Are you someone who wants to create real financial freedom through Airbnb investing, but you're feeling frustrated because you don't actually know what moves the needle?
Maybe your weekends are full, but your place just sits empty during the week — and you're realizing that half-booked calendars usually mean break-even results. And that's not why you got into investing.
What if instead you had an Airbnb that consistently attracted the right guests, filled in those mid-week gaps, and actually produced the cash flow you need to support the life you want to live?
Tune in to Episode 117 of the Host Coach Airbnb Investing Podcast to learn our 12 suggestions curated from keeping our 14 Airbnbs 97% occupied to help you stop guessing, avoid wasting money, and start building an Airbnb that supports your financial freedom!
Topics discussed in this episode:
- How to get past break-even and into profitability
- Must-have Airbnb amenities and furnishings to attract business travelers
- 3 key listing tweaks to boost mid-week bookings
- How to create an automated repeat booking funnel
- Why orphans and same-day availability matter
Host Coach Airbnb Podcast Episode 117 Show Notes:
In any given market, an average occupancy is around 50%, which tends to be most investors like breakeven point. 50% occupancy just covers your fixed costs - so the key to profitability is higher occupancy. A full Airbnb calendar equals a full bank account that we all want and need.
Weekends naturally book, it's just the time when people want to get away and travel, have experiences outside their homes and neighborhoods. So the question is "How do we attract midweek bookings?" Depending on your market, your midweek and your weekend guest avatars may be different. For example, if your market is Charlottesville you could have guests who book based on proximity to wineries on weekends and on the flip side, guests who book for business meetings or conference proximity on the weekdays.
I was just speaking with a client who was struggling with their midweek bookings and he said to me, "I'm in an urban market a few colleges around, I get my weekends full, but I don't get any bookings during the week." We followed up on my next two suggestions and now the calendar is filling up.
1. Conduct an Internet Speed Test in Your Airbnb.
You have to be on your phone and in your Airbnb in your property. Open up the amenity section and you'll be prompted for, to run a speed test. When you do that, the app will run the speed test and verify to your listing the actual speed. So Airbnb will then give you a verified high speed internet badge on your listing and post the actual speed as an amenity: Fast wifi 360 megabytes per second. This really matters for guests who need to work while in your Airbnb, particularly business travelers, who traditionally traveling during the weeks it may need to take video conference calls.
2. Add This Business-Friendly Airbnb Amenity
Add a leaning desk to make an office space out of an empty wall. If your Airbnb doesn't have an extra room for a dedicated office, the leaning desk is a hundred percent our go-to. My favorite leaning desk is 30 inches wide and 20 inches deep... so it's easy to fit almost anywhere and is way more visually interesting than just a normal desk that people have in their homes. I always put a few books that match my accent color and a faux plant on the desk shelves. At $148, it's an inexpensive and eye-catching amenity for your business travelers.
We actually have one on the top of a stair landing, making use of wasted space in a ski chalet where we didn't have regular office space. We put others in the master bedroom, guest room, wherever we can squeeze a leaning desk in, in a property, we absolutely do.
Pro tip: Ideally you want the leaning desk in an area where a door can be shut for privacy because, when you are putting that amenity in your Airbnb listing, it does ask if there's a door that can be closed for privacy.
We have several more suggestions to help you fill up those weekdays.
3. Upgrade Your Airbnb's Office Chair
Invest in a comfortable office chair, not a crappy plastic one. We've all suffered from sitting in terrible office chairs. Don't do that to your guests. Look at Home Goods, Wayfair, or Amazon for stylish chairs that have great reviews about how comfortable they are. Look at the reviews because I have definitely picked pretty things that were excruciating and had to replace them. And this is another great item to add a splash of your accent color. Think green or blue velvet office chairs if that's in your design palette. Or you can match a faux leather office chair to the other elements in your Airbnb to have that cohesive design element.
4. Add a Computer Monitor on a Swing Arm
I actually got this idea from a client just a couple of weeks ago. Add a computer monitor on a swing arm. These can be wall mounted or they can be clamped to the desks. The arms are like $30 or $40 on Amazon. Then add a 24 inch monitor from Amazon, that's about $80. We're all in for $120.
Next, make sure you get a good photo of this setup. The photo shows any business traveler that you are serious about making their work stay amazing. This is about marketing. Even if guests never use this extra monitor this stay, your place may get picked because it was there. It's kind of like the hanging basket chair, but for work!
And I have to say Culin absolutely loves having two monitors. He has two in his office. He even bought one for our virtual team member, so she could do side by side. You can't see it. But here in the studio we have another monitor mounted to the wall. It's something that I could see him 100% choosing to stay at an Airbnb that offered it over one that didn't have this business amenity. It's little things.
Pro Tip: We know that trying to find perfect Airbnb furnishings that balance, price, design, and functionality can be really frustrating, so use our Airbnb Furnishings & Amenity List built from designing and operating our 14 properties over our last nine years of hosting. I made it to help you maximize your Airbnb cash flow by making smart, intentional furnishing decisions that guests- including weekday business travelers actually care about. Inside, you'll see our exact desks, chairs, monitors, lighting, kitchen, much inside. You'll see the exact desks, chairs, monitors, lighting, kitchen must-haves, and other high impact items we use in our own properties. So if you want to stop guessing, avoid wasting money and start building an Airbnb that supports financial freedom, use our list!
5. Analyze Airbnb Competitors Using ChatGPT
Use our chatGPT Prompt to improve your Airbnb listing by evaluating your local competition. You can cut and paste the last 50 or so of your closest competitor reviews into chatGPT, using the prompt we created to learn what guests like the most and least about those thing in those competitive listings. Knowing this information will help you better position your listing to align with guests what guests want in your area.
6. Check Your Airbnb Listing's Search Ranking
It's important to know your Airbnb's place in search position for the upcoming weekdays. Use incognito mode on your computer to avoid cookies skewing your results. I can't tell you how many coaching clients have told us, "Oh, I'm on page one, but no one's booking. I don't understand." It's because they weren't using incognito mode. So Google was showing them their listings first, because that's what they look at the most, and it was just skewing their whole understanding of what's going on.
After you turn on incognito mode, look for where your Airbnb is showing up for each weekday next week and the week after. No one will find your listing if it is not showing on page one. I'm sure you're sitting there wondering "How do I move my page rank?" Well, the fastest way to do that is to jump in on your pricing, right? If you're in position 25 on page two, just go and make a 5% price decrease. Save it, sync it. Wait two minutes and do the search again. And pretty much that quickly, you'll see you've moved from position 25 on page two to position 15 on page one. It's pretty real time!
I always know that Culin's done this because I'm doing whatever I'm doing, and all of a sudden it's like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Booking, booking, booking, booking, booking, inquiry, inquiry, inquiry. And I'm like, did you just change pricing? And he's like, "yeah, of course I did." It works!
7. Adjust Your Minimum Price in Pricelabs.
Recently, October 27th or so, the Airbnb algorithm made a change to single pricing. Meaning that hosts who are using a PMS, like Hospitable, are going to pay the entire Airbnb fee. As a result, hHospitable put a default 18% markup on our listings to account for that- so we're not losing money. However, it's caused us to have to go and adjust our minimums.
So, if I had a minimum set in Pricelabs at $100 that's now showing to the guest at $118. So if I was willing to book a night at a hundred dollars before, I've had to go back and adjust our minimums down to account for this 18% markup. And the Airbnb investors that aren't doing it are not booking.
8. Maximize Your Orphan Nights
What's an orphan? An orphan is one of those nights that just gets stuck between two stays. So if someone's booked for Monday and Tuesday night and someone else is booked for Thursday and Friday night, that middle Wednesday is what we call an orphan, and it can't be booked if you have a two night minimum requirement.
To fill up those weekdays, this is one of the most powerful ways that we can fill in weekday bookings. Go to your Pricelab settings, go to your orphan settings, and you can allow for a one night stay only in the case that it's an orphan booked between two stays.
Pro Tip: Something important to note when you do this is to make sure your housekeepers have the expectation that they clean when guests leave, not when there's a new booking coming in. That way you're never in the situation where an orphan books, but your housekeeper didn't clean and you're like, "Oh my gosh, what are we going to do now?"
Housekeepers always need to be trained that we're cleaning on checkout. If you haven't done business this way in the past and you're making this switch to focusing on weekdays, it may be something to communicate, as Danielle said to the cleaners.
9. Turn On Same-Day Booking
You may not even know what that is, but go check in Airbnb and see what it says for same-day availability. This means that someone can book for that night up until you three o'clock or four o'clock that evening. Sometimes this defaults so that you wouldn't even be shown in search if your same-day availability wasn't set correctly.
10. Optimize Airbnb Listing Copy
We do this on every single one of our 14 listings. Why? Because it's this wording that helps capture the interest of potential guests that love your space but can't afford it during the weekend. How many times have you looked at Airbnb's for yourself, for your own travels and been like, "Oh my gosh, I love this place!" And then you see how much it is you're like, "Oh, well I don't love it that much, or that's just not possible at this time." Well, you and they - the people looking at your listing can heart your listing and come back for that midweek trip at a lower price. It also creates this feeling of urgency to book now for those guests who really do want a weekend get away and can afford your weekend pricing.
Another idea is to add a tile to your photo section in your Airbnb listing that highlights a review from a guest who mentioned how easy it was or how fast your internet was to working from your space or you can create a graphic listing your workaway benefits. Again, we're trying to snag the eye of the midweek business traveler who needs a place to stay that doesn't want to stay in a hotel, but does need to be able to work competently from your listing. We're marketing to that guest.
12. Automate Airbnb Messages to Get Repeat Stays
Create an automated message to your past guests that goes out every 90, 180, 270 days after their visit. Remind them how much fun they had that every season is unique and that you have great midweek pricing. It's easy to entice the guests who have already experienced your amazing Airbnb to come back. We just set up that automated message in Hospitable, just like we would set up an automated message for five days prior to arrival. Set this message after checkout, so 90, 180, 270 days after checkout reminding them about your property and that it might be great for a midweek stay.
Think about the open rate on that. You know, a lot of people talk about emailing your guests. I'm not a huge fan of going back and emailing guests and collecting emails because I don't know that the open rates are going to be really good. But your guest is going to open this message from Airbnb and be reminded how much they enjoyed your place and hopefully rebook. It's pretty much a set it and forget it sales funnel that continuously drips into repeat bookings.
I can tell you, I do get messages from guests who got an automated message saying, "Oh my gosh, we were here in the spring. What's it like in winter? What can we do that's different?" And I get to talk about ski resorts and ice skating and apple cider and all those beautiful seasonal things.
Subscribe to the Host Coach YouTube channel to watch other episodes because we're here every Tuesday with the mission to help you fast track the success of your Airbnb so you can live a life that you love. And remember, our joy is in your success.
Should you need an Airbnb coach to help you find the right market, property, and help you set yourself up for success - feel free to book a free 30 minute coaching call with us. We LOVE helping new investors avoid pitfalls and find financial freedom through Airbnb investing!
