If you own one or two Airbnbs and are currently managing them yourself, this blog is for you!
Owning an Airbnb is like running your own little hotel, and just like a hotel, it requires a vast amount of work to make it successful and profitable. Homeowners, landlords, and investors often lack the expertise, time, and dedication needed to consistently produce 5-star results.
City Superhost can maximise your rental returns and relieve you of all the stress of managing your property for just a 10% online management fee. Here's what’s involved in running your own little hotel:
Designing and Furnishing Your Airbnb Property
Let’s start with the easy bit (although the most expensive) - getting your property ready for guests. Your property needs to feel like a home, not just a rental property.
In a crowded market, your property needs to give the ‘wow’ factor, both online at the point of booking and when entering the home. This can be achieved in a variety of ways - think feature walls, standout artwork and large TVs.
The snowball effect of having a premium property means you can command higher prices, get better reviews, increase your occupancy, and in turn command higher prices.
Of course, it’s got to function well with comfy mattresses & seating, a well equipped kitchen and great WiFi. Airbnb verifies property Wifi to give confidence to travellers that their streaming needs will be met. With the rise of remote working, this is hugely important.
We work with a fantastic interior designer who’ll turn your property into the perfect Airbnb home. Her efficient work often gets a property online 2 weeks before an owner could, and that extra revenue pays for her services.
Airbnb Photography
Unless you’re a skilled photographer – don’t photograph your property yourself!
Photos will make or break a potential guest's decision to book your property, so it’s important to get these right. Hiring a professional photographer or the City Superhost team will elevate your listing and attract more bookings at higher rates.
Short-Term Rental Listing on Multiple Major Platforms
While Airbnb is the original online travel agency for short term lets, there are other, huge platforms your property needs to be listed on to maximise your occupancy and rates. Booking.com (or booking.yeah!) really is a powerhouse full of potential guests.
The Booking.com platform is traditionally geared towards big hotels, but with the growth of the short-term rental market, their marketing is gearing more and more towards our offering, meaning more customers looking for traditional ‘Airbnb-style’ properties.
Unlike Airbnb, Booking.com cannot be used efficiently by someone without a deep knowledge of their platform.
Hosting on multiple channels also brings up the challenge of double bookings. City Superhost synchronises a listings calendar across all platforms, eliminating any chance of a double booking.
Direct Bookings
The modern guest is booking-savvy and will spend time looking for the best price. This means searching on Google, as well as their favourite online travel agencies. Are you taking advantage of Google? Our direct booking site allows your guests to save money and for you to avoid the 15% platform fees.
This example shows one of our fantastic properties on Google, which links to our direct booking site.
Airbnb Listing Optimisation
Are you putting your best foot forward when it comes to optimising your listings? At City Superhost, we know exactly what makes Airbnb and Booking.com’s algorithms tick. Over the years, we’ve gained expert knowledge to increase first-page search impression rate and our listing overall conversion rate.
We’re Verified Superhosts!
Maintaining Superhost Status is a fantastic achievement, and an even better achievement maintaining it across multiple properties. City Superhost prides itself on consistent, high standards that over-delivers on guest expectations – only by doing this can you maintain Superhost status.
At the point of writing, on Airbnb alone, we’ve hosted 7570 nights within the last 365 days with an average 82.4% of guests leaving us 5-star reviews. Read through all our reviews on our Airbnb profile!
You’re a Superhost! Great… But You Still Need Us!
If you’re already hosting and you’re a Superhost, that’s fantastic. You’ve made a great start and clearly know how to welcome guests to your home and make them feel comfortable.
What we can almost guarantee is that you’re leaving money on the table – especially if your calendar is fully booked! This generally means that you’re pricing your property too low. On the other side of the scale, if your occupancy is below 85% then you’re missing out on bookings for any number of reasons.
Of course, there’s lots of other reasons you might want City Superhost to manage your property, such as saving you time or alleviating the need to be on call to your guests 24/7.
Guest Vetting
Vetting guests is one of City Superhost’s highest priorities. The worry of ‘who’s going to be staying in my home?’ is always one of the top concerns of our owners, and rightly so! Allowing the wrong people to stay in your property can have hugely damaging effects, disrupting your neighbours and impacting future guests. That’s why we have strict guest vetting processes in place.
We recommend that all hosts with properties with two beds or more install a noise monitor from Minut. These are our eyes and ears in a property at all times to help prevent parties. These devices monitor sound in decibels, detect crowds and detect smoking. If any are detected, the guest will automatically be notified and we can reach out to the guest to keep the noise down. Generally, they’re just playing music on the TV too loud!
We know from experience that 99% of guests are fantastic people, just wanting a clean space to enjoy their visit.
Check-In and Check-Out
When we hosted our first guests in 2017, we met them at the apartment ready to welcome them to our home - it was great! We got to meet them, show them around our apartment, explain the heating system and recommend our favourite places to eat and drink.
For the next year, we checked people in personally and we realised one major thing: people are late! Whether it’s trains, buses, flights, traffic, or stopping off for lunch, there’s countless reasons someone might be late. But, we were always on time. Not only is this time consuming for us as a host, but it’s also inconvenient for the guest.
Guests don’t want to be held to a fixed arrival or departure time, they want to be free to come and go as they please, just like a hotel. Particularly after Covid, people don’t actually want to meet people in person and are happy to conveniently check themselves in via a lockbox or smart lock.
Check-In Videos
Self-check-in is effective only if every guest can easily follow instructions at any time of day, whether it is daytime or nighttime, and whether the guest speaks English or Chinese.
One of the biggest game changers in our process has been the introduction of check-in videos. In the past, our check in guides were PDFs with detailed diagrams and instructions, but we still received some calls from guests who either couldn’t find the location or operate the lockbox.
Videos solved all our issues. We can now clearly and visually show the guests the local area, lockbox location, how to open it, where and how to park and how to gain access to the property - all in one simple video that any guest can watch.
At City Superhost, over the last 365 days, 87.3% of guests rated their check in score as 5 stars!
24/7 Guest Communications
Quite possibly one of the most demanding challenges to hosting is the need to be on-hand 24/7 to promptly deal with any guest issues, questions or maintenance issues. The modern traveller demands high levels of service and convenience at every turn. City Superhost utilises scheduled messages to ensure that each guest has the correct information when they need it, ensuring each guest receives consistent information.
We back this up with 24/7 support to personally respond to any guest queries.
Digital Airbnb Guidebook
If you don’t have a digital guidebook, you’re missing a trick. Allowing guests access to the information they need, when they need it, is key to excellent communication. Things like WiFi and check-out times are obvious, but City Superhost goes the extra mile by creating how-to videos for all appliances, heating, hot water, how to open a sofa bed (and where to find the linen) and more. We use our guest FAQs to create a guide which allows guests to enjoy every aspect of a property.
Keeping it Personal
One of the most loved features of staying in an Airbnb is its owner’s recommendations on local tips, things to do and places to see. Guidebooks are a fantastic way to connect with your guests on a personal level, with the bonus that guests receive them as soon as they book. This means guests can plan in advance with their recommendations to hand.
Airbnb Maintenance
One of the great things about short-term rental VS long-term rental is that properties are inspected and cleaned after every stay. This means damage and dirt cannot compound over time, leaving you with a huge bill at the end of a tenancy.
As the eyes and ears on the ground, it’s a cleaner’s responsibility to spot any property maintenance issues or damage caused by a guest. Keeping on top of maintenance ensures that each guest has a consistent experience.
Airbnb Dynamic Pricing
Possibly the most important aspect of your business! Get this wrong and your profits could become a loss, and all your hard work done in vain.
City Superhost has a wealth of pricing experience that makes us pricing experts! We use pricing tools combined with real life experience to ensure each property achieves its maximum potential.
A top tip – if you find yourself fully booked weeks in advance, then you’re likely pricing your property too low!
Have you considered occupancy-based pricing? This method is often used to maximise occupancy during the weekdays, while at the same time maximising daily rates at the weekends. They can also be used in conjunction with sofa beds to cover extra costs of linen and cleaning.
Calendar Management
Not all properties are equal. This means different strategies for different size properties in different areas. City Superhost utilises dynamic minimum night stay strategies to attract the ideal length of stay booking and to maximise the occupancy of a calendar.
City Superhost has an average occupancy rate of 85% throughout the year.
Review Management
Once a stay is over, it’s time to get that all important review in. Guests who’ve had issues with their stay are keen to let everyone know, whilst guests who’ve had a great stay are less likely to leave a review. City Superhost uses scheduled messages to prompt guests to leave us a 5-star review.
The final thing to do to complete the guest journey is to reply to their review. This is generally just a personal thank you for their kind review and sharing that we’re looking forward to hosting the guest again in the future. It’s also an opportunity to reply to any negative comments and let future guests know we’ve rectified any issues.
Why Join City Superhost?
On average, we earn 30% more in revenue compared to hosts who self-manage their properties. Simply put, this leaves you with increased profit, less hassle and more time on your hands.
City Superhost has extensive experience managing Airbnb and short-term rental properties. Let us handle your guest and listing management so you can enjoy the returns of your property!
