Hi All,
My bookings have dropped in the past month or so, I’m wondering if there is anything that I can do to improve my page visibility? I seem to be buried, so most guests won’t even find me.
Thanks!
Lorena
What are you doing right now to improve your visibility? Please let us know so that we can suggest solutions 
First, how are you checking your visibility? Don’t do it while you’re logged in. And I open a private browser window just to make sure all cookies are removed so Air will have no trace that it’s me. Then I zoom in on the map to the general vicinity of my location. Don’t zoom in too close, but not too far either.
We’re still showing up in a good position, but we’re just totally dead right now. We haven’t had a single new booking in over a month. We’re booked until the end of December, but we don’t have a single booking for January yet.
The last few years December was super busy and we always raised our prices. This year we had to lower them and still didn’t rent out the whole month. And in past years, we always had some days booked in January by now - although at lower prices. But this year absolutely nothing!
I think it has something to do with the stronger dollar. Most of our visitors to New York are foreign, and it has become about 20%-25% more expensive for them to come here now. While at the same time it has become 20%-25% less expensive for Americans to go overseas. So I have a sneaky feeling, that instead of coming to New York the foreigners are going to some other region where the dollar doesn’t affect them, and the Americans are going overseas because a trip there will probably cost them about the same as a trip to New York would.
2 Likes
Thanks Jon York. I bet you’re right about the economy and travel. I’ll have to figure out how to search while not being logged in but I had a friend search on her computer and it took her a long while to find me. Sigh… I’ve heard that some people pay to have their listing come up sooner, though that sounds unethical possibly but if others do it… than are the rest of us at a disadvantage if we do not?
Here’s hoping we’re all booked up soon!
1 Like
I don’t know what to do, so not much!
I turned off instant book, kept all my house rules, and just made the price lower than anyone around my area and I got 3 bookings today. So …lowering the price is my suggestion.
1 Like
Following this thread…please chime in if you have suggestions!
Thanks!
I agree @JonYork, this year is the worst in my six years of hosting. I’m in NJ serving the NY market and normally we’d be experiencing at least 80% occupancy in December and this year it’s dropped to 50%. My husband and I live in a two family with the rental house in the front, and our house (known as a casita in our area). We sit in our living room at night and look across the patio into the empty kitchen window - the house has sat empty since December 5th and won’t be occupied by guests until December 23rd. January-March have always been dismal for us and we drop our prices to cost +10% and even at reduced prices, it’s a real hustle to get bookings. At this time of the year we’d usually have a lot of bookings for the upcoming year, but with the exception of April, we’re not doing that great. The next few weeks will be used to do some real analysis about our future. We’ve already dropped two listings and it’s starting to feel like the bubble is bursting. I hope not, what will I do with 58 duvets?
2 Likes
Put them on ebay and people like me will buy them.
@Lorena I wonder if the uncertain political situation is affecting things? That’s the one thing that’s different this year than any other year. I’m busier than ever but as I’ve said that’s because I have very few tourists, I have travelers stopping here for one night. And a significant part of that travel is non-discretionary. So I don’t know if my experience will apply to you but here are some things I do.
I check my listing everyday. I change prices, pictures, wording weekly. I have significantly improved the room but kept prices the same. I instant book, allow same day booking and 24 hour check in (it’s self check in). I monitor my search ranking with smartbnb.io. I allow pets with a $10 charge.
1 Like
I Think as a general rule business on airbnb has gone down for hosts world over as listings outmatch supply!
6 Likes
Oh wow! We’re in NJ serving NY too!
Our bookings weren’t down 50% this December, I just checked and it’s actually 25%. But, Still NOTHING for January! So for January, our bookings are down 100%. It’s very strange. Oh and on top of all that - I’ve dropped my regular pricing service for a bit to give Airbnb a shot at it. I’ve been using their prices for the last few days. The other service had has at $67-$75 a night during January. Airbnb started off a few days ago at $55 a night, and now they’re down to $44! I’ve been accepting those much lower prices - just to see what would happen - and still nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I sent Airbnb a message through twitter a week ago because our dashboard was reporting that one of our rooms hadn’t had any views since November 30th. For me it was still showing up when I did a search (while I wasn’t logged in), but I asked them why the dashboard would say 0 views for so long. Strangely, a couple of hours later someone from Airbnb called me on the phone to tell me that it was indeed still showing up but bookings for shared rooms were way down because at Christmas time it’s families coming to New York and they want a whole house.
That surely didn’t sound right. And I think SuperhostNYC - you have some whole house rentals, right? Plus, in years past we got tons of tourists throughout all of December. They weren’t people visiting family either. But they were 95% foreign… and you wouldn’t expect foreigners to come here to visit family.
Anyway, if more people are looking for whole house this December because they want to visit family, then that would sound like it’s a more domestic market this year than in years past.
So an economics question for you guys. If a new president comes into office and does several supremely stupid things in his first few months, would that make the dollar stronger or weaker!!??
P.S. SHNYC… on the duvets - we’ll take two!
Everyone should do a search using different criteria. I don’t recommend clearing your cookies because most travelers do not clear their cookies before using Airbnb. And for those of you who use the same wifi network as your guests, they are not likely to clear their cookies either.
I don’t show up in all search results that I should appear in. There are not that many listings in my city, but if I do a search with no dates selected and one, two, or three guests I don’t even show up at all! In other searches I also don’t show. So have other people search for you as if they are traveling to your area. Don’t have them click on your Air link…because it will likely show up. In the end Air said there is nothing they would do about it.
I do think they are moving to follow Homeaway’s “best match” system. Bascially the sites want to play Cupid and match up traveler with a booking that benefits the site. Not everyone enters a dated search.
The reason we should clear our cookies is because we’re normally logged in as hosts. And if you’re logged in Airbnb will show us our listings. So there’s a chance they’ll show our listings anyway, even if we logout because they can see we were logged in recently from that browser.
So you can either clear cookies, or the easier way is to just open a private browser window - you know like the “incognito” window in Chrome. Those windows keep no track of anything you’ve done so there won’t be any cookies there that would indicate to Airbnb that you have logged in from that browser or computer. If you show up this way, then you know for sure that you’re showing up.
2 Likes
One need not do the whole cookie thing. Just use a chrome incognito window and don’t sign into air.
3 Likes
We get less air bnb booking but more with other channels.
This isn’t always true. Like I mentioned before, I only show up in certain searches and I should show up in all of my test searches because I have nowhere near 300 listings in my area. When I enter 2 guests for my city, I should show but instead 19 other properties show. I am nowhere to be found. Poof! The best way to confirm is to have other people do searches as if they were a traveler. And they shouldn’t do anything they “normally” wouldn’t do before searching.
1 Like
I would not do this, to be honest. Yes, if you have the lowest price in the area you’ll get bookings but you need to be sure that you are still making a profit on those bookings. If you are, then fine. But there are so many hidden costs associated with hosting so with a low price you might be in the red.
It can also lead to a price war in your area where all hosts reduce their prices and you almost have to give away your accommodation to beat everyone else. Again, this leads to no profit. So why host?
Remember too that you can’t just add a listing to Airbnb and expect that you don’t have to be actively promoting your rental. Last time I looked, the website said that they have 2 million listings. You will still need to promote your listing away from Airbnb.
1 Like
I’m wondering if you are able to share your other channels though maybe Airbnb will block your response.
This forum is not controlled by Airbnb.