How can I get more Airbnb bookings?

Many hosts, especially those wanting to rent out their flat, house or spare room frequently, are asking themselves how they can get more Airbnb bookings. In this article we’ll show you some techniques to improve your Airbnb listings ranking and get more inquires and bookings. 

Improve your Airbnb ranking

So - how to get more Airbnb bookings? The most important thing is to make sure your listing is optimized for Airbnb search. When a potential guest searches for a listing like yours, you’d like to be on the first page in the search results, right? The higher your listing appears in the search results, the bigger change you have to get clicks, inquiries and bookings, which in turn means more profit in your pockets. To make this happen, you must pay carefully attention to the Airbnb ranking factors:

Airbnb ranking factors:

Response time – people responding quickly to inquiries will get a better ranking in search

Instant book – the instant book function improves the response time which in turn will boost your Airbnb ranking, ref the point above.

Number of high quality pictures – have at least 20 high quality pictures on your listing

Number of reviews – a large number of reviews will help your Airbnb ranking

Complete listings – also, make your listing complete and fill inn all information

Name of attractions and places - Include the name of a nearby attraction or place in the headline of your listing and repeat the name a couple of times in the detailed description.

Number of 5 star reviews – the more glowing reviews you receive, the better ranking position you’ll get.

Number of times your listing has been wishlisted

Log in frequently - According to BNB Expert, if you login frequently - at least once a week - your ranking will improve. It’s suggested that you login daily and spend sometime on Airbnb if you want to boost the ranking of your listing.

Have a descriptive, updated title and Listing. This comes directly from Airbnb; “Guests want high-quality, accurate listings. If guests see your listing in search and click-through to learn more, this can improve your search performance in the future.”

You can read more about the Airbnb ranking factors in this article: Airbnb SEO tips

Advertise your property outside Airbnb

In addition to making your listing visible in Airbnb search to get more Airbnb bookings, there are several ways to market your properties outside the Airbnb website. Here are some suggestions:

Sign up with other trusted vacation rental sites

Once you have created a listing on Airbnb it’s fast and easy to copy the content to other vacation rental sites. To avoid double bookings, you can easily integrate bookings from different vacation rental sites by using the Airbnb ICAL calendar tool. Here is an overview of recommended alternatives to Airbnb, and all of them are free to advertise on:

Flipkey is tied to Tripadvisor, the biggest travel site in the world with millions of users worldwide. For vacation rental owners it's fast and free to create a vacation rental listing and your vacation rental will be displayed throughout the whole Tripadvisor network, uncluded 12 branded subsites. 

List your property on Flipkey here - it's fast, free and easy

Wimdu - the European alternative to Airbnb. 

Homeescape.com

Guesthouser.com

Housetrip.com 

9flats

See full overview of Airbnb alternatives here

If you're advertising on multiple sites, you should consider to get a channel manager tool, such as Lodgify to avoid double bookings. Lodgify also provides a powerful website builder and a great marketing package. 

Use social media to market your Airbnb listing

After having signed up with the most popular vacation rental sites, you should use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and other social media to show off your listings. 

On Facebook you can easily create your Facebook business page, advertise it and connect with potential guests. It doesn’t cost much to advertise on Facebook and from as little as 5$ you can advertise your ads and updates. Make sure to target your ads to the right people to get the most from the money spent on advertising.

Google plus works pretty much the same way as Facebook. By creating a Google business page your properties will appear on Google maps, which can help you get more bookings from people looking for accommodation in your area.

Create your own webpage

Creating your o wn webpage can be a good way to showcase your properties outside Airbnb. With your own website you can also take direct bookings, not having to pay the 15% Airbnb fee. 

Make sure to optimize your site for Google and other search engines. There are plenty of articles on the internet explaining how to create simple websites and how to optimize your content to search engines, for this reason we will not go in detail on this topic, but here are some basic tips:

• Use high quality pictures to attract potential guests
• Give each picture a name picture to appear in Google image search
• Focus on a few important keywords and terms. Use the Google Keyword planner to get an idea of competitiveness and search volumes of each key word