Ready to take your Airbnb game to the next level? The key to success in the short-term rental world is maximizing bookings without slashing your rates. But with fierce competition, even seasoned hosts can find it challenging to keep their calendars full. That's why we've curated the top strategies to boost your bookings, increase revenue, and supercharge your ROI—all without burning yourself out. Dive into these powerful tips for how to get more bookings on Airbnb!
To start optimizing the performance of your Airbnb portfolio with data-driven decisions, check out Summer Forecast. Our intuitive Airbnb data tool offers powerful insights that will help you make smarter decisions that boost your bookings and revenue.
Why am I not getting as many bookings on Airbnb?
At some point or another, Airbnb hosts end up wondering why their listing is not generating more reservations. The truth of the matter is that there are dozens of possible reasons why your bookings might be slowing down over time or lagging behind competitors.
If you suspect that your short-term rental (STR) property is underperforming in terms of number of reservations, one of the first things to do to diagnose the problem is to analyze trends in average occupancy rates. Comparing your listing's occupancy rate to the market averages can help you confirm if your property is indeed falling behind the competition so that you can work on fixing it.
To do that, you can find Airbnb occupancy rates at the market level collecting data manually, using the Airbnb platform, performing competitor analysis, talking to local hosts, or making use of short-term rental data analytics tools like Summer Forecast.
Some of the more common reasons for lower-than-expected bookings on Airbnb–combining both supply- and demand-side factors as well as the quality of your own listing–include:
- Inflated nightly prices
- Not showing on guest searches due to an unoptimized listing
- Low-quality photos
- Sluggish communication
- Slow booking approvals
- Poor rating on Airbnb
- Adverse customer reviews
- Insufficient marketing efforts
- Growing competition from other hosts
- Changes in tourism trends in the local market
- Macroeconomic conditions affecting travel patterns
Together with the average daily rate (ADR), your Airbnb bookings–or occupancy–determines the total revenue that your short-term rental is able to generate. In this way, it also directly impacts the overall profitability of your property.
Because of this, it's crucially important to analyze the number of bookings you're currently getting, whether this has gone up or down over time, and what occupancy rate it leads to. It's worth spending some time and effort on pushing reservations up as this will eventually increase both income and ROI.
How does the Airbnb algorithm work?
The Airbnb website works very similarly to Google's search engine–on Airbnb, guest searches result in vacation rental listings, while on Google, user searches result in web pages. Airbnb has developed a complex algorithm that takes into consideration numerous factors to determine how high or low a certain listing ranks in guest searches.
Why does all this matter?
Because how well your listing performs in Airbnb search results directly affects how often it gets in front of the eyes of potential guests and, thus, how many bookings it gets per month or per year.
The main features that the Airbnb algorithm factors in, as highlighted by the platform itself, include:
- Listing quality: The Airbnb search algorithm considers a number of indicators to determine the quality of a listing in order to recommend better listings to guests by placing them higher in search results. Some of these factors include property photos, listing title and description, amenities, cancellation policy and information, host support, guest reviews, and average ratings.
- Listing popularity: More popular Airbnb listings perform better, and popularity is affected by guest engagement including saving a listing to wishlists, bookings, and messaging the host.
- Listing pricing: The Airbnb algorithm considers the total price of a listing including the daily rate, additional fees, and available discounts and compares it to the price of similar properties in the area. The platform ranks higher those properties that offer more quality at lower rates.
- Listing location: The exact location of a property impacts its ranking as listings close to popular attractions and places of interest that get booked more often rank higher.
Airbnb wants to provide guests with the best possible listing at a competitive price. From a host's point of view, it's useful to know how the Airbnb algorithm and search results work as you know which factors to focus on to get more Airbnb bookings.
How to get more bookings on Airbnb
It's time to dive into the top ideas on how to get more bookings for your Airbnb listing. Note that these strategies have a two-fold purpose: 1) to help you rank higher in search results and 2) to get booked more often by guests who end up seeing your listing.
For both beginner and experienced hosts, these are the best ways to get more bookings on Airbnb. We'll explore each one in more detail below.
- Optimize your listing for the Airbnb algorithm and for potential guests
- Use high-resolution, professional photos
- Implement a dynamic pricing strategy
- Make your cancellation policies more flexible
- Turn on Instant Book
- Maximize available nights on your booking calendar
- Add more amenities to your property
- Consider redesigning your space
- Target niche guest audiences
- Offer discounts to get more weekday bookings
- Work on getting more extended stay reservations
- Roll out promotions that drive bookings
- Focus on off-season marketing
- Automate guest communication
- Generate more reviews from customers
- Offer a pet-friendly space
- Work with a property manager
- Use an Airbnb management software
Let's take a look at what each of these proven and efficient Airbnb booking tricks entails, how it works, how it's implemented, and what some pros and cons might be.
1. Optimize your listing for the Airbnb algorithm and for potential guests
The first and most straightforward thing to do to try to remedy your struggling Airbnb occupancy rate is to enhance your listing for the Airbnb algorithm and for your potential guests.
To improve your listing for Airbnb SEO and guests alike, you have to come up with:
- Short, attractive title that grabs attention (using emojis is OK)
- Detailed and informative, yet scannable description (using bullet lists is ideal)
- Gallery of professional photos (more on this shortly)
- Comprehensive list of available amenities
- Helpful guestbooks and detailed house rules (to set up guest expectations)
- In-depth cancellation policies
- Complete information on your host profile
Within the listing title and description, make sure to use words and phrases that guests frequently use when they search for listings in your area. This can cover things like local attractions and distance to them, popular property types, highly demanded amenities, and exceptional experiences. To figure out the most relevant keywords to go in your listing, you can check out the top-ranking listings around and try to mimic them while highlighting the uniqueness of your space.
Importantly, your listing should underline all the top features of your property and the biggest attractions of the area while remaining 100% truthful. Don't try to cheat the algorithm by saying things that are not fully accurate as this will bite you in the form of negative reviews that will push your bookings down over time.
The pros of this strategy are that it's basically free to implement (except for maybe the photos), it doesn't require much time, and it works in the long term. There are no real downsides to it, and it should be step #1 when trying to get more bookings.
2. Use high-resolution, professional photos
Related to the first point, having high-quality photos of your short-term rental is crucial for the success of your marketing efforts. Photos are important in two major ways. First, the Airbnb algorithm favors listings with a larger number of high-resolution photos, so your listing will get more exposure. Second, guests are more likely to book a home that they can clearly see in the photos.
Hire a professional real estate photographer if you don't have the necessary skills and expertise. The fee you pay to them will be more than compensated for once you start getting additional bookings. Remember to show both the inside and the outside of your property, to display all rooms and amenities, and to really focus on the most appealing characteristics of your property.
On the plus side, a picture is really worth a thousand words on Airbnb. On the negative side, you'd need to change your listing photos every time you make significant changes to your rental.
3. Implement a dynamic pricing strategy
Another highly-effective way to boost bookings without sacrificing revenue is to work out what is called a dynamic Airbnb pricing strategy. This means that you should continuously adjust the daily prices of your listing to reflect changes in both supply (number of available listings in the area and how they compare to your property) and demand (how many guests are searching for and booking properties in your market).
Some factors to incorporate in your vacation rental pricing plan include weekdays vs weekends, different seasons, major local events, and more. After setting up a base price based on competitors' rates, you can increase it during peak season to boost income and decrease it during off season to continue getting bookings despite slower interest from guests. In addition, don't forget to include different promos and discounts, which we'll discuss a bit later.
To set up dynamic pricing, you can use the readily available Airbnb Smart Pricing tool, but many hosts report that it tends to underprice listings in an attempt to get as many bookings as possible, which negatively affects total revenue. That's why it might be better to use a third-party Airbnb pricing tool with a more robust algorithm.
The main advantage of this strategy is that you can get more Airbnb bookings during the low season to limit the effect of seasonality in the STR industry. However, dynamic pricing requires a lot of work unless you use an automated tool, which might prioritize occupancy over income, so you should be careful in your choice.
4. Make your cancellation policies more flexible
Another easy-to-implement trick to "hack" the Airbnb algorithm and to also attract more guests is to make your cancellation policies more lenient. Generally speaking, listings with more relaxed cancellation rules get more bookings. First of all, they seem more guest-friendly, so Airbnb prioritizes them over comps. Second, guests prefer to have some flexibility should something happen to prevent them from honoring the reservation.
The advantage of this idea is that you can implement it easily without spending a single dollar on it. The disadvantage is that you might get last-minute cancellations with no monetary compensation. But to tackle this issue, you can work on last-minute reservations through special discounts. Most hosts also find that their overall revenue goes up with this technique, even with the additional risk.
5. Turn on Instant Book
The Airbnb website itself recommends that hosts turn on Instant Book, an optional feature available on the platform, to increase the number of their bookings. The way instant booking on Airbnb works is that guest reservations that meet certain requirements are automatically approved and confirmed without sending a request to the host. Airbnb search results favor listings with Instant Book switched on, and they also tend to rank higher because of the more efficient interactions between guests and hosts.
The best thing about this feature is that hosts can set up minimum guest and trip requirements for automatic confirmations. Nevertheless, you lose some control over the approval process.
6. Maximize available nights on your booking calendar
Airbnb gives you the option to block nights for personal use, maintenance work, and other purposes, leaving all other nights available for booking. A quick way to get more bookings is to make as many days as possible available for renting.
The logic is straightforward: The more your property is available for booking, the more it will be in front of potential guests' eyes. After all, Airbnb cannot show your listing in search results when it is not available for the time for which a guest is looking. However, this does not mean that you should ignore necessary maintenance and repairs to maximize your Airbnb occupancy rate as this can lead to poor guest experiences and negative reviews.
To implement this trick, you don't have to do anything; just leave your calendar as open as possible. The downside is that this may affect your ability to enjoy your own second home, especially around holidays and during peak season.
7. Add more amenities to your property
To get more bookings on Airbnb, it might not be enough to work on the listing; you might need to put some effort into your actual property too. As the platform aims to provide the ultimate experience to guests, it prioritizes listings with more amenities. You can rank higher and attract more renters by extending the list of available extras on your property.
When considering additional amenities, make sure to focus on those with the best value for money. In other words, look for options that don't cost too much but allow you to increase your ADR significantly. You can check what amenities competitors have and build on them by either offering the same (to not fall behind) or something unique in the market (to get ahead of the competition).
The best thing about adding new amenities to your Airbnb property is that you can boost not only bookings but also nightly prices for a real push to revenue. However, some extra features are really costly and might not bring enough additional income to make the investment worth it, so choose smartly.
The most popular Airbnb amenities include hot tubs, swimming pools, fully equipped kitchens, free parking spaces, coffee machines, and more. A tool like Summer Forecast can help you determine just how much a hot tub or addition would mean for your bottom-line revenue, and if it makes sense financially.
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8. Consider redesigning your space
Go beyond adding more amenities and work on the entire design and furnishing of your vacation rental. You can simply give your property a fresh look by updating the design and the furniture, or you can focus on a specific theme to create a unique experience for guests.
If you decide to go for major changes and don't have an interior design background, find professional Airbnb furnishing services. Summer offers short-term rental design and furnishing services that drive bookings, engagement, positive reviews, and bottom-line revenue at competitive pricing starting at $10,000 for an entire property. Different packages are available to meet the needs of all hosts.
The main benefit of this strategy is that redesigning your Airbnb can push up both daily rates and reservations as well as guest reviews, ratings, and rankings. The con is that it requires a certain amount of time and money.
9. Target niche guest audiences
Many hosts have been able to optimize their bookings by finding their niche. With so much competition in the Airbnb market, it's hard to stand out if you're trying to compete with every single listing in your area. Finding your own place and becoming the best in it is a proven technique to increase reservations.
Some example niche audiences to consider include vacationing families, couples on romantic getaways, parents with young children, pet owners, digital nomads, remote workers, and traveling professionals. The choice of your target guest group should be driven by your market (and typical visitors), property type and specifications, competition (try to differentiate yourself), and your personal preferences. Once you know your niche, adjust your rental and listing as needed.
The benefit of this trick is that it can give you a real competitive edge in the industry. The main drawback is that it might be costly and time-consuming to transform your house into the ideal space for your niche guest audience.
10. Make adjustments to get more weekday bookings
Generally speaking, Airbnb listings tend to get more bookings over weekends and holidays, so one way to boost your occupancy rate is by focusing on weekday bookings. Here's how:
- Lower prices for weekday reservations
- Offer additional discounts for multiple-night bookings during the week
- Highlight weekday benefits of your location (special events, things to do, etc.)
- Market local events such as conferences, concerts, and others
- Target business travelers by setting up a home office
The main benefit of this idea is that you can create entirely new demand and find a new group of potential guests. On the negative side, you'd need to put some effort into your marketing strategy to reap the expected results.
11. Work on getting more extended stay reservations
Another way to get more booked nights is to get fewer but longer reservations. That's why it's worth trying to offer Airbnb long-term rentals that are usually booked by remote workers (those working from home) and temporarily relocated professionals (traveling nurses, etc.).
To attract extended stays, first find out what type of guests would be interested in this option in your market and then adjust your property accordingly. You might need to add a home office space, a laundry machine, and some cooking equipment if not already available. You may offer additional services such as on-demand cleaning, linen change, laundry, and supply restocking. Moreover, change the wording of your listing to make it attractive to those looking for mid-term and long-term rentals on the Airbnb website. Don't forget to set up weekly and monthly rates below the base price.
The good thing about this approach is that it can be implemented together with other strategies to get more bookings and that it can really decrease the cost of marketing and guest turnover. The bad thing is that the success of this strategy depends largely on your market and property type and might not be applicable in all cases.
12. Roll out promotions that drive bookings
When working on your pricing strategy, you can incorporate different types of promos and discounts to attract extra bookings in specific cases. The key with this is to make sure that the discounted rates make financial sense, in other words, that the new prices are enough to cover all operating expenses and leave you with positive cash flow.
Some smart ideas for discounts and promotions include:
- Early-bird discounts
- Last-minute discounts
- Extended stay discounts, such as weekly or monthly rates
- Entire weekend discounts
- New listing promotions
- Low-season promotions
- Holiday promotions
- Promo codes to use at local attractions
People enjoy exclusive promos and discounts; it's simply human nature. As an Airbnb host, you should take advantage of this fact to get more bookings and grow revenue.
The main benefit of this idea is that the sky's the limit; you can get as creative as you'd like, depending on your market, property, and target guest persona. At the same time though, you risk losing money from excessive discounts unless you plan your strategy carefully and base it on careful analysis.
13. Focus on off-season marketing
While seasonality is something that simply exists in the short-term rental market, this doesn't mean that there is nothing you can do to mitigate its negative effect on reservations and occupancies. It's worth putting some extra effort into marketing your listing during low season to get a few more bookings and increase your annual occupancy rate.
In your listing, highlight local events that happen outside the hot season. You can lower nightly prices as part of your dynamic pricing strategy to make your place more attractive, too. Use the power of social media as well as contact previous guests with special offers to get more exposure when reservations are naturally slowing down as a result of seasonal effects.
The main benefit of this approach is that you don't really have anything to lose; if your listing is already not getting booking activities because of low season, you can't do worse than that. A major downside is that you need to put some active work into pricing and marketing your property for this idea to work.
14. Automate guest communication
Efficient communication and active interaction with guests is one of the factors that go into the Airbnb algorithm. Guests simply appreciate it when a host is available to respond to their questions and concerns, so they are more likely to book with them and to leave a 5-star review.
What this means is that you should improve communication, and the best way to do that is to use vacation rental management software that features a unified inbox and automated messaging. Tools like Guesty, Hostaway, and Hospitable offer such functionalities as an important part of the process of streamlining and automating the management of short-term rentals.
The best thing about this is that you will be able to get more bookings not only in the short-term (by answering potential guest questions when they are still deciding between a few possible listings) but also in the long term (as satisfied guests will write positive reviews and boost the overall rating of your listing). Meanwhile, you need to spend time on managing all communication, but this can be largely addressed by using the right software platform.
15. Generate more 5-star reviews from guests
In a few Airbnb booking tricks so far, we mentioned the importance of having a good overall ranking. This entails getting as many positive guest reviews as possible while avoiding negative reviews at all costs. To achieve this, first and foremost, you have to offer a superior place that's perfectly maintained, cleaned, and stocked and excellent guest experiences including but not limited to on-time communication and support. Next, your listing has to reflect your actual property with no discrepancies which can be extremely frustrating for guests.
As a final step, you have to actively seek reviews from happy guests by following up with them after check-out, asking about their stay, and kindly requesting their feedback. To encourage guest reviews, you can review guests and/or offer them a small discount on future bookings.
An advantage of this strategy is that a positive rating is something that will work for you in the long run, continuously attracting more and more guests to your listing. The disadvantage is that one negative review can really mess up things and hurt your listing, so you should work on optimizing guest experiences.
16. Offer a pet-friendly space
In mid-2023, Airbnb announced a nearly 50% increase in nights booked with pets. Moreover, 52% of pet owners travel with their pets. To benefit from these trends, Airbnb hosts can turn their home into a pet-friendly listing to get more bookings from pet owners. Indeed, the ability to bring their pet along is a major reason why some travelers choose vacation rentals over traditional hotels.
On the positive side, you can charge a pet fee to cover for the additional work, especially cleaning, and damage associated with hosting pets. On the negative side, you might need to make some changes to your space to make it pet-safe and friendly, to provide some pet accessories, and to hire professional Airbnb cleaning services.
17. Work with an Airbnb property manager
If you don't have the time to allocate more effort to your listing or your previous efforts to get more bookings have failed, you can hire one of the best Airbnb management companies in your area. Professional short-term rental property managers offer hospitality-quality services that can really boost reservations and profit, including but not limited to redesigning, listing optimization, pricing, marketing, guest support, guest concierge services, and others.
The main benefits of this approach are that Airbnb property managers can considerably boost results for you and that you can make money from Airbnb passively. The drawbacks include giving up some control over the management of your property and paying monthly property management fees.
If you're looking for best-in-class, end-to-end short-term rental management services to get more bookings and generate more revenue, check out Summer. Our team of professional property managers provides comprehensive services covering everything from furnishing and listing, all the way to cleaning and maintaining, with everything in-between. All this at an industry-low fee starting at only 15% of booking revenue (excluding cleaning revenue). Keep in mind that Summer-managed properties earn more income than at least 95% of comps in each market where we operate.
18. Use an Airbnb management software
The final strategy to get more bookings, which in a way combines many of the previous ideas, is to subscribe to the best Airbnb management software. Some of the ways in which the top tools can help you enhance your occupancy rate include:
- Build and automate a data-based dynamic pricing strategy
- List your property on multiple platforms and optimize listings via a channel manager
- Maintain an up-to-date booking calendar
- Streamline guest communication
- Collect and manage guest reviews
- Coordinate your team to make sure all guest requests are fulfilled
The most important benefit of deploying short-term rental management software is that you can streamline and optimize the management process which will lead to more bookings and better revenue while minimizing the level of effort required on your end. The main risk is opting for a poor-quality software platform that doesn't maximize results.
For access to institutional-quality Airbnb data and analytics with an unmatched level of accuracy in the U.S. market, check out Summer Forecast. This is your go-to platform for maximizing bookings via intuitive and actionable insights on daily prices, occupancy rates, revenue, market trends, and comps. Additionally, SummerOS acts as an all-in-one platform that is designed to simplify and elevate every facet of short-term rental management for maximized performance. The tools will help you get more bookings than ever before.
Bottom line
These are the top ways to get more bookings on Airbnb, whether you are just getting started or already have a few years of hosting behind your back. For optimal results, you should try to combine a few of them. For instance, you can implement dynamic pricing with the help of the best Airbnb software tools, while updating your property in line with your niche guest audience and improving your listing.
No matter which strategy or strategies you opt for, the effectiveness of your efforts will depend largely on the quality of Airbnb data and analytical tools that you use. Summer Forecast is the top-ranked STR data and analytics platform to help you optimize daily rates, boost occupancy, and maximize revenue.
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