Why most BnB’s don’t achieve 100 percent occupancy rate at optimal rates
Competition
You are not the only BnB out there. Most likely your neighbour has been renting out his BnB for the past 5 years and is busy expanding his “business.” What I am trying to indicate is that you are not alone. Many others are trying to capitalize on the “shared economy”. Meanwhile, they have more experience and access to more funds and simply know better how to provide an optimal Airbnb experience.
Next best thing
You could be very overpriced. What you might consider cheap others may consider a ton and vice versa. The next best thing might offer more and better at a cheaper rate. Best practice for pricing later is a whole other topic. Which involves due diligence and understanding the economic value of your short-term rental and all of the services you are offering with it.
Terrible pictures
You might have awful pictures up for whatever reason. Off angle/granulated, overexposed, pictures of a brick wall (displaying a very unsuccessful graffiti piece). This has an explicit effect of your prospective guest. A poor reflection of the actual state of your property is a definite cause of a lack of bookings. A potential guest’s perception can be influenced from the get go, for better or for worse.
Poor description
A very limited, badly written description will also do the trick of NOT attracting guests. If your description is riddled with spelling mistakes this definitely can put a reader off. It hardly instils trust. After all, how much effort would someone have put into their actual BnB if they didn’t even put any effort into the description? Unfortunately, this is how your guest thinks.
Combination of crappy title/ non-SEO-optimised listing/ NOT using Instant booking function
I won’t go in depth into best practice for titles for the sake of there being enough info about it on the interwebs. It speaks for itself you need to grab the attention of a prospective guest.
Moreover, it’s important to know that hosts who regularly update their calendars on platforms get “tagged” by their algorithms as both active and responsive. This means if you update daily you rank even higher. No updating, no ranking in Airbnb. More on that later! Updating your listing and calendar a lot in combination with a speedy response definitely puts you ahead of your competitors. Obviously, this requires effort and commitment but you definitely get to reap the rewards. More response = more booking potential. At the same time, more requests enable you to be selective in your hosting for those who prefer to be able to.
“Instant Booking” is an Airbnb feature (other platforms give it a different name) that helps you get more reservations. A certain amount of guests like the option to book a room immediately, as they would do with a hotel. It’s more appealing to be able to make the call instantly instead of having to wait for approval. If you enable instant booking, you attract guests that generally know for sure that they want to secure their accommodation with you. Instant booking ensures your listing is booked more often thereby boosting your BnB ranking.
House rules from hell
You are so focused on all the rules you want and demand your guests to abide by, they get scared and decide not to book with you as a result. You might be really nice, but your very rough profile begs to differ. All CAPSLOCK, literally shouting at your guests:
NO SMOKING – NO BARGAINS – NO DISCOUNTS – NO FREEBIES – NO PARTIES – NO FUN – NO DISOBEYING OF RULES – DISOBEYING OF RULES WILL LEAD TO HEAVY FINES – WE WILL CALL THE POLICE
So yeah, you catch my drift……