How to Get Started on Airbnb 🚀

Okay, let's talk about Airbnb. Now, there's a massive misconception out there in the hospitality world that Airbnb is just for the domestic people. So if you've got a spare room in your house or holiday cottage or holiday rentals, now their Airbnb is one of the biggest and fastest growing hospitality websites in the world. It was started in San Francisco by a couple of guys who couldn't pay their debts, who were right next to a massive conference center and went out and bought blow up mattresses and created a quick website and offered it to anybody coming to their conference who couldn't get a hotel room. That's how it was created. They paid the debts and they grew and grew and grew from there. And the reason why it's become so popular is that people now can get a different experience when they go on holiday. Now, I personally love Airbnb. I probably use it more than staying in a hotel, if I'm perfectly honest. On my honeymoon, me and my wife, we went traveling around America. One of the first places we landed was Los Angeles. I used to live in Los Angeles, so I knew the area kind of well. We wanted to stay near Venice. Instead of going for your bog standard hotel, your Hilton or whatever, we went on Airbnb and we got a place right next to the beach for a fraction of the cost of a hotel room. And that's literally where so many people's booking patterns are going now. So much so that booking.com, expedia, Hilton's and all the bid guys are starting to think a little bit differently. So for us and independent hospitality owners, whether it's a hotel or a guest house, I am seeing good results on Airbnb. So I want to show you how you can get your property on Airbnb. And like I've said from the start, end of the day, let's get everything with just the basics. So let's get listed on all the big websites with just the basic listing, and if it proves popular, then we can go and delve into it further. The big struggle and the big error that I see so many people making is that when they create a listing, they do it all wrong. And if you do it wrong, you're going to get stung. And that is where people start saying, oh, Airbnb is crap. This is the homepage. As you can see, they are really going big on experiences at the moment. Don't worry too much about this. Just at the moment, it's still growing. They're only available in the larger Cities at present, so LA and London, etc. But it will be coming. So if your property, for example, can do something like an experience, for example, a one of my clients offers a wine tasting tour for free when they stay at the property. This could be something to add in at a later, later date. As you can see here, homes and featured destinations. It's really cool, it's really art. So very hipster y, very millennial. But so many people are using this website now, so it would be foolish to not take advantage of it. So let me go into the dashboard. So you create your account and it's really easy to create an account. You just need a password, you need an email address and then you can get started. So when you first log in, you go to your listing. Now the granary, for those who know by now, it is a 14 bedroom guest house and it's got free holiday cottages. Now what I recommend to get started and you know, be aware that I'm showing you the basics here is just create a listing for one room. Really simple, really easy, one room. Now the biggest mistake that I see people make when I've listed their guest houses is that when they fill in the basic form, they're basing it on a normal holiday listing site like booking.com for example. So you would go onto booking.com and say, I am a guest house, I've got 10 rooms, they're all individual, double room, single room, etc, etc Airbnb, don't think like that. Don't forget it was made for the domestic people. So if you go in here and you say that I've got 16 bedrooms, I've got 20 beds and I can hold, you know, 40 guests that will sell your property on Airbnb, that you will be able to host 40 guests in one booking. 16 rooms for one booking and 20 beds for one booking. And then you're gonna go price it at 80 pound for the night. And so a guest could potentially book it for all of that. And that's where it gets crazy. That's where accidents happen. So just to start with, whether you've got a 20 bed hotel and you're watching this, whether you've got a five bedroom guest house, just take one of your room, take your best room, take your favorite room, whatever room that may be, whatever one that comes to mind, and just submit that one for the granary. We've gone for Pet Friendly bedroom in the Countryside. So you give it a nice little title. So you can't just go and call it, you know, room One doesn't make sense. You've got to give it a name, got to give it an edge. Because as you can see when you're on the front. So this is a search here. So when you're on the front here, and this is Scarborough uk, double room in charming Georgian house. I assume that's going to say that stands out a lot better than just cowshed. You know the things that really stand out for Airbnb. Two things again, we're coming back to the images. Your photo is so important and that first line of description. So they give you an example, they give you an advantage, sorry, over other listing sites where they let you sort of sell it in the description. So make sure that's cool. So weightless changes here. So double room, double room.

With a fantastic countryside view. Something like that.

Summary. What they do here is they give you a template. So they ask you a load of questions and after you've answered the questions, it just basically provides you with a template. So it'll say, you know, tell me a little bit more about your property. And it just comes up with a really basic sort of summary of your property. So just put farm for the granary, farm stay, accommodation.

In the middle.

And remember, you're listing this like it's just for the room.

So breakfast is included with the stay.

Your bedroom is pet friendly, so why.

Not bring your dog? What else can we put here? A double room, double bed with bath and shower. Sweet. We provide the towels, bedding and the fun.

As you can see, the way I list the granary online is not your bog standard, boring listing. I do like to make people smile and to take notice. That's just how I do my copy. You may be totally different, just suit your personality because end of the day, if you're all snobbish in your copy of your listing, then when they rock up to you and you're not that sort of person, then they will spot it a mile off. And again, if you're friendly and funny in your copy, but when they arrive, you're yes, sir, sorry, sir, you know, madam, etc. Then it just doesn't match it. So write that matches your personality, write that matches to stay at your property. As you can see, you can write a little bit more about the farm. So, sixth generation.

Fam.

The Simpson family.

We are a working farm, working, working farm. So depending on the time of the year, you might be lucky enough to see some baby animals, Parmesan.

And again, they are asking you these questions, basing it on it being a Holiday letter or a rental. So if you already are a holiday letter or a rental, this is easy. You've done this on every single website that you've listed on for a guest house is a little bit different. So bearing in mind, just match it up to what you offer at the moment. So you will get your own key, You will have full access to the.

Property, something like that.

Guest interaction. We live on site.

And I'm more than happy to answer any questions, issues you may have.

So then you can write about Howard Dale.

Howard Dale is 10 miles from Scarborough and 12 miles. Seaside of a forestry.

Again, the more information you fill in now, the more information that the guest will have. And again you can preview your listing.

So when comes up here, this is.

What the guest sees. So I wanted this image to be of the view with the animal in the farm. You know when they click on that image and they go to the next one, they can start to see a little bit more about the room. So don't forget when you're putting the room image in here, make sure it matches up to the room that you're going to give them. You know, the room that you have in mind. Now this is the important bit, the next bit when it comes to your calendar. Don't sync this up to your property management system. And hear me out before I say this, Let me take you in. So you're going to just list one room. Now obviously you may have 10 rooms, 12 rooms, 15 rooms available and say for example, you're just going to put in a double room. So say that all of your rooms are double room, not of them, all of them are pet friendly for example. But just basically try and do it as a generic list in here have the pricing to be something average. So don't you know our base average price is 88 pounds. Okay, now here's what you're going to do. When it comes to the booking settings, there's two options that they give you on booking.com now there's the book instant. So basically as soon as a guest comes on, they can book straight there. And then I say turn that off. The reason being is that guests can book. Straight away. It's similar to how booking.com or Expedia work. But unlike booking.com unlike Expedia it's not a two way sync to your calendar. So a guest could book your last room on for the granary, for example, and they book it on the day of arrival or two days before. And for whatever reason you do not get that email. It just may go missing or you missed a notification on your phone. A guest rocks up. In the meantime, somebody has booked from booking.com and it goes straight through and it takes that last spot. The guest arrives on the day and they haven't got a room. Double bookings are the worst. It's happened to me. I've never felt so embarrassed. And all the admin around it is just impossible until Airbnb develop a 2 sync. So basically what a 2 sync means is that when a booking comes in on Airbnb, it automatically takes it off your calendar. Then I do not recommend having the automatically book option on. Now they will say that your listing will be affected, that they won't, you know, you won't appear on the search results as much. But it doesn't matter. Always, always, always have that option where the guests must send a reservation request. And what that is is that when a guest sends a reservation request, you get a little email, you get a notification on your phone. You either accept it or you decline it. So this gives you the time to look at this in your own time. You can go to your calendar, go to your property management system and just match the availability to the guest request and then you can knock it off on your property management system so nobody else can book it. Now look, you can see all the peer pressure that Airbnb are putting on me right now. Increase your earnings with instant book. Guest who meets all your requirements can book instantly. Otherwise others will need to send a reservation request recommended. The peer pressure is there, but I never ever, ever let them do an instant book. I did it when it first came out. Problems occurred. Okay, so going back to why to add one room. Add one room. Do not sync your calendar up, have all the availability in the world and then let guests send you reservation requests. Do that, you'll get more eyes on your page and you'll be able to get a reservation request come through. If they can't get in that room, which is that pet friendly room, see if the other pet friendly rooms available. You know, I've got, I've got a lot of rooms and my cottages for the granary on Airbnb. So that is why I'm able to look at the pet friendly, the family, the doubles, the single, etc. That's the first guest requirements Airbnb standard requirements. Profile photo confirmed. Email and phone number, payment information agreement to house rules. So basically you've got all of this in here. It all it basically means is that Airbnb don't want to have idiots booking on their site. They're like a community. So this is why they ask when you sign up to Airbnb in the past, you had to give them a profile picture, you had to do a government issued id. The reason being that when Airbnb was first created, they're so different to any other listing site or any other business in the world. They went and got over call 100 customers, their core hundred people that were listing their properties on the site. And don't forget, when they first started out, it was just guests, it was just people, people with a spare room. And they said that one of the main issues that they had was safety and they wanted to know who was coming to stay with them. So that is why to be on Airbnb, they made you have a government id. It's basically a copy of your passport, copy of your driving license. So just so you could say who you say you were. Okay, going back to the basic listings again, just match up your house rules and your policies with what you have at present. You know, check in and check out. The bottom one is the cancellation one. So the way that Airbnb works with payments is that they charge the guest, the money sits in lieu on Airbnb and then at the end of the month or after the stay, Airbnb pay you. So with your cancellation policy, you can have it as being flexible, moderate or strict. So if you have it as strict, if a guest, like I say, if a guest cancels, and it's Pretty self explanatory, 50% refund up until one week prior to arrival. So if I book now for the 1st of November at the Granary and it's £100 a night and I stay for two nights, that's £200. As long as I cancel one week prior to arrival, then I will get a hundred pounds back and I'll lose £100. So £100 will come to me and £100 back to the guest. You know, it's simple, simple stuff. So try and match it, the cancellation policy to what you do at the moment. Pricing again, Airbnb have got this new pricing rule where they can do smart pricing. Now if we turn smart pricing on what it does here is that it will. So we've got this here. So basically my base price is £88. So I would. And what it does is it takes all the popular dates and all the non popular dates. So what it will do the maximum, it will automatically adjust every day. So if on a really, really quiet day and it takes all the Listings in Scarborough. If on a quiet, really, really quiet day, it will take my base price of £88 and knock it down to 87, I could even go down as low as 80. Then on really, really popular days, it will go up to 121. So that's how smart pricing works. It's new, give it a try. You know, end of the day they do it all for you, etc. But have a little play around with it. If you're not comfortable with smart pricing, just put your base price and that is basically what the guest sees. Now the only other change that you would need to do is if you were going to charge a cleaning fee or a security deposit etc on there. Now what you will notice, and if anybody is on Airbnb and you've got a listing, you'll notice this, that say Your price is £90, there's a service fee. Now this is how Airbnb makes it money. Airbnb compared to booking.com and Expedia only charges 5% commission. If you abide by their instant book policy, then it's 3% commission. So really low for hoteliers where they make the additional money is with service fees. So they charge the guest a service fee. So they're making money from you, the renter, and from the guest who's going to be booking. So if you ever go on and do a search and you're thinking, well, I'm only charging 100 pound a night, that should be £200. For £200. But then if the guest is spending more money, it's the service fee. Okay, so we've gone through smart pricing, length of stay, we've got all of that. Yeah, if you can. Basically, if you've got a rental property, you can offer a discount if they stay for a week. You know, if a guest ever wants to stay with me for a week, I'm always going to give them a discount or a month, you know what I mean? So it's, it's definitely well worth adding in there. End of the day, like with all of this, if the guest wants to make a booking, this will come through to me. It does not guarantee the booking, they're just inquiring. So play around with this, you know, it's definitely worthwhile doing. Right, so that's availability, which is good. Again, it's all pretty much self explanatory here, but you can amend it all in there. Finally, co hosts. So if you want, you know, if you want to have a couple of users active on here, so for example, when I work with my clients and we add them to Airbnb, it's all under my account, and then I just set them as a co host so that we can both manage the account. They still get paid, but we'll just be able to both manage it together. And that's as simple as that, really. Airbnb, I would get started. What I want you to do now is to go and go to Airbnb and list your property. Get the best pictures. Don't forget the first six pictures. Sell your property, so make sure your pictures are spot on. Think of a nice little title here, think of a nice little description and just list one room. If you want it to get set up and you're not confident of going live, send the link to me. I'm more than happy to have a look at it for you and give you my feedback. So that's Airbnb. I'm going to leave you there. The challenge and the task right now is to go and create a listing, get your pictures, get set up for one room, and then let me know you go. Email MarketBoostly, message me on Facebook, comment below, and I will see you for the next part of the course.