Is your Airbnb struggling? Do you wonder if there are new Airbnb trends that you need to know about and capitalize on? Do you wish someone could give you a list of hacks to help you succeed as a new Airbnb investor or supercharge your current listing?
If these questions sound familiar, you need to listen to Episode 71 of the Host Coach Airbnb Investing Podcast where we’re analyzing the latest Airbnb trends of 2025 and sharing the hacks you can immediately use to make more money and stay at the top of your market!
Read on to know what to do differently to stay ahead of the new, emerging Airbnb trends, and exactly what we’re doing, so you can Find your Where, Make it Pop, Price for Occupancy, and Optimize for Rank to succeed as an Airbnb investor.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- The big, emerging Airbnb trends of 2025
- Why the hot markets are no longer the hot markets to invest in
- The surprising impact of Airbnb’s Guest Favorite ranking
- Must-have amenities for 2025
- How running an Airbnb custom promotion can benefit your listin
- 2 new AI hacks for guest satisfaction
- The new RankBreeze integration that offers more data about your competitors
Host Coach Airbnb Podcast Episode 71 Show Notes:
All right guys, buckle up. This is gonna be a banger! I have been receiving questions over the last couple of weeks from clients coaching clients asking, "What Culin and Danielle, are you specifically doing in this 2025 environment in your portfolio differently to stay ahead of the competition?"
Because let's face it, this has been a little bit of a challenging winter, particularly here on the East Coast. We've had a lot of storms and we've had to work a little harder, and a lot of our clients are asking, what are we doing differently? And the things that I've come up with, we decided to put together in this episode to share with everybody, even if you're not on the East coast and having a tough winter... these are the hacks that are making a difference in today's Airbnb environment.
We're going to dive in and break those hacks up into our four pillars. If you're not familiar, the four pillars of Airbnb investing according to us are: find your wear, make it pop price, and manage for occupancy and optimize your listing for rank. All of these hacks and insights are arranged into those different columns,
Where to Invest in an Airbnb - Avoid "Hot" Markets
Starting with finding your where what's going with market selection in today's environment. We've always focused on getaway markets, right? Where do people like to go two, three hours from a major metropolitan area? Some of those markets, particularly ones that we're in, have gotten a little overheated in the last year or two.
Overheated meaning we're seeing higher price per square foot for purchase price. We're seeing some increased competition, which is putting downward pressure on price per night. In markets that have some regulation, we're seeing higher occupancy taxes.
So personally, we're starting to look outside of those getaway locations and looking at county over, or a county beside where. It's not the named market, for example. So we're kind of moving outside of the hottest getaway markets and getting to markets that are tangential to them. We're finding better price per square foot. We're finding less competition on deals. This means we're not competing against five other bidders and we're finding success in that.
Absolutely. Actually our most successful property is in a tangential market. It's a very special place to begin with, but it's success gave us a little more confidence. We now have two investments in tangential markets that should go live in the next month.
We're shifting our focus there a little bit on markets. So as you're looking at the named market, if you're not finding what you're looking for in terms of price, you can look a little outside of that. One thing that's making that possible is the algorithm.
The Airbnb Guest Favorite Algorithm's Impact on Tangential Markets
I played with an example and I encourage you to do this. I typed Helen, Georgia into Airbnb, and it pulls up, listings in Helen, Georgia. When I hit page two, the search results zoom way out to 25 or so miles out from Helen, Georgia, showing 25 other cities.
So the algorithm is making a little bit of a change. They're doing this, we believe, to really surface Guest Favorite properties. We mentioned a previous episode, the importance of guest favorite to be on page one. In this Helen Georgia example. when I go to page two, I'm now also seeing mostly, if not exclusively, Guest Favorite properties, but the search area has widened up by a 25 mile radius or so to show those Guest Favorite properties.
So, in terms of market, you can look at markets tangential to primary markets without the fear of, "oh no, that's not gonna be found, because nobody knows the name of that town."
To have a clarifying statement here, the first 18 listings that show on page one of Airbnb search would be directly in Helen, Georgia. But when you go to page two, there's where you see the next 18 listings that may not be in Helen.
Yes. Those Airbnbs might be 20 miles away, and they're being shown over ones that are actually in Helen Georgia. Isn't that crazy? It's because they're a Guest Favorite.
Wow. Yeah. It's kind of a mindblower. So that is a big 2025 Airbnb trend that we're seeing just emerging right now.
Airbnb Property Selection Hack - View & Seclusion
The other thing that we're doing a little bit differently has to do with the properties themselves. Previously, we were just buying what we could get in our primary market. For a while we were very market focused, and now we're starting to hone in a little bit and being more selective in fighting properties that stand out even more. So for us, it's a lot about views and seclusion.
The last property that we put online. The property itself is nice, but it's got a view. It's the most impressive view I've seen in the United States. So outside of the market, we're looking for uniqueness in the property itself. That could be views, it could be just anything that really makes it stand out from other "normal" homes.
Timeline Adjustment & Purposeful Amenity Selection
We're also shifting our focus to going slower to give time for renovations before we jump on Airbnb with a new listing. We used to sometimes take three weeks, do the best we could, and bang launch that Airbnb. We did this because I felt like I was losing money every day I wasn't on the market. Now we're focusing on building a five-star review streak from the very first guest.
So, we're taking more time to put in more amenities, which we'll get to in a little bit, because we really want to have that Guest Favorite status from guest one... and in case you missed our podcast episode on Airbnb Guest Favorites and are wondering what that is. It's basically a higher distinction than Superhost, and it's awarded to the top properties and they're gauged against their performance against other Airbnbs in their market.
So if you become a Guest Favorite, your listing receives a gold trophy icon, a gold guest favorite badge, and the highlight at the top of your place's listing. This sounds kind of silly, but it makes a huge difference again, where you show in rank and also guests see that icon.
You can actually filter just by guest favorite, and it's a huge indicator that, "oh, this is a winner. I don't need to look any further. I'm just going to book it."
Make Your Airbnb Pop with HDR Photography
Moving into my personal favorite pillar, make it pop. It's very important to make your listing pop! The way to do that, aside from having that nice trophy and banner from Guest Favorite is your photos. We talk about this all the time, but we're not joking. Your listing must have HDR photos. They pop off the screen and just grab potential guests attention.
Your photos are basically how you book your nights. It's not like selling a house where you pay money to do a one-time transaction. You're investing in photos that do all of your transactions. If you have so-so photos, even if you took them with your nice iPhone or Android, there's gonna be less interest, and that means there's gonna be less engagement with your listings, which means you're going to have a lower listing placement. And sadly, that means that you're going to have less stays booked. This is a downward spiral, and we don't want that to happen to you. So just pay for the HDR photography.
If your excuse was, well, it's really hard to find an HDR photographer. You're right. It was. Now you do not have to be a real estate professional to contact and book an HDR photographer. Our favorite website for HDR photographers HomeVisit.com is now available for anyone to use. So you have lost your excuse. If you don't have HDR photos - book an appointment right now! If you have your current photos and you're not satisfied with them, check out Home Visit. They're not a sponsor... we just appreciate their work!
As Danielle said, they used to be exclusive to real estate agents for booking, but now anyone can request their service. They have a great network of coverage. Also consider reshooting your Airbnb photos if you've added amenities, if it's a different season or your lawn finally grew in. The photos are inexpensive, and then you can also add a digital layout of your space, which guests really appreciate and it also limits the questions you get asked, like is the bathroom next to the second bedroom? Potential guests can just see it visually laid out.
Another pro tip is to avoid Airbnb's auto arranged by room when you set up your listing. Don't do it. It's not as visually pleasing as the original host curated photos. And if you'd like to stand out by not doing their weird room by room thing, people see exactly the photos. You want to showcase the best parts of your property immediately. And then I said it once before, I love to talk about them.
Which Airbnb Amenities Matter
The next way to make your listing pop is amenities. We are in the middle of an Airbnb amenities arm race. Back in Episode 33, we did a deep dive into this concept with a guest who had set up over 500 Airbnbs. So if you're serious about maintaining your cash flow from your property, you need to invest in amenities that guests are seeking.
EV Charger
An example of that, that's really on time is EV chargers. I don't drive an electric vehicle, but electric vehicles are becoming so much more popular. There's 5.1 million electric vehicles in the United States. That's close to 10% of all households.
I did a little research and took a market with 530 listings. It was with a client and we were talking about EV chargers, and we filtered that search result of 530 listings by "with EV charger" and it came up with 14 listings. So, if I'm that one in 10 person that's driving a Rivian truck or a Tesla, and I'm looking for EV charger - I only have 14 options in a market with 530 listings. That's a huge way to stand out and differentiate yourself. There's an EV charger in a box sitting on our front porch that was just delivered for our next cabin.
Infrared Sauna
Another hack that we're moving towards is whil hot tubs are important in our market: they're expensive, they're hard to get, they're hard to install, and they're a lot of maintenance. So, in our last three Airbnb investment properties we've gone with infrared saunas. They're way less expensive and they're way less maintenance. You can get an outdoor sauna new for $5,000. You can get an indoor new one for $2,500.
We're finding a lot of deals on Facebook Marketplace and Wayfair for them, and they seem to be filling the same need as a hot tub, with less cost less maintenance, and they're a little bit more on trend with what is going on social media.
Absolutely. Who doesn't want to take a long hike and then relax in a sauna? It has that ooh factor. Again, we're trying to have amenities that guests don't have in their own home. Not that many people have a sauna in their own home.
You also want to think about investing heavily in your outdoor spaces. This doesn't mean just having nice outdoor furniture, that's very helpful, but a lot of people have outdoor furniture you want to invest in fire pits, turning sheds into interesting things. I'm currently taking a dilapidated shed and turning it into a wine barn. It's a wine library with books and nooks and a table for puzzles and games. And I have all of these little pictures of barn animals drinking wine. It's ridiculous, but it's something people don't have. And it's whimsy. What group of girls doesn't want to book a Cabernet Chalet and then sit in the wine barn and play games, drink wine, and have fun. Hopefully many!
Internet
Internet is another thing. We've moved away from some bad cable, some bad dish, and Starlink is killing it. That's what we've moved to. It's super fast uptime and download time. We've never really had a problem. It used to be hard to get the equipment. You can buy it in Best Buy now. It sets up in five minutes and it's Bulletproof, reliable, loving on the starlink these days.
Game Rooms
Another hot idea is using your space for a game room. If you've got a shed, as Danielle said, or a garage or a basement, invest in some machines to create a game room - a pool table or one of those like sliding shuffleboard things. If you don't have that much space, try a wall-mount Pac-Man machine. We got it on Amazon for $250.
Another option is an Infinity Game table. It looks like a little glass coffee table, but it downloads with all these cool games in it. It's a huge differentiator it's not an Xbox - it's a little bit more family oriented and it drives bookings. t's super cool. It's basically an iPad on legs. I am not a big gamer and have so much fun playing whack-a-mole games, Mahjong, all that sort of stuff. So if there's a rainy day, somebody's not feeling - it's just a fun, interesting diversion that you don't have in your own home.
If you need something less expensive to help your listing pop, think about a neon sign or interesting accent wallpaper or even a mural wall. Anything that helps your listing jump off the screen as different and interesting. People want Instagramable areas, and so that's something that you can capitalize on for very small amount of money.
Also, if you're putting in all these new amenities, if you add a game room, if you add a fire pit, if you remake your shed into a wine barn, I won't be that mad at you for copying me. Make sure you photograph your new amenities and highlight them in the top photos of your listing. And if it's a big amenity, like the sauna that Cullen was talking about, consider adding it to your Airbnb listing title.
In 2025, we're really focusing on improving our existing listings by adding amenities that we've just chatted about over buying more listings. It's a quality over quantity hack that has been paying off.
Pricing for Airbnb Occupancy
Moving to pillar three, pricing for occupancy. We've talked about third party dynamic pricing quite a bit. We're seeing that more hosts are adopting dynamic pricing. Now more like 30% of hosts using dynamic pricing - but a lot of those hosts are still setting it and forgetting it.
Just because you've got your Price Labs set up doesn't mean that you don't have to do any work in terms of pricing. We look very closely at what we call near-term vacancies, which means if you go into Price Labs and see what nights are available over the next two weeks that aren't booked yet. We want to start adding some manual discounts.
We can click on those dates and start bringing them down, say 5% at a time until we find a buyer for that night. So we need to be active. We need to be looking in our price labs.
Airbnb Promotions
Another hack that we just started using is Airbnb's Custom promotions. This is really interesting. So you can go into your Airbnb calendar and you can run a custom promotion. They'll suggest a discount for you. And at first I was a little concerned when I'm already discounted. The good news is, they don't use your current price, they use your average price, so usually they suggest something over 20%. And it turns out that that number generally is what I'm already charging. So I'm not really giving up any additional revenue.
The upside of doing a Airbnb custom promotion is they offer three or four really unique benefits. They give you a special line item on your listing that says Special discount offered for just these dates. They also give you a little badge at the bottom saying saying this host is providing a special discount. Most importantly is they also at 20% and over. They include you in email promotions for people who might be interested in staying in that area. We just started using that in the last two weeks, and it seems to be working well. Seems to have an influence also on rank placement, so pretty excited about that.
SEO Key Words Hack for Airbnb
Another idea is using SEO keywords in your listing or listing description. And for those of you who are wondering, SEO stands for search engine optimization - that would be using words to help Google find your Airbnb listing. So what Culin's saying is some people don't go directly to Airbnb and start searching for Stone Tower Winery. They sometimes go to Google and put in Google, "Airbnb near Stone Tower Winery. " So having those words in your listing can help you be discovered that way as well.
We tested this out. You can legitimately type in whatever the attraction is near your Airbnb and put the word Airbnb and it serves up Airbnb listing. It's a great hack to get more eyeballs on your listings and more bookings. We're also trying to find ways to save time and maximize our automations.
Using AI for Airbnb Messages
Another hack to share with you is using Hospitable AI questions for our most frequently asked questions from guests. Things that I hear all the time that I have to respond to that are: "can I check in early? Is the water safe to drink? How do I operate the gas fireplace?" So instead of me, either typing it out manually or even having a quick response, I've trained the AI from Hospitable to answer those questions. And while it was pretty recent implementation, it's going well and saving me time, and guests are getting instant feedback.
You can also use AI to build custom itineraries for your guests. So somebody who's asking for romantic getaway, or big foodies, or outdoorsy family adventures, what you can do is use AI to build custom itineraries for your area and have them as saved responses. So when someone asks you a specific genre of itinerary question, you just hit send and you will absolutely blow their minds in a good way. Which leads to the five-star reviews and guest favorites that we're all looking for.
Airbnb Upsells
We're always looking for ways to make more money from our existing Airbnbs. And something new to consider is upsells. You can use Hostfully's platform to upsell anything that you want to offer guests for an additional charge. Things like: firewood, romance packages with a bottle of Prosecco, candles and chocolates. Anything like that is just extra dollars that you can add on to every guest day. Late check-ins and checkouts as well can be charged for. I was just exploring this this morning with Culin.
There's also Viator integration with Hostfully. And if you don't know, Viator is a huge platform that helps people traveling, book really neat experiences, excursions, boat rides, everything. And when you have this integration with your Hostfully account, anytime your guests book something through your guest book, you receive an 8% commission on that booking through Viator. So that's just easy money people. We're looking forward to putting that one in place. We're gonna put that in tomorrow if possible. And if you think about it, that adds up pretty quickly.
Optimizing Your Airbnb Listing for Rank
Alright. Moving to our final pillar, optimize your Listing for Rank. We start that by taking a close look at our reviews. We call it review the reviews, and you're going find gems in there. People are going to tell you in private feedback and in public reviews areas in which you can improve. We think a lot of hosts overlook that, but if you dig through those reviews, your guests will tell you how you can improve.
Next is Rank Breeze. Rank Breeze is always evolving and they have a new integration with Airbnb. So if you have a Rank Breeze account or if you get one, there's a second integration that gives you a lot of information about not just your rank placement performance (ie: are you showing up on page one, which you want to be?)
Rank Breeze has this middle section now you have to opt into this integration with your specific listing and it gives you a wealth of information about the market, about how your revenue compares to the market and similar properties, how your occupancy compares, how your listing views and wishlist, additions compare. I really love pouring over that data.
One more suggestion. We're in a new era of Airbnb investing and the age of the professional host is here. So if you're a "set it and forget it host" who did great during covid and are struggling, you really need to take time and spend time on your properties. Stay in your Airbnb for two days, reorganize the cabinets, make a list of all the little fixes: touch up the paint on the outdoor furniture, trim the hedges. There's endless things that when you are the one there in the space that you love caring for it. Your guests coming in afterwards really feel that and express that. And that's again, one of those great ways to trigger guest favorite.
So there you have it. You now know the emerging Airbnb trends of 2025 and the hacks you can use to find your where, to make it pop, to price for occupancy, and optimize for rank placement
If you love our advice and want some help on your Airbnb investing journey - we'd love to coach you! Set up a free 30-minute Airbnb coaching call here.
