I thought I’d update this, roughly a month later. The top post says I
posted it 26 days ago.
So, some statistics. I’ve now had a grand total of 11 inquiries so
far. This is everything under https://www.airbnb.co.in/inbox. I’m not
distinguishing between reservation requests and booking inquiries
here, since Airbnb is lumping them together. Of these two were
directly reservation requests, and one of the remaining 9 was
initially a booking inquiry and then a reservation request was made. I
did pre-approve the request, but I’m not sure if the guest used the
pre-approval or not. So a total of 3 bookings so far. Currently for 6
days, 3 days, and 7 days. At least for now, inquiries really don’t
mean bookings. The funny thing is that some of them sounded quite
serious about booking right away, and at least based on this small
sample, the number of questions they ask appears to be inversely
proportional to the likelihood of renting. The three people who
actually booked, collectively didn’t ask anything at all. The people
who made the current booking didn’t even send a message with the
initial reservation request.
The current guests initially booked for 2 days, and then extended for
a further 4. They are scheduled to leave Tuesday morning. I almost
didn’t book the lady who made the booking request, because she didn’t
include a message, but she did respond to my reply.
I was a little nervous about the currently resident couple. The
guest’s page had basically no information and she basically told me
nothing before arriving. Also, it turns out they are locals - the
guest page listed a different city, but apparently that’s out of
date. However, they’ve been out most of the day, every day, and been
practically invisible while they have been here - no requests, no
questions, nothing. I’ve got a feeling this is considerably better
than average.
Here is a inquiry breakdown by location: 6 India, 1 Canada (from an
Indian), 2 US, 1 Australia, 1 Vietnam. The three people who have
actually booked are 2 India and 1 America. Since my cancellation
policy is moderate, the two people who have booked but who haven’t
arrived could currently cancel with no penalty.
The inquiries contained some curiosities:
- The Australian gentleman who asked for a discount for a 2 week
stay, then added “How do I apply the discount to the booking” and “do
you provide a coupon code?” The funny part is that he is himself an
Airbnb host for several properties (much more expensive than mine) and
with good reviews, doesn’t offer any discounts himself, and further,
doesn’t he know how Airbnb works? I don’t think coupon codes can be
used with Airbnb. I assume the correct instrument for giving a special
discount would be a “special offer”, so why didn’t he know that?
I offered him a 10% discount, but didn’t hear anything back.
- The Vietnamese lady who said she wanted to book outside Airbnb,
then asked for a discount (for a two day stay), then said she “won’t
cook at home much”. (I don’t offer cooking facilities, only a
microwave oven.)
I said no to both the booking outside Airbnb and the discount. She
replied saying she would think about it.
- The Indian gentleman who said his 15 year old son and a friend
would be competing at a local tennis tournament. As he put it “On the
other day I’ve done booking like this only.” I also wrote about that
in http://www.airhostsforum.com/t/minors-travelling-alone/4668.
The couple currently renting the room were kind enough to fill out the
suggestion form I gave. I asked them to rate possible items on a
scale of 0 to 10, where 0 was “don’t care at all”, and 10 was
excellent. (Some of these are things that would have been relatively
straight-forward to do, but I put off because I didn’t know if anyone
would actually show up.) One item that they predictably gave 10 to,
was a separate fridge for the room. I think I’ll get that next, but
I’ll park it outside. More space for the fridge, less noise in the
room. And everybody likes fridges.
I purchased a domain name, http://towerroom.net, which now redirects
to my Airbnb listing. Eventually having my own website would be a good
idea, I think.
Overall, this is moving a bit slow, but there a lot of people listing
here, some of them are cheaper than I am, and some of them have
reviews. So I guess it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. Some people
have made suggestions about the listing. If other people want to
comment, it would be appreciated.