Top Airbnb Expert Reveals 11 Game-Changing Tips to Boost Your Listing

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. I like to take notes. In fact, I feel that that is a big reason that I'm able to successfully improve my short term rentals. Constantly. I'm constantly listening to other podcasts and YouTube channels and going to events and trying to remember it all, but of course I can't remember it all. So I store all my notes and I was going through my inbox, my inbox where I store a lot of these random notes recently, and I pulled out some notes nuggets, 12 nuggets that I sort of just had there unorganized, that I think will help you a lot with your short term rental. And so stay tuned. I want to break those down in a real quick rapid fire episode. And tip number one is for Airbnb. And yes, if you have a boutique hotel, you should also be listed on Airbnb. If you're not, you're leaving a lot of exposure on the table. And so for all of you out there, if you're currently listed on Airbnb, we know that Airbnb automatically filters your properties by category. It could be historical, it could be cabin, it could be tiny home. But they don't always do a perfect job of categorizing your property and sometimes they fail to include you in categories that you should be included on. And so good news, you can actually request that they edit the categories that are currently showing up for your property or request up to five new ones and you can simply go to elevate translated.com forward slash categories. That link sounds a little weird being Airbnb. I did pull this from Jasper Rivers podcast a while back. So shout out to you Jasper, who we've had on this show, he creates fabulous content and this is a tip I think that all of you should look into if you haven't already checked out the categories for your properties. Number two, I feel like we talk about this one a lot, but I just got to reiterate how important photos are. And if you think about it, if your property's making 50, $100,000 a year, investing $1,000 on photos should be a no brainer. You need to have the best photos possible. It's night and day, the difference between a property that successfully operates so provides a good guest experience, but that has good photos versus one that has bad. So make sure that you have really good photos. I know that's not like a crazy new idea, but also make sure that you have drone photos, make sure that you have sunset photos, make sure that you have Parking photos or photos of some of those places maybe that aren't that photogenic, you could say, because if you don't have them in there, well, you're not painting the full picture. And your guest, it might not meet their expectations. Right. So we got to make sure that our photos are accurate, but we want to make sure that they are the best quality possible. So please do not use your cell phone to take the photos. Hire professional. Okay, three, and these first few tips are, are just sort of around listing and marketing. And the third one is I had a note on wallpaper. I don't actually have wallpaper in any of my properties yet, but just continuing with this theme of good photos and visibility, getting good visibility on the different search engines, that happens by having photos that stand out. And so by installing wallpaper on a wall, you can make a very quick, nice, different accent wall. And so consider putting some wallpaper in your properties if you're seeing your occupancy and your demand go down a little bit. Okay, the fourth tip here, there's a couple little decor items that you might want to take another peek at. The first one is your doormat. So yes, most properties have a doormat, right? When's the last time you checked yours out? Is it dirty? Are your housekeepers checking it out for you? If you're operating your property remotely, you can order these things on Amazon, ship them there very, very quickly. Consider putting a funny one in there. Or just make sure that you're changing those because remember, that's the first thing that someone sees before they open the door to your property. Wireless chargers. We know that people cannot live without their cell phones these days. And it's just a really nice convenience. Put some wireless chargers next to the bed so that people have quick, easy access. The next little piece here is just a pet peeve of mine. And we've done a lot of episodes on decor and stuff like this in the past. If you're new to the channel, you can find all of our prior content@str riches.com so make sure that all your light bulbs are the same color. A big pet fee is when I check into an Airbnb and there's two bedside lamps. One has a warm bulb and the other has that bright hospital looking one. It's just really tacky. And a light bulbs like $5. Right. So make sure that you've checked that on your properties if you haven't recently. Okay. Another four tips when it comes to operations and reception. And the first one is, did you forget something? At your property or did your housekeeper or whoever's doing the turnovers for your property? Did the guest show up and maybe there's not enough toilet paper? Hopefully this is not the case. But this is an emergency situation and sometimes you need to get something over there really quickly. Well, luckily we can order a lot of things online now with exceptional delivery times. And so consider using Amazon's one hour delivery service if you happen to be in a larger city. Or consider using Grubhub or DoorDash for sending food to your guests. Or maybe a little surprise of some sort if you need to. If you find yourself missing something, consider the online ordering options now because they're better than they've ever been. Okay, number six is to limit your response messages. We know that people do not read, like hardly at all anymore, but we know when they do read is the moment they make the reservation and right before they check in. So consider limiting the length of your messages and also making sure that the timing of your messages going out are much more in line with when your guests are actually going to be paying attention. Okay, tip number seven. And this comes back to guest experience. And that is if a guest asks you for something, maybe they ask you if you have a blender in your kitchen or maybe they ask if you have baking trays or maybe they ask if you have wireless chargers as they're on their way to your property because they forgot theirs. Well, if they're asking you for something, the chances are that other people are thinking about this as well, but they maybe just don't ask you. So in a nutshell, if someone's asked you for some sort of item they that you should have in your home and you don't have it there, lots of other people have probably looked for it but just never said anything. So make sure you go on Amazon or wherever you purchase your supplies and your furnishings, you pick one up and you add it to your property. Okay, number eight, we're going to talk about minimum prices. And I talk a lot about revenue management on this channel. If you missed some of our past episodes, you can check out 237. We talked about why you need another minimum price. I know there's a lot of you out there thinking, how can I have two minimum prices? Check out episode 237 7. We'll explain how and why you need another one. Episode 255 we talked about how you can really easily understand if your minimum price is not low enough. So go back and check those out. But for today, the quick TIP is that you need to know your fixed costs on your property, right. So these are going to include things that you can't change the cost or they don't change monthly. So this would be your mortgage, for example. This would be property tax. This would be, you know, maybe you have a gardening service that you have every month or pool service every month. The costs that don't change, you need to know those. And then next you need to know your variable cost per reservation. So these will be things like how much you have to pay your housekeeper, how much your electricity or the electric bills utilities might be. Once you have those two numbers, you can decide what your minimum price should be. And then in my opinion, assuming you're running an investment and this isn't like a personal type property, you should always be renting at that minimum price number in a last case emergency situation. And now I know there's a lot of you thinking out there, it's, it's not worth a few extra dollars to pick up over the month, potentially getting a new gas. But I'd consider rethinking it because you're also going to get another review, right. And if you're getting more reviews and you're doing a really good job and you're building that average and the account well, then that will ensure that your property is more visible than your competitors and that will ensure that you will make more money. So make sure you know your fixed costs, make sure you have a really accurate estimate of your variable cost and then adjust your minimum price accordingly and pick up some more reviews if you're finding your property is not staying occupied. Okay, we got four more. And this is for those of you out there looking for your next investment. You need to consider what size property it is you're looking for in that new market. Because we know that a two bedroom might rent for more than a three bedroom. Yeah, it all comes down to supply and demand. You can find those numbers on airdna Co or dynamic pricing tools like Price Lab. So that is tip number nine. Make sure if you're looking in a new market that you know exactly the best size property to purchase. Number 10 is just to remember when we're using all these data tools that they are averages. Right. So we really have to take that with a grain of salt. Remember, There is a 90th percentile that operates that way year over year. You can learn a lot from those properties. Right. You can also get a pretty good idea of why properties not earning a lot in a market. Yes, a lot of that Comes down to reviews, but there's so much more to it. So just remember that averages are averages and we need to understand a potential market a lot better than just going off of averages. Tip number 11 is do not compare potential properties. So property that you might be investing in with data from properties that are not active. What do I mean by that? Well, a lot of these data sources that we use show all of the short term rentals in the market and maybe some of those were online for like a month just to kind of test it out. That would mean that that property was only active for 30 days out of the year. So to really get a good estimate, you need to filter those results, I would say to at least 250 days out of the year. This will help account for that are seasonal. Maybe you have owners staying there. So just remember that we need to make sure that the data we're using is good data. And then the last tip, you don't want to be comparing properties, potential properties that you're investing in, to data for properties that don't have a lot of reviews. Right. I mentioned a while back that when I was doing some research for some of my properties in California, just playing around with the data that it was estimated that a two bedroom property in the same market with a 4.6 average on Airbnb versus a 4.9 average, was earning half as much with basically everything else being equal. So the location, you know, the size, amenities, all of that was pretty much equal. And the properties were estimated to earn half as much. I know I've talked with partners that have come to us, a lot of them from some of the bigger box management companies and unfortunately I don't want to say any names, but one of them rhymes with Shimamasa that might help you out. They have reviews in some markets that are just going the wrong direction and so it makes a really big impact. And so make sure that you're comparing good data if you're looking in a new market. And until next time, Those are just 12 little quick tips if you're curious where I store all my notes. Well, I use a program called Notion. It's amazing they have a free version. It's the best program I found out there. I used to use OneNote and so check that out if you haven't already. I'm sure you'll find yourself using it multiple times a day, just like my team and I do. Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week and thanks for tuning in. It.