5 Airbnb Tips All New Hosts Need to Know

Airbnb can be a tricky place to navigate as a beginner Airbnb host, so we’ve compiled some of the most useful Airbnb tips that all new hosts need to know!

1. Be honest with your guests

As Learnbnb says, there’s no use lying or misleading your guests about your property through your listings or messages. You will most likely get caught out if you mislead your guests, and then you run the risk of getting into big trouble.

Your Airbnb property is sure to have its quirks and flaws, so own up to these! Guests likely won’t even mind, plus they are much more likely to give you a better review if they don’t feel they’ve been lied to.

2. Never take bookings outside an Airbnb app

Once In a Lifetime Journey suggests you should never take communications or bookings outside of Airbnb apps. This is for a range of reasons.

Communicating with your guests on an Airbnb app makes it easier to keep track of communications and bookings. This will help you avoid double-booking your property or losing important messages between guests that you later rely on if something does go wrong.

3. Use a keyless lock

Buzzfeed offers this helpful advice to use a keyless lock if you’re not going to give the keys to your guests in person. This is an easy option to keep your keys safe and secure for guests. You just need to set up personalised codes or use an app so that guests can enter your property.

4. Keep your Airbnb space clean

Airbnb says you will need to create a cleaning routine so you can keep your space clean in between guests. You could either hire a cleaner or do the cleaning yourself, but you will need to be thorough, have the right supplies, and create a cleaning tick list that you can stick to.

You can also add a cleaning fee to your listing to offset the cost of professional help.

5. Communication is key

Here’s another useful tip, this time from Stuff, communication with your Airbnb guests is the key when it comes to running a successful Airbnb operation. This is especially important on the Airbnb platform as rankings are also dependent on how long it takes for hosts to respond to guest messages. It should take you a maximum of 24 hours to reply to a guest query otherwise Airbnb may punish you by taking your listing down.

You should also keep lines of communication open with guests and send them the following messages (plus your cell phone number and email address once they are staying at the property in case of emergency):

1. Booking confirmation message
2. Pre-check-in message
3. Check-in message 
4. Check-up message
5. Check-out message
6. Post-check-out message
7. Review reminder message
8. Price reduction message for longer stays in the property

Conclusion

I hope you found these Airbnb hosting tips really useful when it comes to running your own Airbnb business. If you do want to own an Airbnb, but you don’t want to manage it and have to keep up to date with all the latest tips and tricks, like I’ve shared in this article, then you may be interested in an Airbnb property management company such as Zodiak Management. We take all the hassle and stress out of hosting and leave you with a passive source of income.