3 Ways to Maximize your Airbnb Profit During the Slow Season
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Get your Airbnb ready for the slow season
Winter is coming and unless your vacation rental is on the ski slopes, you need to prepare for the slow season. The days of set-it and forget-it are over. You need to get creative and scrappy with how you’re marketing your short term rental. Let’s go over 3 new ways of marketing your short term rentals.
List your vacation rental on more platforms
Gasp! That’s right I said it. If you are only on Airbnb, it’s time to expand and list your place on more short term rental platforms. After Airbnb, I suggest signing up with VRBO. Below are a few platforms to start with and why I like them:
VRBO
We get high-quality bookings on VRBO, longer stays, and more respectful guests. We don’t get as many bookings as Airbnb but I prefer these bookings and I have never had a VRBO guest ask for a discount.
Hotels.com
Listing on Hotels.com gets you exposure to 675 million monthly viewers and it’s partner sites Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Trivago. That’s a whole lot of eyeballs on your listing that you didn’t have before.
Booking.com
This platform has 1.5 million nights booked every day. It also comes with search engine marketing to get your listings seen. You do pay a ~15% fee when someone books as compared to only 3% on Airbnb, but you get some extra SEO juice so it’s better than having empty days on your calendar.
FlipKey
Has the same 3% booking fee as Airbnb and is owned by TripAdvisor and sometimes FlipKey’s listings are featured on TripAdvisor’s site.
Offer your rental as a coworking space
I bet you’ve never thought of this before - offer up your space as an office space or coworking site. I’m partnering with Codi to offer my followers a chance to list their spaces on their platform. Codi is a coworking platform based out of San Francisco, CA. If you use my link below, they will give your listing priority.
Because of the national pandemic, many offices are closed (especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York City.) This leaves business professionals stuck at home trying to co-work with their kids and dogs. If you are finding your rental is empty during weekdays, why not explore the co-working route.
My favorite things about hosting my vacation rental as a coworking space on Codi:
I make $72 per day per person that I host, which adds up especially when you are hosting a whole team.
The cleaning process is much easier because there are no beds to flip
My usually empty weekdays get booked
Business professionals have been very respectful of my space
Professionals typically book for 4+ days at a time
If this interests you and you are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, or New York City you can apply to host on Codi. The process to get listed is quick and easy and it has been a game-changer for me.
Become the travel authority of your area
What better way to attract new guests to your rental then to create guides of things to do in your area. See how I’ve done this for our rental Lodi Landing. And don’t forget to put this info in your Welcome Book.
Here are some local things you can talk about:
Restaurants
Bars
Activities
Things for kids to do (if you are kid-friendly)
Places to take your dog (if you are pet-friendly)
Here are some marketing channels where you can share this content:
On your STR blog or guest post on a local travel blog
On your vacation rental Instagram account (Use location tags and local hashtags)
In travel Facebook groups
On Seeker - Seeker is like a Pinterest for travel destinations. They are launching in Q4 2020 (Just in time for winter.) And they are a mega cool startup. Use my referral link to sign up and create content that is relevant to your listing, you can even link all of your social channels in your profile so people can contact you and see your rental website.
3 things you need to do to get more bookings
List your rental on more platforms
Offer your place as a coworking space
Become a travel authority in your area
