants-rights threshold and then insist on overstaying.
- Only makes partial payments–squatters like to do so to establish a payment history.
- Won’t pay due to maintenance issues they claim that your property has.
- Leverages local tenancy laws to delay the eviction process.
- Complicates legal proceedings by filing counterclaims.
Professional squatters can be hard to spot because they are so good at what they do. However, since they are human, they tend to slip up from time to time by doing one or more of the following:
- Creating a vague profile or not completing their profiles.
- Using blurred photos or stock image photos as profile pictures.
- Not including much personal information or using generic information for personal information on their profiles.
- Renting on a recently created account with no reviews.
- Having no social media profiles or connections.
- Not interacting much with you during the pre-booking process despite having booked a long-term stay.
- Not answering direct questions regarding the purpose of their stay.
- Making a last-minute booking request to extend their stay.
- Not giving consistent stories about their travel plans.
- Not readily giving up additional verification information.
- Making immediate requests to stay for longer than 25 days.
- Attempting to book properties multiple times while using different accounts.
- Haggling over long-term stay rates.
- Asking to extend the booking length after checking-in
- Paying through unconventional arrangements.
DO NOT rent to a person who shows even one of these signs during the booking process. Chances are that person is a squatter.
Do NOT ASSUME that Airbnb Will Automatically Protect You!
You’re being very naive if you’re an Airbnb host and you think that Airbnb can automatically protect you from squatters, because it’s not that simple! True, you can avail some support through Airbnb’s AirCover program, but the protection tends to be basic. Aircover’s basic role is to act as an intermediary. So, it can help with facilitating communication and providing limited financial protections. However, its main role, functions, and powers tend to end there.
For example, the AirCover program can’t override local tenancy laws or help with legal proceedings. That means you need to be familiar with local tenancy laws before becoming a host.
What the AirCover Program Was Designed to Do:
- Initiate mediation between guests and hosts. Also, assist in establishing communication channels.
- Provide financial protection for documented damages. However, understand that AirCover insurance has coverage limits.
- Provide step-by-step and comprehensive guidance through the support process.
- Provide official documentation support for legal proceedings.
- Provide partial reimbursement for lost booking income during the dispute period.
- Give access to the 24/7 support line.
What the AirCover Program Can’t Do:
- Physically remove squatters from a property.
- Guarantee specific legal outcomes for your jurisdiction.
- Handle local court proceedings for you.
- Override or bypass local tenant protection laws.
- Completely compensate you for financial losses.
- Speed up local legal processes.
Here’s What You Need to Know About Airbnb’s Squatters Rights
You’ll have an easier time dealing with and removing squatters if you’re familiar with their rights. That will save you from a lot of headaches as a new Airbnb host. For starters, you need to understand the different types of occupancy that most jurisdictions officially recognize for tenants:
- Transient occupancy:
- Generally applies for tenants whose stay doesn’t exceed 30 days.
- Hospitality laws govern transient occupancy.
- Guests have limited occupancy rights.
- It’s easier to remove overstaying guests under transient occupancy laws.
- 30-day threshold: this is one of the most vital Airbnb tips for hosts. You may be able to avoid spending lots of times in the courts and getting entangled in what can be a complex legal system for Airbnb owners if you understand the laws pertaining to this threshold. The reason is that the 30-day threshold begins a critical legal boundary in most jurisdictions.
Most jurisdictions recognize guests who have stayed for at least 30 days as a legal tenant. That means their rights according to the law change. It also means that you will have to follow different rules and procedures if you want to remove them. Many factors determine when and if the 30-day threshold applies:- Payment patterns and history.
- The nature and terms of the original agreement.
- Local short-term rental regulations.
- Tenant’s patterns for using the property.
- The landlord’s documentation and communications procedures.
- How the law defines a tenant vs a guest: you need to understand how the law recognizes a tenant and how it recognizes a guest, because there is a significant difference, and it does matter when you are trying to evict an overstaying guest. The differences in legal definitions influence all of your legal options and proceedings because they change the rights that guests and owners have:
- A guest’s basic characteristics and rights:
- A predetermined departure date.
- Advance payment for the entire stay.
- Receives hospitality services.
- Isn’t responsible for any property maintenance.
- Has no legal rights to modify the property in any way, shape, or form.
- Limited property access rights.
- A tenant’s basic characteristics and rights:
- Extended and greater occupancy rights.
- Pays rent periodically.
- Is somewhat responsible for maintaining the property.
- Has some property modification rights.
- Is extensively protected by local laws from eviction.
- Controls who can access the property and when.
- A guest’s basic characteristics and rights:
Knowing This Will Help You Keep the Squatters Away!
The best way to deal with squatters is to not let them access any of your properties to begin with. You’ll need to devise and implement a comprehensive strategy that includes and combines comprehensive guest screening procedures, clear rules, and effective monitoring elements. You’ll gain more insights into each element and how to implement each one effectively in this section.
Screening Guests
You’ll need to thoroughly read and analyze the profile of everyone who wants to be your guest. Note: it’s not enough for you to do a basic verification checklist because you will miss a lot of crucial details and red flags if your guest screening process is that simple and limited. You’ll need to go online and scour each guest’s booking history, when they created their profile, and reviews from previous Airbnb owners.
Note: it’s important to scrutinize the last element! Look out for any late checkout or rule violation mentions. As a rule of thumb, you should shortlist guests having completed profiles with clear and professional photos and verified social media profiles because they tend to be legitimate and more reliable guests.
Pay attention to your guests’ initial Communication. You can learn a lot about their initial intentions by doing so. You need to ask them specific questions regarding why they want to stay in one of your properties. Be sure to thoroughly document all of their correspondence, communications, and interactions–and make them as detailed as possible.
Look for red flags during the initial communications process: evasive, inconsistent, and short responses. Above all, rely more heavily on your intuition when initially communicating with any guest. You need to create a systematic and thorough verification process. For starters, always insist that all guests give you government-issued IDs. You can verify guests better by cross-referencing them with the guests’ booking details.
You should do long video interviews with guests who are staying longer. You’ll get more of a vibe as to the type of guest they will be when you see their physical interactions and facial expressions. You should verify employment history and work patterns if you’re renting to business travelers. Of course, always document each verification step carefully and thoroughly. Doing so will provide useful evidence that you can use in court, if needed.
Establish Clear House Rules
You need to write down detailed (but not necessarily lengthy) house rules for guests and post them in an easy-to-see place in your rental. Lengthy house rules will just overwhelm guests and motivate them to move out earlier. Not only will you keep misunderstandings from arising, but you’ll protect yourself legally with tangible documentation.
As a bare minimum, your house rules must include:
- Maximum occupancy limits.
- Detailed procedures for checking-in and checking-out.
- Clear booking extension policies.
You need to be extra vigilant of visitor policies and maximum stay durations since guests who violate these tend to turn into squatters quickly. You can prevent that through vigilance. You’ll need to mention your house rules and policies across many channels for them to be truly effective.
Start by including crucial policies in your listing description. The next step is to send your guests complete (yet brief and powerful) messages before they arrive at your property. Third, post printed rules at places in your property that you know guests will notice and give them a digital guidebook that they can refer to for quick guidance.
The last step is to give guests regular and automated reminders regarding checkout times. That will help ensure that guests abide by your rules. Also, make sure to get guests’ acknowledgement of your rules in writing before they check-in. That way, you’ll have evidence you can use if you ever need to.
Monitor Your Properties
It’s easy to monitor your properties 24/7 if you use new and advanced technologies like the Ring monitoring system which you can access from your smartphone. You can also ‘smarten’ your properties with these technologies which help you lock and unlock your home from apps on your smartphone.
You can create unique entry codes using these smart locks that only certain people can access. Similarly, with noise sensors and utility monitors, you can easily detect strange and unanticipated noises and movements. That helps keep your properties safer and more secure. It also gives guests the peace of mind that encourages more stays
You’ll need to monitor your properties routinely as well. Make these as subtle and unanticipated as possible. For example, you can turn a request to fix leaky faucets into quick and casual property checks. Use cleaning service people as agents to do routine property checks for longer-staying guests.
Property management platforms are great when you want to monitor and manage your properties remotely. They can help you do prevention by spotting troubling booking and communication patterns before they can become issues. You can also keep your properties safer with security cameras–just inform your guests of their presence beforehand. You need to be completely transparent with all of your monitoring efforts because guests value honesty.
You can also have neighbors do monitoring provided you have a great rapport with them.
To Wrap Up
As you can see, it’s not easy to be an Airbnb host. You are not likely to succeed as a newcomer if you aren’t aware and don’t comprehend the Airbnb Tips for Hosts that I have explained in this article. I have given you information that will help you out.
