Several times a week – no, many times a week – new Airbnb hosts post on forums with some variation of the following message:
‘Help! I tried to search for my listing on Airbnb and it’s just not showing up! What should I do?’
Actually, nothing. This very amateur concern should be ignored.
But what these hosts tend to do is contact Airbnb (who no doubt sigh and think ‘oh, not again’) and tie up Airbnb resources when they should be dealing with hosts who are contacting them because they’ve got druggies partying loudly in their rental or there’s a fully-fledged gun battle going on in their house. Joke, by the way. These things only happen in the extremely exaggerating media).
What new hosts don’t realise is that the purpose of the Airbnb search system is to match potential guests to places that are exactly where they want to stay. Not just that. When guests are searching they use filters to determine the exact criteria of what they are looking for.
They also add the dates of their anticipated stay – something new and inexperienced hosts seem to forget.
So, let’s say a guest searches for a rental in your town searching for the following criteria:
- June 1 to June 5
- Two adults and one child
- Private room
- Pet friendly, bringing dog
- Private parking
That’s only five criteria – many potential guests search for many more.
Now I’m sorry if this is hard for new hosts to accept but you simply won’t come up in the search results if:
- Your rental is not available from June 1 -5
- You only accept two guests
- Your rental is an entire place and not a private room
- You do not accept dogs
- Parking in on-street and not private
That is just a simple example. Think of the hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of permutations that a potential guest can search for. And this applies in your area. Potential guests can specify superhosts, instant book, swimming pool available, extra guests welcome, children accepted, apartment with no stairs, ocean view, mountain trails, daily breakfast service, bicycles available, ADA compliant, parties and events accepted, toiletries provided, paddleboard available, airport pickup, zipline in yard, Netflix, barbecue grill provided, gourmet kitchen etc. etc. etc
There are SO many more.
So, there are so many criteria guests can search for and experienced hosts appreciate this – their listing is only going to show up for potential guests who are looking for the accommodation they offer.
So you don’t come up on the first page of a simple search for [your town]? So what? And why would you want to?
Just learn more about how Airbnb works, that’s all.
ARTICLE BY:
Jackie
JJ is originally from the UK and has lived in South Florida since 1994. She is the founder and editor of JAQUO Magazine. You can connect with her using the social media icons below.