3 Million Views… and Still No Bookings? What This Host Missed on @ryan Trahan's videos

Can one viral YouTube challenge actually change an Airbnb host? Whole year? Ryan and Hayley Trahan hit all 50 states in 50 days. Millions watched every night a different Airbnb. You've got castles, your tree houses, goat farms, yachts. Some of those listings blew up. But here's the twist. Most hosts completely wasted that moment. I'm Maximson, founder of Boostly, have helped over 2,000 hosts over the last 10 years generate more than $250 million in direct bookings. And I'm telling you, if you ever get this kind of exposure and send people back to Airbnb, you're losing money and control and future guests. So in this video, I'm going to show you what the smart host did right, what most hosts got totally wrong, how they should have turned views into bookings. And I'll be ranking a bunch of these Airbnbs based on how well they handled the spotlight. And if you would like me to roast your market on a future video, there's a link in the description below. And there's also a link down there below on how you can book a call to work with me and our team. Let's get into it. So let's just take this moment to remind everybody what is going on here. We've done three of these videos now. This is the third, the first and second one. I'll leave a link on the description that you'll see above. Now you can go back and watch the first two. We're in week three now. Ryan and his wife Hayley are traveling around 50 states every single day, staying in a new Airbnb. And I'm saving them to this wish list on my Airbnb account. Now you can actually go and follow this journey on here. And as you can see, they've started in Texas, they've made their way, they're coming back, and they're currently over the east side of the United States of America, which is fantastic. They're doing all of this to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. And as you can see as of today, the day of recording, they have just passed the $2 million mark, which is phenomenal. Like I said, they still got 30 days to go, which is crazy, but it is absolutely an amazing cause. The series is doing so well. As you can see here, this is View Stats. This is the a really cool YouTube sort of step thing to get for free. But as you can see over the last what we're talking now, they've been doing this for 20 days. So if we look over the last month, 141 million views. In the last seven days alone, I've had 42 million views. And what I'm doing on this little mini series is I'm taking seven days worth of Airbnb listings and I'm ranking and roasting how they got on. And it's not in terms of how cool it is, because obviously that's what they're doing in the series there. They're voting on their coolest Airbnb that they stay in. I want to look at it from a point of. A marketing point of view of which ones of these actually took advantage of it and which ones totally blew it. Now, the context is there will be some of these that are hobbyist hosts, there will be some of these that are professional companies. But I want to show everybody how they can take advantage of it and how they can also tweak their Airbnb listing to get potentially more. More bookings. Because you'll be amazed that after getting what is 3 million views, how many of these have got accommodation and availability for this coming week, which is. Which is madness. So let's get into it. So, obviously, video one and two, we. We stopped here, which was over in Alabama, and now we're going over to Mississippi. So this is the video again. 3.2 million views. Visiting office in the laundry. I lost. I didn't. It has a backyard, if you remember this video. It's one of the ones that was a really nice one right on the beach. They absolutely loved it. The actual Airbnb listing itself is here. Coastal retreat, heated pool, hot tub and game room, and high tire home based in St. Louis, Mississippi. Again, 16 guests, a huge property. But, you know, as we'll be able to see, this one has actually done all right. This one has got. This is a. This is a place where families will come and go to the beach. So it's a summer. Summer resort. And as you can see, we're coming into the summer now. It is pretty much fully booked, so they will probably turn around to me and go, mark, we don't care. But there's definitely some things we can spot here. So, number one, the actual listing itself, I think it is structured very well. You can tell instantly which pictures and which properties have been done by a professional and which being done by their. By their iPhone, so to speak. Going back to the silo in week one with Ryan, when the second picture was literally of him on his Airbnb listing of the guy in the missile silo. But this is Cool. So let's go have a look at this. For one thing that I did spot straight off is that this is a great way of doing this. So this is obviously their property. They're obviously a management company because when you can go and see how many listings these guys have, they've got lots 164. So this is just one that is part of their big portfolio here. If I was to have one critique of this is that in no way, shape or form as it made this property Googleable or Instagrammable. So if somebody comes onto here, you know, and they want to go and find it on Google, it's making it really hard. So as I say to everybody in this first line of text, you say this is the. Let's just call it the beach house by Heirloom or Heirloom. Heirloom. I don't think I'm pronouncing that right, but heirloom. So if we were to check. Let's go have a little look if we can find the business in any way, shape or form. Because I want to see their Instagram. This is Heirloom professional vacation rentals management company. Stayhealoom.com one of the. One of the really interesting things I just saw there is that they're on Directo, which again, if you all been following this channel for a while, Directo is the tool that so many people are using now to, to go and find better rates than booking on Airbnb, booking.com Etc. So obviously the website, you know, this is, this is a company, this is a proper company that they're not messing about here. They've got properties all over. They've got their. The little chat widget, they've got Directo, which is cool. I mean, the website, it's not the worst, it's not the best. I'd give it a solid 6 out of 10 Instagram 27. 26 followers. Any mention? So the last tweet, the last post, sorry, three weeks ago, no mention at all. And it's just pictures of the properties. I feel like they're missing an absolute trick here. I feel like Maddie, Maddie, rent Mount Casey and Maddie, you've got some work to do here. I think you could do a lot of good stuff, to be brutally honest. Not one mention that Ryan's stayed there. Let's look at the reels. That's his pictures. Yeah, the Instagram is shocking. But again, they could turn around to me and go, hey, Mark, this property is booked out solidly. But did they take advantage of it. Have they done anything for the promotion of it? Do they even realize that Ryan has stayed here? I would go down as. No. I mean, it's not the worst. It's definitely not the best. But we're going to come back to our tier ranking system that we have going on here. Let's just put this one for now. We're going to place it in the middle at number four. So every single week I rank these from one to seven. Who did the best, who did the worst. That's the first one. So first one done, first one down, let's go to the next one. So this one was a very cool one. If you, if you remember this, they went to Alabama and they stayed in the Storybook Castle B and B. Now this place looks like something from Shrek. It looks something from Harry Potter. It looks something from Medieval. It is very, very cool. If you remember watching the, the video in the series. So if we come back, go into Alabama, 2.7 million views when they got there. Again, the exterior, the thing about this property is the exterior looks unreal and then the interior just looks insanely bad. But that's probably the vibe that they're going for. But the, the actual listing itself looks unbelievable. So if you were to Google Storybook Castle B and B, let's go and do that first. Now, bearing in mind that this is obviously a massive guest favorite hosted by Pagan, if you click on Pagan's Airbnb listing, as you know, obviously pays a lot of attention on their Airbnb account, they've gone and done all of this. My work is the owner operator of the Airbnb Storybook Castle. They've done that, which is very cool. But let me just go and see if it is Googleable, right? We want to see if we can find more about it. We're going to call it a storybook Castle BnB. So if you Google Storybook Castle B and B, this comes up fairhopecastle.com okay? And if you click on that, then the website loads up. The website is 100% as you would imagine it, very Castle y medieval type vibe. They've obviously got all of the things that they've got going on. The one thing that I would say here is that from the off, you've always got to do with your website, the three things, number one, who you are, what you do, how to book, right? And there's no easy place here to go to actually to book. You've got castle stories, you've got the castle, you've got Mosher Castle Again, it's confusing at best. Like, is all of these properties on the same bit of land? How can they book? You need, like, a very clear book now button for people that honestly don't know what they're looking at. So I would have a very clear book now button that would then load up to a page that would then go, okay, let's go and book your stay in one of these castles. So the website, again, isn't the best. You've got a Facebook page, and this is the thing. I tried to do a bit of research here, and I couldn't find your Airbnb listing. I could find your Facebook, and obviously I've messaged you on Facebook saying, you know, well done. But I. I was really struggling to find an Instagram account. We are currently in Mississippi. I'm not entirely sure what this is. Without much effort on our part, Airbnb was featured in state republication and renowned by YouTube personality Quick Read. The video is 20 minutes. I'm not entirely sure what they're talking about here. Okay. A little bit mad. I don't think, you know, truthfully, they understand social media very well. I feel like they could definitely get a little bit of help in hand on. On this. But obviously, the couple just look like they know. Obviously, they. They're very, very active in the area. They're very, very active obviously on Facebook. I feel like if they were to get on Instagram, this place would absolutely blow up and it would just get so much more attention on. On this. Now, from what I can see here now, this is the thing that's confusing to me. So if you look at Pagan and if you look at their listing, they've only got one of their listings on here. So you think, oh, okay, you can only book to stay in this bnb, but if you come, sorry, that's wrong company. If you come onto that actual website and you come to here, you've got Castle stories. Sheldon Castle. So, again, what. What is Sheldon Castle? What's Mosher Castle? So, again, these all look like different places that you can stay at Fairhope. So why to me have you only got one on here? Again, this is confusing to me. So it'd be confusing to guess you are potentially missing out on so many bookings here because of this. I mean, you'll come to me and go, listen, Mark, this Fair Hope is now solid booked out pretty much up until kids go back to school in September. But for me, you're confusing me. So if you can confuse me, you'll be confusing potential guests. And you could be potentially missing out on so much more revenue if you were to just put your other properties on here. So again, I assume this is the, the same one that homed Ryan and, and Haley. And again, please go and get some professional pictures here. These just look like the ones that you've taken. You could do so, so much more and you could, you could get, you know, so much more potential bookings on here. You can get so much more attention on, on here. So it's definitely work to be done. I did just want to give a little shout out to a company. So I've been doing these roasting videos now for a while and the guys at Guest Impress reached out to me and they said, hey, next time you do a roast video, um, they've given me a free account, but there are some price and it looks pretty cheap. They say put the, put the listing URL into our tool and we'll give it some AI analysis. So I thought, well, let's go ahead and do it with, with the Storybook. This is a pretty cool one to, to do it with. Again, not affiliated. Don't get any money for saying this. I don't do take sponsorships on the channel, so. But again, it says, hey, we'll go and roast it. If you're roasting it, let our AI do the roasting as well. So I've turned it on. All I've had to do is paste in the. The link to the listing. I've hit this. I've hit advanced AI mode. So it's going to take a little bit extra while to do this. But then what it's going to do is it's going to give me a full breakdown of the actual listing. So this is guestimpress.com you can go in. I'm sure there's like a freemium model where you can start out, put your link in and it will, it will give you some advice on, on your own listing. But this is definitely something that I will be doing. I would be taking this word in here, but breaking it down into bullet points. 100. Just explain a little bit more how many properties are. Add your extra listings on here. I would definitely be getting an Instagram account and, and taking advantage of that and talking about it a lot more that you've had, you know, close to 2 million, nearly 3 million views on. On here. Okay, so this is the guest report. Now you can save it as a PDF. It comes with key recommendations, image insights. So the key recommendations, the listing showcases that the uni, the historical Nature of the property Highlight highlighting the proximity to downtown Fairhope and East Shore Art center to an appeal. Consider adding images to the interior of the studio space, including kitchenest bathroom. Now, this is the cool thing, right? So this is one of the cool things about the tools and they did show me this in a, in a loom. So this is the current picture. Now this is good for anybody who has done anything where it's not being done by a professional. You can come in and do enhance with AI and then what it will do is it will improve this image. So this image is obviously being taken by the host. This image has been taken on what looks like their camera. You can use this tool to make the image pop more. So when somebody's doing the scroll or someone comes to check you out on Airbnb, that listing and that picture will be AI improved. And there's two options as the deep one or there's the enhanced one. And I guess from a costing point of view, depends on what membership platform that you own, depends on, on what you get with it. So as you can see, the image now looks like a proper storybook. I can download the enhanced one, which is pretty cool. So it does, it does make it, it does make it pop a lot more, which is very cool. I would also agree with this. I feel like there isn't enough interior style shots and the interior style shots, again, are done on your phone. You're missing out on potential so much more here. You can potentially put your prices, you can potentially do so much more of them than what you're doing at the moment here. Pagan. So hopefully you get to see this in terms of what you did, have you been able to take advantage of it? I mean, you've obviously got bookings, but I feel like you're not taking full advantage of it by putting on all of the other properties. So what we're going to do is I'm going to mark you down here. In fact, I'm going to put you at four. Just because this company hasn't even acknowledged it, that this company, the Mississippi 100, Mr. Boat on that one. But I feel like with this one could done a little bit, a little bit better. All right. But well done. The place looks amazing. The kids, my kids have said, hey, we want to go check this out. Let's move over to the next one, which is in Florida. Again, if you watched this episode, which seems like so long ago, but it was only last week, it was one of those really unique. This has got a story in itself. So I Have done a little bit of digging. I've tried to find out more about him, about the. About the owner of this one, because if you watch this, like I say, it's in St. Augustine, the place itself. So they didn't actually arrive until really late because of one of the Wheel of Doom. So they had a forfeit to do, and somebody donates $50,000, which is an unbelievable amount, they spin this Wheel of Doom and they have punishments. And this one is that they had to run their tank down to EMP empty for whatever reason, which meant that they had to then arrive really late at night. But the. But the. The property is pretty cool. The story behind it, when you do find the story behind it is. Is amazing. So this property was flooded and the guy totally, totally rebuilt it. So let's go and see if we can find it all online, because again, he does have an Instagram. I know, I found it. Perch on the web. Find the Prince Container Apartment. Okay, so this is pretty funky. He's gone. Find the Prince Road Container House Apartment. Therapy Atlas, Obscure ig. So he's got that in. Obviously it's got around the Airbnb rules, which is pretty. Which is pretty cool. I'm all for that. Definitely better ways to do it. So let's go and see what this is. So this is discover containers. So when Rob the Piazza's home of over 30 years was severely damaged to a fallen oak tree thanks to Hurricane Irma in 2017, he decided to make lemonade out of lemons. And he found himself holding himself holding. Seeing the opportunity to invent his own approach to housing, he undertook the massive DIY task. So that is an unbelievably cool story. That's the thing that stuck with me. But bear that in mind right when we look at the listing. So Prince House, Container. Yes, here we go. So if you look at the. I don't know what that is. Okay. That doesn't mean anything about anything. Well, this house was clean and hollow in the presence of mind to shot. Okay, so he's done that. This is what's going to 16. Okay, so this was. All right. Now, did he take advantage of the fact that they've just had millions of views? Let's go and have a look at this place. So the first thing that. What I would say, come and stay in the Prince Roadhouse container. The. The listing. Actually, I'm going to put this into this as well. The. The title means nothing. If you haven't got a clue what this is about, it will mean nothing. To nobody. Okay, so what the first thing that I would say, and I'm going to put this through the Analyzer tool as we're doing this is you've got to come up with a, with a better title. And I feel like when you say come and stay in the Prince Road container house, that doesn't mean nothing to nobody. The picture in itself is showing that it's a pretty cool container house. It's a pretty unique listing. What you need to do is you need to get across very quickly about the story behind it. So I would just put down here featured in the apartment for opinions. Again, people don't care about that. You got to be able to speak about them. So you need to fill out the actual description in itself. Let me just do this. I'm going to grab this, I'm going to come into Chat GPT just as the Analyzer tool is doing its thing. I'm going to go and find that article that was on the web. Okay, now read this, do nothing. And then what I'm going to get it to do is I'm going to get it to rewrite the description based on the story because I feel like the story, if it can interline it with speaking to the ideal guest, will make this such a better listing. Okay, now I want for you to rewrite the description and title. Now while it's doing that, I will notice about the pictures. So that first picture, fantastic. That is the hero image. That is the one that when you're on the scroll in St. Augustine, that will definitely stand out. In fact, if I were to come in here, do St. Augustine and I'd go for a little search again, that stands out. To me. There are some pretty cool properties in St. Augustine. But if I see that, I'm like, whoa, tell me more. Obviously this is why it's a guest favorite. The thing that's letting you down is pictures. 2, 3, 4, 5. This is prime real estate here. And you need to be able to, to sell the property. In those five things, you've got to earn the right to click in and instantly. The things that I notice here is that you've taken these yourself. So number one, go and invest in a professional photographer to come round when it is those quieter ones and get some professional pictures here. Because when you do it by yourself, I mean, look at these. The way that the light bounces off the thing there, it just doesn't look very good at all. And the way that you realign those pictures needs to improve. I'm sure you've got some parts of your property that are just so unique and it'll make it stand out and I just feel like a photographer will bring them out for sure. Also as well, I feel I remember from the actual video that you have bikes that you let people use. You've got to be able to show that in the pictures. And kettle barbecue. Free parking. Pets allowed. If you do have pets allowed. Oh, assistance animals only. Private gym, private sauna. You need to be showcasing these. So the first thing I would say, seeing you've got so much availability, is that you need to be showcasing, showcasing the fact. Right, let's go back into chat GPT. It's going to be on Airbnb. That's right. My chat GPT likes to ask a lot of clever questions to get a 10 out of 10 answer, but I'm just going to get to do it. So the art filled container house with jukebox, chef kitchen and sauna. To me that is already a better title. This isn't your average day. The prch Prince Prince Road Container house is a one of a kind home built from nine upcycled shipping containers packed with personality, top line tech and vintage flair. Inside, you'll find a 1950s jukebox. Again, this is pretty cool. I like that description a lot better than what you had then. What I would do, Jay or Rob, Sorry, is that in here you need to fill out your Airbnb list in a bit more and you've got a description. So in here I would talk about your story. So in 2017, Hurricane Imma rudely destroyed our home for years. So I built a house I shipping containers. That's devoted to. Come on in. That's what I would have in this bit here, fill out all of that, which would be. Which would be fantastic to do. Look, you can even see Ryan's review here. So that's Ryan Trahan's listing is obviously showing that he's been to all of these, these cool places. You can see the places that he's leaving reviews as well as he goes, which is. Which is funky. But again, you need to be able to do this. Now I know that you have been posting on your Instagram account about the fact that you've just had Ryan and Haley stay. But if you look at your Instagram again, you're pointing people back to your Airbnb listing, which is fine if that's the only thing you're going to be doing, but you're doing all of the work here to put people back to Airbnb. I would be 100 for yourself looking to get a direct booking website. Getting a direct booking solution. Go get a. Get a PMS set up. But the thing about your tagged images, you want to be showcasing and talking about you and the container, the before and after. Right. If you have got. I mean you've got this here six years ago. This is good. This is the before and after. People love that. And you've got the walkthrough which is good. People love that. But here you need to be. It doesn't. No one cares about just visit to Bill Bauer, right. You need to be in here on the third one maybe just showcasing reviews, do a reel of reviews. Views that are on there. I don't know. But even just screen grab when Ryan and Haley came to visit and the views that it's had on the back of it, you need to be able to. To showcase that. Just get rid of that one. Doesn't make sense to anybody. But things like this on a walkthrough are great. The only other thing that I would potentially suggest which is kind of crucial for properties like yours is that on your Airbnb listing that prop that picture number five, because you have got such a unique setup that means nothing. That's just theirs obvious. The coffee bar. I feel that's quite a cool. You can keep that. That. No, no. Because you've just done that there. But what I would be doing to look to is to get a 3D floor plan again. You'll have a floor plan hopefully somewhere of what you did. You can run that floor plan, upload it to chat GPT and ask to create it into a 3D floor plan for Airbnb and it will do so. And I feel like that would be kind of cool for your listing just because then people be able to understand the layout of where everything is is now I've gone and done this into Guest Impress as well, like I said. And again, it's got some key recommendations. Showcase unique architecture, highlight the tech, emphasize the relaxing and even in aspects improve photo quality and consistency for more professional appeal. So again, let me just go back to one of those images that I mentioned where the light was just really glaring. Okay. It's not giving me that option to do that. Let's do this one. So we're going to do an enhanced with AI on this one and let's see what it. What this tool comes up with at Guest Impress. This isn't your average state. And again, I feel like you've got such a cool opportunity here to have It Instagrammable and Googleable. But you just got to. Got to make it so you can't just say, go and check us out on ig The PCI H. The Prince Road Container House. The prch Prince Road Container House. I feel that's a pretty cool business name and one that's obviously done you well. I mean, hey, you know, you've got 51 reviews here. Got a really good start. It's just a case of getting more visibility out there. And I feel like with a good Instagram approach to this, obviously start doing all the direct bookingness, then you will get. So. So. And you're not just always reliant on Airbnb bringing the bookings in. Right, let's see if that image has caught up yet. There you go. I must admit, I'm not a massive fan of some AI images. It does make it looks a bit cartoony, but it's better than the pictures that you've got. Go get professional photographer. Go get them in there and get some better pictures. And I think you will absolutely smash it. Okay, right, let's move on to the next one. We're free down. Before we do that, let's rank and rate him now for context. He has been Instagramming on his stories, not on his main one, which is, you know, not top marks, but he has been Instagramming that. Haley and Ryan have been. I have seen that because I follow them now on Instagram. So we're going to put them in. In number three. All right, let's move on then to the next one. So we've done the container. We've done Mississippi, we've done Alabama. Now we are going to Charleston waterfront with deep water dock. So this is in South Carolina. Let's go and find the actual video itself on here. I've got so many tabs open. South Carolina. Good morning, sleepyheads. And again, if you're not watching the series, Do Go do go and check it out. It is an unbelievable series. We love watching it every day. Okay, so this one here. Let's go have a little, little quick look. I'll be totally honest with you, I've forgotten this one. So I need a little. A little reminder. But again, really nice hero image. So it's the first one on the front here. We love the bit of that. You can see instantly that they've had professional pictures done. Yeah, it is good. It does look very South Carolina. A little bit of old school with a little bit of modernization. The back is unbelievable. You've got the docks out there. So, yeah, very cool place. Let's go and see if we actually took advantage of this. This is hosted by somebody called Candice. Let's have a little quick look. Super host, obviously designer, born in the 80s, but can I find. Can I find anything about them? Charleston Waterfront. So instantly, this is not a hotel or an investment property that sits vacant. This is our dream home. Built on what we think is the most beautiful piece of property in all of Charleston. We are happy to share it with our Airbnb community. This Moder Charleston Waterfront offers all this. John's island estate has access to downtown. So she's obviously, she's calling out. A lot of people will be watching this. This is not a hotel or investment property. Well, Charleston Waterfront Retreat. I would be amazed if she's got an Instagram account. They scream hobbyist host to me from the off. So to answer your question, have I take advantage of it? Let's have a look. Well, they will turn around and go. We've solidly booked out until October, which well done them. Or they could have just closed it out and they're not taking bookings. I don't know. Because this doesn't look like a business. This looks like a hobbyist host. Now, the one thing that I've instantly noticed is that they do like to do a bit of the bullet points, which is good. The space, cars, details. I mean, this just looks like a. An Airbnb host and a hobbyist hosted that. Will she have taken advantage of it? Who knows? Does she know that she's been featured on a video that's had 2.4 million views? Who knows? That's all we've got. Does it look good? Amazing. Have I forgotten about it already? 100%. So with that being said, Charleston, I'm gonna put you down here. Looks amazing. Have you taken advantage of it? I don't think you even care, to be perfectly honest. You're booked up anyway. So let's move swiftly on. Let's move swiftly on, too. Okay, so this one was a cool one. I feel like this is a contender for number for number one. So this was the boat. Now, if you remember this day, this is North Carolina here. Where am I? So they got locked out of the boat. Not by the Airbnb hosts fault at all from the Wheel of Doom. They had to sleep. They had to sleep outside of the Airbnb. And if you look at it area right here, it's a boat. It is literally just a boat. But this video has got nearly 3 million views. 2.5 million views luxury lot in a perfect location. One of a kind. So again, if you, if you look at this, welcome aboard one of the largest and most luxurious yachts in the Carolina. 72 foot long with over weighing over a thousand hundred thousand pounds. Doesn't mean nothing to me. Which was custom made and cost over 4 million new. Doesn't mean nothing. So again the, the absolute description of this is awful pictures. They do look professional, which is. Which is good. Do they have the best ones at the. The first. The first five? I think so. I think that is a great shot. I feel like that's a reflection. I feel like that could be a better one. I reckon a drone shot in the harbor of this would be so much better than that. You could use that as picture number free because you've got the bed shot. But we've got three bed shots there. You need to be able to mix these up a little bit. But I think a drone shot of that showing where it is, I think that'll do a lot better than, than that one. So maybe go and get a drone shot in you too. Your description. All right, let's go and whack this into Chat GPT and I'll also go into our other one that we're using as well, new chat. So read this and then improve a copy of the description and the title. All right, so while that's doing that, I'm going to do the same thing again. I'm going to go into here, come into our Guest Impress tool. I'm going to go and analyze another listing again. I think the images generated this isn't the best because it makes it look a little bit AI to AI, but I feel like there's definitely a good.