Revealed: 6 secret strategies to double your Airbnb income in 30 days.

Get a work desk/station that’s very appealing to business travellers, make sure you have a food delivery option to their door for a quick and easy breakfast (we offer this service and it’s super easy to order), Make sure you have fast reliable WIFI, provide an automated check in with a key safe and detailed instructions of how to check-in. Business travellers prefer this due to ease of access. If your building has a pool and a gym bring it to their attention in your listing. Make sure you have a comfortable bed and if the apartment experiences noise get double glazed windows so you can promote your quiet environment conducive to working and sleeping. Mention all these things in your descriptions and have pictures of these items with descriptions on the pictures.

Within this business travel section you can have two separate listings, one targeting woman on business and one targeting men. The most important factors for female travellers are cleanliness, safety, price, service, facilities and location. Target these points in order to make your female business traveller listing stand out from the generic masses. Make sure your clean is world class and mention it in your listing along with the safety features your property has. Consider enhancing safety features so you can brag about them on the listing. Make use of your pictures to focus in on these different areas described that attract your different travel markets.

In Cape Town leisure travel dominates the market so it’s important to take extra care of your listings which cater towards leisure travel

Couples are often looking for romantic dining experiences. You can make deals with local restaurants in the area that are highly rated and have a romantic setting where your guests receive a discount with an assigned coupon. Then advertise this in your description. Offer a concierge local tips of all the best couple things to do in the area and let them know you provide this in your listing. Advertise that you provide MCC on arrival and perhaps roses. Advertise on the listing that you can customise the experience for the guest based on their desires. Advertise that the property is staged to be romantic on arrival with dimmed lights, scented candles, Belgian chocolates etc. The sky is really the limit on this one when appealing to the traveling couple.

Again do your market research as to what families are looking for but here are some things to focus on: Providing a free cot, high chair and plastic cutlery and letting the guest know in the description will bring young families in their droves. The thing is not many places bother catering for families with young kids so you’re competing with a very small amount of listings. Advertise flexible bedding such as two singles in one of the rooms instead of a double bed. Advertise that you have a washer/dryer. If there are stairs is there a stair guard. Advertise it!

(only applicable with two bedrooms or more.) Again sounding like a stuck record do your market research! Groups like services such as a laundry service. A concierge experience catering to the groups different interests. An area where the group can all hang out and enjoy themselves like near the pool or on a balcony. Advertise that if the group is traveling for a specific event you can organise services around this such as reliable transport or advice on the best way to get to the event, the pitfalls and the amount of time needed to get to the event. If your property is spacious showcase it. Groups don’t want to be forced to be on top of each other all the time so space is a big plus.

More prevalent than ever and you can set up a listing to target them! In fact people going solo in travel is up 600% between 2014 and 2019. Firstly if you have more than a two bedroom you’re probably going to be priced out of this market so this is for two beds or less. These unique creatures like to do things off the normal tourist routes so list everything like this in close proximity to your property. They will often be wanting to meet other travellers and locals so advertise descriptions and great locations. 88% of solo travellers want to go off the beaten path. 38% want to participate in adventurous activities that also get up close with nature. 53% hope to engage with locals. For the female individual traveller make a strong point about security and the cleanliness of the accommodation and then back it up with world class cleans.

Lastly make sure to mention all the positives about your listing that every class of traveller enjoys in all your targeted listings e.g. air-conditioning.

I’ve given just a few tips on what to put in each listing but the rest is up to you. Really get to know your different kind of guests, upgrade your property if you’re missing items or the look and feel your property is off. Ask guests questions and then refine each targeted listing until you’re sucking in your target market and obliterating the competition. By the way if you master this technique you can expect to add at least another 50% to the revenue your listing is generating. That’s all to your bottom line so the effect on your net earnings is amplified by much more than 50%. This is powerful stuff if you put the time and effort in.

Give the guests a welcome gift on arrival. We personally give artisanal coffee with some rusks for an authentic South African experience and then chocolates with the South African flag on each pillow. For more upmarket properties we will provide champagne. Some other suggestions are city memorabilia, something local and unique, a fruit bowl, airport pickup, map of the city (cheap or even free but goes a long way).

Email me at jonathan@manageair.co.za and I’ll be happy to provide you with one. Making sure your property has all the bells and whistles is one of the puzzle pieces that completes the five star picture. You really don’t want to give your guest an option but to rate you five stars.

Your property should be squeaky clean in-between guests. To get there Your property should have house keepers trained to a hospitality standard clean. On top of this they should have a checklist which is ticked off digitally as they work their way through it and provide photographic evidence of each point. This way you know the house keeper has made themselves aware of every detail that needs to be taken care of as they’ve completed the checklist and provided pictures. If anything is not done to standard it’s because they chose not to knowing full well what was required of them. It’s important that physical spot checks are performed on the house keepers work. This maintains a high standard of clean as the cleaners know there are consequences to a substandard job. Email me at jonathan@manageair.co.za and I’ll provide you with a cleaning checklist

You will experience wear and tear in your property and it needs to be kept in show room condition. The only way around this is to do a maintenance and inventory check at every change over. The nice thing about this is you pick up damage immediately and you know exactly which guest caused it. This allows you to claim if your guest has come from a platform like airbnb. You should get a maintenance and inventory checklist to be completed digitally by the house keeper. Again their maintenance and inventory checks need to be checked occasionally. This can be done when the cleaning check is performed. This way you have a fully stocked property with all the bells and whistles that’s sparkling clean and in show room condition. This is a great way to start ensuring all five star reviews.

We use our software to take care of messages that don’t require the human touch so we can eliminate human error. Good automessages to have are a confirmation message as the booking is paid for, check-in instruction message, post check-in message, pre-checkout message, post checkout message and the family and friend discount message to try drive more bookings and guest loyalty.

Make sure that none of these go over 100 words, guests don’t want to be reading a novel just to find out how to get into their accommodation. The longer it is the less likely they are to read it and the more likely there is going to be a problem. Trust me guests will punish you in reviews because they didn’t read the check-in instructions and showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s your job to make their stay is effortless no matter what the circumstances.

Besides this you need someone that will closely monitor the inbox and always be ready to take a phone call. We have a 24/7 guest communications department that takes care of this but if you’re starting out I’m afraid you’re going to need to be stuck to your phone so you can answer any questions without delay. Something we’ve implemented which works well is whatsapp calling the guest after check-in. We then give them advice on what to do
whether they are into adventure, restaurants, on business etc. We know the purpose of their visit from the booking confirmation message which asks them the reason for travel and their interests. This is a sort of concierge experience. It adds a personal touch and shows we care about their experience beyond the accommodation.

Your property and experience can be amazing and receive 9 five star reviews in a row. Your next guest staying for business has a problem with the WIFI and can’t have his zoom meeting. You receive a two star rating bringing your average right down into the depths of never seen, never booked. Eventually you will always have problems. Something out of your control will go wrong for your guests. You need to do everything possible to make the guest believe that you went overboard to try and fix the problem and compensate them.

Remember they have your success in their hands. One bad review and you’re out of the game in this highly competitive market. Have the issue fixed immediately, comp them with restaurant vouchers, offer a full refund, send over a gift basket, go there in person and apologise profusely! Do anything and everything you can. Make the guest feel bad they complained because you’ve gone to such lengths. If you think the R10,000 refund for their stay is a lot wait until I tell you about the hundreds of thousands in lost revenue over the year due to your poor overall rating. Just go back to the exposure and conversion exercise I did earlier and you will see it’s worth the cost and effort.

You should never cancel a booking unless the guests are causing extreme damage to your property or creating a major noise disturbance. In this case if you prove to Airbnb they have broken the house rules Airbnb will cancel the booking. Make sure that it’s completely worth it though because even though the cancelation doesn’t show up on your profile the guests will still have the ability to leave you a review. If they have used profanity or slurs or assumptions about a persons character or social and political views in their review or complained about something that doesn’t relate to your property you can get Airbnb to remove the review. Please refer to my previous guide which will prevent you from dealing with guests like this in the first place. Cancelations on your profile get your property less exposure and therefore less bookings so avoid them where possible.

The last thing you want is a guest waiting around for an hour trying to check in or worse ending up lost because your instructions were poor. If you’re doing an assisted check in make sure you’re on time. Use the opportunity to show them the basics from WIFI to TV to appliances and offer some concierge advice. Tell them about the little nuances in the property. Always have a big smile and a welcoming demeanour. If your check-in is a self check-in make sure your instructions are detailed and concise. Use pictures to go with your descriptions. Make 100% sure absolutely everything is in working order and explained fully in your house manual. Self check-in is fine and actually preferred in most instances provided everything is working like a well-oiled machine. If the guest has to constantly contact you because there are problems you can kiss your five star goodbye.