How to hack the Airbnb AI so you can place your property in the category you want to be in

Recording of a brand new episode. So welcome aboard. Please do let me know in below in the comments where you're tuning in from around the world. And if you are tuning in live, give me a hashtag live. And also let me know what are your thoughts around the new Airbnb search changes. So many hosts in the hospitality community and the ones that I see on the forums are fuming with a few things. But I've got some good news to share with you on how you can manipulate the search to appear in these new categories that they are banging on about. So let me know what your thoughts are below in the comments. Wherever you're tuning in from, whether you're on Facebook, whether you're on YouTube, LinkedIn or wherever. If you're watching back on the replay, leave me a hashtag replay. Still leave me your thoughts and also as well drop in your Airbnb listing so we can all go and have a look at how the new system looks for you. So before we go, before we begin, let's start with with that little rap. This is a freestyle going off the dumb.

Ready for my close up good looking let me tell you get more bookings. Aw that'd be nice giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah you're gonna get em hun. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson. Whoa having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect you're better but direct. Here are the words in the podcast.

That's what comes okay everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. Hello Zoe. Hello Christina who's in with us live and the many other people that are tuning in from from all of the platforms which topping in it's going to be a pretty popular topic because we're nearly touching 100 people in total over all the platform. So let's get into it. Let me know what your thoughts are below. Let me know where you are in the world. Let me know your Airbnb list and drop it in and let's have a little look at some of the the little searches. So first and foremost the search has changed. They did say it was going to be a brand new one as you can see here on on the screen. I'll just bring it up now. So this is what the map looks like now. First and foremost I just want to save this. I want to just bring this up on screen. How Much Airbnb trying to copy Boostly right now. This is a. This is a Boostly website listings main map. This is the Airbnb website map listings. It's literally on the other side. I mean, Joe and Brian, if you wanted to copy me, all you have to do was ask. But. And that's by the by. So there's some pretty big changes that are coming. They have stripped it back massively. Like when you now land on the Airbnb website, you don't see any guff, it's just straight into it. And one of the. One of the big things that everybody has noticed is that there are categories and these categories take up pretty much the main discussion points. So if I just bring up on the screen here, Airbnb categories. Designed to help guests discover one of a kind homes. Our hosts offer millions of unique homes around the world. Airbnb Categories organizes them into created collections with over 50 categories of homes chosen for their style, location or nearby activities, and then they go into what they are. So categories is a big part of search now and I'm definitely going to touch base on that. But before we do, before we crack into everything, I just want to give a little bit of a shout out to a member of the Boostly community, as I like to do now on our Boostly podcast. We like to give a little bit of a tip of the hat to say to share their wins and just to sort of give a shout out to some amazing humans that are part of the Boostly community. The Boostly community. For those who don't know, We've got over 10,000 years of experience in there. We've got some of the best of the best. If you want to be part of the Boostly community, just go to boostlyacademy.com but before we do, give a little shout out to Ger, Mr. Ger Jones. He was being off Facebook for a while out of the group. Happens to the best of us. But he is, he is back. He's back into the group and just want to say we said that he's back, which is amazing and so much love is shared in the group. So go well back. Welcome back. Is a stalwart of the community of the group. He provides so much motivation to hosts even when they're the lowest ebb. And I just wanted to give him a little shout. So please give him some love in the comments. If you are part of the Boosted community, it's great to have you back, buddy. Okay, so let's go on to it first and Foremost, the first thing that you will notice right now, the biggest change, which is interesting for me because this is something that we've been talking about for a while, how to manipulate that search, how to draw the attention. When somebody is running a search on Airbnb, you will notice that the description is no more. Now, what does that mean for hosts who are trying to grab attention on the Airbnb search, to try and then draw them away from Airbnb to their direct book sites? Well, first and foremost, you can't have those fancy titles anymore. You can't have emojis in the titles in, in of your Airbnb listing. Rest in peace emojis. That has always been a controversial talking point. You can talk about emojis all day long, but now it doesn't mean anything. So what do you get now? Well, when you're on the search, as you can see here on the screen, if you are, if you are watching in and tuning in with me on the, on my left, which is just here, you have got this. So you've got category and then you've got groups of two. Now, obviously, if you're looking on the app, it's going to be slightly different. I'm doing this on a computer. But as you can see over here, as over here, the way that it works now is they show you, number one, the home, as in what your, your property is. And then it also shows them the price and it shows them the picture and the review and this little tag here. So it's, it's very different. And the number one thing that you have to make sure now is that you have to make sure that unique selling picture is spot on. So that first picture, USP unique selling photo, is your main picture, the one that draws the attention. You no longer can rely on some fancy copy or an emoji to grab the attention. You've now got to rely on that first picture also as well, the tag. Now, there's nothing you can do about the tag. Airbnb associate that tag to you, but those that have got a tag, again, it draws the attention. So the main thing is, is that number one. So what I've done on here is I've highlighted those little tags, the main picture and the category. So it's the category that we're talking about and the category that's going to definitely get a lot of attention. Now, first and foremost, you may be wondering, well, how can I get placed in a category? Well, it depends on two main things. And Airbnb have said this in the past and they're obviously going to be drumming it more home. And obviously this is brand new. This is less than 48 hours old. For the, for the remainder of this month and maybe even for the remainder of this quarter of this year of Q2 of 2022, it's going to take time for it to figure itself out. But there's definitely something that you can be doing now in the short term to be impacting this. And number one, the fee. The feature that they talk about is key features of your space that are decepted or basically depicted with high quality photographs. So high quality photography. So if you haven't yet got high quality photos on your Airbnb listing and it's time for you to maybe book in a photo shoot, maybe time for you to get some new pictures done. But also as well, the, the key thing of that is not just high quality photos. Key features. So what are key features? It's your unique selling point. So if you were, for example, a glamping hut or a glamping property, or you were doing glamping, for example, the pictures that you would put in, the pictures that you would list on your Airbnb property, Airbnb listing, those first 10 would be of that. Okay, so you would take high quality pictures, focusing and highlighting the fact that you are glamping. Okay. Now not only that, what you need to do is you have to take full advantage of the captions. So whenever you add a picture to Airbnb, you've got the ability to add a caption. Now, there's no guaranteed win rate with this or success rate with this or proof of this. But if you utilize the captions and if you were to utilize keywords, and again, if you just got to think about what those keywords would be, you basically use that option and that ability to use keywords and tell the user what they are looking at. And again, always think when you're typing this out, you're writing it for the Airbnb algorithm because this is what they're talking about. They say that with the categories and how to take advantage of it, high quality photos, focusing on your key features, using the photo captions to describe what the guest is looking at clearly. So with the glamping, if you've got the exterior shot with the, with the patio and the hot tub and the view, you would utilize that to talk about the hot tub, the fantastic views, the glamping. Okay, so don't just half heart, a half asset. Don't just put this is a picture of Our tent, you would go in and you would give it a bit of context to it, explain to the guests what they are looking at. Now, we always say that a picture tells a thousand words, but now you're going to actually have to take advantage of those captions and in those Airbnb pictures. So there's 50, like I say, over 50 categories to choose from. They've got them here from amazing views, Arctic beach, Bed and breakfast, camping, chef's, chef's kitchen, countryside, creative spaces, design, golfing. There's, there's many, many more in there. I mean if we were just to go have a quick look at that search that I brought up a second ago when I was looking at York shared homes, barns, national parks, tiny homes designed and farms, these, there's so many to potentially choose from. Now this could be the difference from you being in an over populated category. Then focus featuring on a category that is very, very rare, but one that's going to stand out. And the example I wanted to give to you again, I went on this morning to have a little look, a little browse around and I clicked on the camping one. And bearing in mind this is on the Airbnb full search. I haven't filtered it down to anything. This is anywhere, any week. And the number one choice for camping was this rusty old caravan with amazing views. So again, this is a prime time to take advantage of it right now more than any before. If you want to get your listen in front of others. And yes, Jody, you've just put in the live chat. So describe your photo. That is a very simplistic version of what I'm trying to say here is describe your pictures. Now another thing that you can be doing is you've got to take advantage of the backend, the extranet of Airbnb, your dashboard, your home behind the scenes, your hosting dashboard. I went on today just to see if there's anything that changed. And the first thing that they hit with me is this. Do you have a dedicated workspace? Okay. Now obviously if anybody's been paying attention to Brian Chesky's Twitter, you will have noticed that he is now traveling the world, staying just in Airbnbs. He's working and living. And this is a trend that is going more and more and more and more. And so Airbnb now are going to be making sure that you're listing is fully up to date with the latest amenities and features. So if you're going to take pictures and you're going to add new pictures to your list and if you're going to change your pictures up and you're going to then describe them in the captions. Please, please, please make sure that you combine that by making sure that the amenities you tick for each of your listings match it. Because this is what the AI technology, this is what the machine learning will be looking for. So again, if you haven't done so already, go and have a look. And if you haven't got a dedicated workspace now, Airbnb aren't just adding this because their founder is now traveling around the world. This is based on what is happening with their data. They've got access to tons of data. They can see so much more than what we can. And this is definitely a trend now. Not only dedicated workspaces, but also as well, your wi fi. If you've updated the app to the latest version, you will notice in the changes you can is that filtering for WI FI speed is going to become a thing sooner rather than later. Those of you that have been tuning into the Boostly podcast since last September, you know that this is something that we've been talking about, that this is coming. You can now go into your listings on the app and add in your WI fi speed. Okay? And that's going to start to get categorized. This is all due to the fact now that so many people are traveling while working or working while traveling workation. And so if you can fit in a dedicated workspace, whether it be an office, whatever it may be, then make sure that not only do you mark it down, but you go and take a picture of it and set it up nicely. Now, the core message that I want to say to everybody is that yes, we want to utilize Airbnb for what it is. It's an amazing marketing machine. And yes, we can manipulate it and we can get guests, future potential guests, to see us, but at the end of the day, you don't want to be promising something that you don't have. So I'm always a massive fan of under promise and over deliver, and I, and I can't stress this enough, is that if you've got a city apartment and if you go and say amazing views and you try and tweak that camera and try and manipulate that shot so it looks like you've got amazing shoe shot views of your skyline, but when the guest turns up and they look straight out, they're looking at a building, then that is going to get marked down heavily in the reviews. So the reviews is the final thing that Airbnb will look for, is that the Guest is saying it offers X, but the review is showing that somewhat completely different. So make sure that what you offer is what they get. And if you do that, then your listing, your profile, your business will become visible. And if you give the guest the best experience, and this is the most important takeaway that I want to give to everybody tuning in, whether it's live or on the replay, is that if you give your guests the best experience, then they will go away and you will get referrals and you will get repeat direct bookings for life. It will fill up your property. So you will never have to rely or panic when Airbnb goes and move the goal posts again. Okay, that's the most important thing. If you want to build a business, build a brand, then you're going to have to build a direct booking element into what you're doing so that you're never reliant on Airbnb. So when they do go and move the goal post, you're out panicking, going, ah, shit, I got to try and do all of this instead. On a day like today, you can go and try and manipulate it to try and show in more searches and categories so someone lands on your listing. And then with the things that I talk about about driving people from an OTA list into a to a Google search to then find on your website, then you're just taking full advantage of it instead of relying on it. So I hope I find you all. Well, let me know your thoughts in the comments. Let me know if you've watched this live by leaving a hashtag live. We've got a lot of people tuning in right now all over the channels. And if you want to find out more about Airbnb and all the latest changes, then come on into the to the Facebook group. The hospitality community is the free community and the boostly community is is those that want to take their direct booking step a little bit further, just like Ger and so many other people. And if you want to start off somewhere, go and grab a copy of this, the book Direct Playbook. It's available on Amazon right now. It's got packed with full tips, 101 tips on how you can increase your direct bookings. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please keep the conversation going in the comments. Please let me know what your thoughts are. Please let me know what you're doing. And also as well, let me know by leaving a link to your Airbnb listing. Let me know when you've added in the photo captions and I'll go and have a little look and give you a little bit of help in hand and so will the full community. Thank you so much everybody. I'll be back very soon with another podcast episode. As always keep proactive, don't stay reactive and let's go and get some direct bookings. This is a freestyle going off the dime.

Ready for my close up good looking let me tell you get more bookings. Oh that'd be nice giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah you're gonna get em hun you're gonna sit back listen to Mark Simpson whoa having a blast gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cause it's so hard and the tee is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it just do it loosely if you want my respect you'll better put direct mmm Here are the words in the podcast that's what comes.