How we became AirBnB Superhosts in our first two months of hosting

A couple of friends have asked me to share how we became AirBnb Superhosts, and some general tips about running a successful AirBnB, so here goes…

Backstory: We have this beautiful home in the country that we couldn’t sell. We love it, but after five years of trying to make our lives there work, we couldn’t deal with living so far from town. (When we moved there, our daughter wasn’t doing 13 (!) dance lessons a week that required a 45 minute drive to get her there.) So, we decided to move anyway and see if we could cover the mortgage by AirBnBing the place. Surely we’d get a few bookings, right?

Prepping the house

Before we could list the house, we decided to fix some of the issues we’d just lived with for years, such as there not being a shower (when we bought the house we were like “Well that’ll be the first reno we do,” but then we got used to just having baths and never got round to putting one in) and some plaster that had lifted off the lath in one of the rooms. We needed to buy bedding, a few more mattresses, and kitchen equipment because we had to take stuff with us when we moved. Consequently, setting up the AirBnB was not cheap. We had to leave all our good furniture there, and are living with thrift store furniture at our new place and mattresses on the floor.

We pretty much emptied the house of all our personal stuff. Actually to start with we left more stuff there, but realized some guests literally went through every cupboard (random things were moved) which was a bit weird, so we’ve since removed more things. We put locks on the attic and basement doors, so we could have some private storage places. We left our art on the walls though, because we wanted the house to still look like a home.

I left tea, coffee, and sugar for our guests, as well as cooking oils and a bunch of basic spices. I also left hotel sized toiletries in the bathroom (as a travel writer I have loads always).

We got an alarm installed for the times that the house would be empty. The new alarm system has been really helpful because it shows when people arrive and leave — making it easy to see that our guests have checked out so we can get in there and clean. I installed a keypad lock on the front door, so we don’t have to be there when people check-in, or even see them when they are using our home.

Personal touches

We want to make people feel welcome, so we always leave a personalized note on a stick-on chalkboard on the fridge, and I pick up a blueberry pie from our wonderful local bakery for when guests arrive.

When people book with us, I ask if there are any kids in the group and how old they are so I can leave out age-appropriate toys or a crib/ highchair etc (all the stuff I should have got rid of when my kids grew out of it but didn’t). We already have a massive trampoline in the yard, and plenty of books and puzzles in the library for guests to use.

Dealing with guests

Before we started this, I met someone who has several homes that he rents out on Instagram, and his big tip for success was to always give guests a five star review unless they do something major. I’m glad he gave me that advice, because it made me chill out about mess and broken stuff. Things happen, and you can’t expect that people are going to care about your home as much as you do — especially when they are on vacation. Almost everyone deserved those five stars anyway, except for the group of young people who stayed three weeks and left food exploded in the microwave, a layer of filth everywhere, didn’t sort the garbage so I had to separate rotten food from recycling, and peed in one of the beds — I didn’t discover this until I got to the bottom of the laundry hampers and found the evidence, they probably would have lost a few stars if I’d found it before reviewing them.

Although I still worry every time I go to the house after someone checks out, those guests were unusual. Most guests have left the house clean and tidy. Some have stripped the beds (something I always do when we stay at an AirBnB) and two have left us presents. Nine of the 12 guests we’ve hosted have left us great reviews (the others didn’t leave any review, and I guess some people just don’t bother).

If you want to become a Superhost, having positive interactions with guests has to be priority #1. You want those guests to give you a five star rating, and leave you a review. You don’t want to cancel bookings, or forget to respond to people promptly, as those are things that the AirBnB platform monitors. In case you’re reading this wondering what being a Superhost does for you, it gives you an icon that says you provide exceptional service to your guests, and pushes your home into more searches so there are more eyeballs on your listing (and hopefully more bookings).

Setting rates

When you set up on AirBnB they suggest a price that they think people would pay for your place. For us they initially suggested $120 a night, and although I thought that sounded too cheap (our place sleeps eight) we went with it because other homes in the area were going for even less, and I wanted to make sure we got bookings so that we could get reviews —I know that we look for reviews before we book anywhere, so felt that we needed them fast. We kept that price, but I’ve raised it for next summer. I’m confident that we’ll book out for the summer, and have raised the price to $160 a night from June 2019. Let’s see how that goes.

AirBnB has a Smart Pricing function that automatically raises and lowers your rates depending on demand. We opted to turn this on, and there was one weekend where it booked us at $140 a night. I don’t know whether it helps with bookings or not.

You get to charge a cleaning fee, and we decided to set that fairly low at $50 because I didn’t want to put people off booking with us. I may reassess this later, as I know some people charge upwards of $100.

Well, that’s all I can think to say right now, so hopefully this has been helpful.

Related posts:

Rapid application development has gone from a race to a sprint. It’s no surprise — enterprises need better applications faster. From a former reliance on traditional coding, application development…

Her name was Diana. Or Dirty Diana as we used to call her. Diana was a Puerto Rican escort and madam. The woman was rough trade through and through. But there was something I liked about her. Diana…

Over the last 15 weeks of Writing 150, I believe I have adopted a focus on developing an arguable thesis for each writing project, arranging the materials for my essays, and utilizing scholarly…