3 Things You NEED to Get Your Airbnb Booked Solid in 2023

Things have changed, there are a lot of hosts talking about not being able to get any bookings, and going 30 60 90 days without even so much as an inquiry on their short term rental property. So in today’s video, I’m going to share with you the three things that I’m doing to stay booked going into 2023. And what you can do to make sure that you get the same. So the first thing is your cancellation policy, you absolutely have to make sure that your cancellation policy is set properly for the area that you’re in. Now, for most properties in most areas. This means setting a strict cancellation policy. Gone are the days that we experienced in 2020 and 2021, where you had to set a flexible cancellation policy on your property in order to get booked. Now I know that was the case for a lot of properties, and a lot of areas myself included, eyes shifted over to a flexible cancellation policy. And that was largely because people weren’t locking in travel plans for fear of the government telling them they’re not allowed to travel anymore. Well, that’s since changed. And now what you want is for your guests to be booking under a strict cancellation policy and relying on their travel insurance if they need to do any kind of last minute cancellation. Because at this point, we all know what to expect, there’s a lot less uncertainty. And so if a guest needs to cancel last minute, they should be relying on their travel insurance not on you as an Airbnb host to get their money back for them. So make sure you have a strict cancellation policy in most places. Because ultimately, you’re going to make a lot more money by locking in bookings than what you’ll potentially miss out on by accepting reservations. That will only book under a flexible cancellation policy, because the reality is, a lot of those people are later going to end up cancelling on you. And that means that your calendar got blocked up with someone that ultimately flaked out when you could have gotten a firm booking in there. So cancellation policy is an absolute must. Now the next thing you want to do that you absolutely have to make sure you nail is photos, I’ve said this time and time and time again. So I’m sure I sound like a broken record if you have watched a lot of videos on this channel. But if you’re new year, I always harp on the importance of photos. And right now specifically is a really, really important time to be nailing this. If you haven’t already gone out and invested in professional photography, and gotten them to do a really, really good job, then now is the time more than ever, because ultimately, last year and the year before, were times when pretty well anyone could list pretty well anything on Airbnb for pretty much any price and it would get booked. So even if you had a subpar listing, sure you are leaving money on the table, but you would still end up getting booked. Now very different. Now we’re in sort of a macro slow season. So anyone who’s operating in a more seasonal market will know exactly what I’m talking about. We’re in the low season, if you’re one of the top 20% of hosts, you end up getting the lion’s share of the bookings. Whereas if you’re in the bottom 80% of hosts, you end up getting next to nothing. And so a lot of hosts are talking on social media and elsewhere about the Airbnb bust, how there’s so much less demand and people aren’t getting booked up. And the reality is, those are just the underperformers in the market. Those are the people that are in the bottom 80% who just aren’t getting any of the bookings, a lot of people think that when demand for travel goes down, that everyone feels that equally, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that the 80% of hosts that are on the bottom 80% of the market, they end up getting almost no bookings and the demand that there is gets filtered towards just the top performing hosts. So you need to make sure you’re one of those top performing hosts and you have a top performing listing. The easiest lowest hanging fruit that you can grab onto for this is going to be upgrading your photos making sure that you have photos that really showcase your space. Well help the guys to envision themselves in space. We have other videos on this channel that go into detail about exactly how to optimise your photos and get really great photography. But that’s one thing you really want to now while you’re at it if you want bonus points, make sure your whole listing is optimised because now more than ever, if you want to get any bookings, you need to make sure that everything is really dialled in. You guys just want to take a quick break here to say that for those of you watching, who want to build cashflow, and long term wealth by purchasing Airbnb and short term rental properties, there’s a link in the description right down below for a free training that will walk you through my exact strategy for investing successfully in Airbnb ease. Now, if you’re not ready to actually buy properties, and you want to get started managing other people’s properties on Airbnb the same way I got started and build a full time income managing other people’s properties. There’s actually another free training linked in the description down below as well. That’ll be a really great fit for you. So whether you want to invest in short term rental properties and actually build amazing cash flow and long term wealth by acquiring the assets, buying the properties themselves, or you’re looking to earn a full time income managing other people’s properties on Airbnb, we’ve got some awesome trainings that are linked in the description down below. That will definitely help you out. When you sign up for the trainings. We’re also going to send you a Few other tools and resources completely for free just to help you get started. Again, the links to sign up are in the description down below. And both trainings and all the tools are completely free. So make sure to register for the trainings, links in the description down below. So that’s the first thing is your cancellation policy and your photos. And the third thing is your pricing strategy. Like I said before, the last couple of years, you could list pretty well anything at pretty well any price and get booked. That’s not the case anymore. That’s just not the way things are in the market. Right now you have to be adjusting to the fluctuations in demand, there’s less overall demand, that means you have to not only just drop your price, but you also need to actively manage your price, you need to have a data driven pricing strategy so that you know exactly what your target is for every given month of the year. And then you need to be able to track how you’re doing relative to that target every single week leading up to that time, and then make your pricing adjustments accordingly. increased price if you’re getting overbooked decreased price, if you’re getting under booked, and really actively manage that, I can share that a listing I just launched wasn’t getting the bookings that I expect it to be. And so I went in there after a couple of days, and I actively managed the pricing, made some adjustments, then I started getting a flood of bookings coming in, I was able to mitigate any of the downside and really just average out the prices and adjust the prices ongoingly. And so that’s now a process that I do every single week it has been historically approached, we do every single week with each one of our properties. Now I’m sometimes even getting in there twice a week. This isn’t a really in depth, extensive time consuming process, we’re talking about maybe 20 to 30 minutes per property, if that to go and actively manage your prices. And what it results in is hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars of additional bookings every single month, because you’re actually adjusting your pricing to supply and demand. So if you don’t know exactly how to price your property, again, we’ve got trainings linked in the description, we have other videos on the channel that dive into that in more detail. But it is absolutely crucial right now that you adopt a data driven pricing strategy, not just set it and forget pricing. Gone are the days of being able to get bookings for any property at any price. It’s just not where we’re at right now. So you need to make sure that your pricing according to what people are actually paying. I’ve seen videos of other YouTubers out there that are saying they’re not getting any bookings, or they’re getting one booking in a month. In fact, in another video coming on the channel, I’m doing a full deep dive in a reaction video to one of Shelby churches videos where she explains about how she only got one booking per month for two months straight. And that’s a reality. That’s just a result of the fact that she didn’t have a danger and pricing strategy. She wasn’t making the adjustments she needed to to repricing. And so if you want to make sure that you are getting fully booked, then you need to have a data driven pricing strategy. So again, those three things to recap, or you need to have a cancellation policy that is set up properly, you need to have great photos and just overall a really good listing. And then third is you need to have a really solid pricing strategy. If you have those three things. I promise you, you can make it through any season you can make sure your Airbnb and your short term rental performs no matter what’s going on in the rest of the market, but you need to make sure they’re dialled in now if you want help doing that we’ve got tonnes of resources for you on this channel and linked in the description to help you do that. I hope this video was really helpful and valuable to you. If it was please take a quick second to just hit that like button, give this video a thumbs up I really appreciate it. Make sure you hit the subscribe button as well to stay up to date with two new videos we post every single week on this channel. And last but not least, make sure you leave me a comment with your thoughts, questions, comments, anything you want to share, just drop them in the comment section down below. All that said I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. Thanks for checking out this video and I’ll see you in the next one.