10 perks of listing your vacation rental on Airbnb as a Smoobu host

Whether you are a novice vacation rental owner or a host who is looking for a way to grow your business, listing your property on Airbnb could be the key to your success. However, a sound booking portal is not enough to ensure the success of your business if it’s not complemented by an efficient vacation rental channel manager. Hence, the partnership with Smoobu was born! Smoobu is one of few select channel managers to earn the status of Airbnb Preferred Software Partner 2024.

Want to know more? Here are the 10 top perks of listing your vacation rental on Airbnb as a Smoobu host.

Booking portals for vacation rentals: an overview

The vacation rental industry is diverse. Not only are there a plethora of different types of short-term rentals, from luxury sea-view villas to cottages in the mountains and everything in between, but there are also many booking portals on the market. These booking portals allow potential guests to easily research and book these vacation rentals all over the world. So, as a vacation rental host or property owner, how do you choose the most effective booking portals for your business?

A good start could be to evaluate the most successful sites on the market, one of which is undoubtedly Airbnb.

Airbnb: from one couch to 6.6 million global active listings

Firstly, what’s Airbnb‘s success due to? Founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk in San Francisco, Airbnb was initially a platform through which individuals could rent out a bed or couch in their properties.

This site offered a significantly cheaper alternative to traditional hotel rooms. In addition, this new, more down-to-earth type of tourism allowed travelers to experience the lives of people in the city they visited, meet locals, and receive advice often not available online. This formula soon led Airbnb to success. By the end of 2022, the booking portal had 6.6 million active listings worldwide. Your vacation rental could be one of them!

Smoobu: vacation rental management made easy

Developed in 2014, Smoobu is an online vacation rental management software. Created by hosts and based on their own experiences renting out properties, its main purpose is to simplify the management of short-term vacation rentals by automating a number of manual tasks. In this way, hosts are free to use the saved time as they prefer, focusing for example on guest relations, optimization of their listings, or developing marketing strategies to grow their business.

Smoobu’s main feature is the channel manager, which allows vacation rental hosts to connect listings from different booking portals (such as Airbnb) and synchronize their calendars in real-time. Beyond this, Smoobu offers several additional features such as automated messages with guests and third parties (such as your team members and cleaning services), an easy-to-use website builder, and customized digital guides for guests.

10 perks of listing your vacation rental on Airbnb as a Smoobu host

Now, there are numerous reasons why you might want to use Smoobu in combination with Airbnb to successfully manage and grow your short-term rental business. Here, we have gathered the top 10 perks of listing your vacation rental on Airbnb as a Smoobu host.

1. Gain wider international visibility on Airbnb

Airbnb is visited daily by millions of users from all over the world looking for the perfect vacation rental for their next holiday. In fact, despite evolving macroeconomic uncertainties, Airbnb has seen significant growth throughout 2022. By listing your rental on this booking portal, you have the opportunity to reach this extensive pool of potential guests.

Airbnb’s top users are not only young people, digital nomads, couples looking for a romantic weekend getaway, and groups of friends. Families with children also book on Airbnb: in fact, in 2022, there were more than 15 million check-ins in nearly 90,000 destinations. No matter what target audience you want to attract, you can find be sure to them on Airbnb.

2. Differentiate and manage your listing through Smoobu

Listing your vacation rental on multiple booking portals has its advantages in that it allows you to diversify your offerings and grow your business. At the same time, in order to attract potential guests, you need to create high-quality listings, which usually requires some work.

By using Smoobu’s channel manager, you won’t have to worry about blocking out calendars manually on each portal to avoid double bookings. With Smoobu, bookings will sync automatically, saving you precious time and eliminating the chance of a double booking. You will then be able to spend time on differentiating your listing. Connect your Airbnb listing and don’t forget to create your own vacation rental website, where you can build your brand and get commission-free bookings!

3. Optimize your listing to rank higher on Airbnb searches

Airbnb rewards its hosts’ commitment to creating a high-quality listing. For this reason, if you have professional photos, an up-to-date description, and a complete list of services offered, you can easily reach the top ranks in guest searches.

In addition, the filters and categories offered by Airbnb allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition. Do you manage a rural home or a farm with animals included? Do you own a vacation home with an amazing pool, unusual accommodation in the middle of nature, a glamping tent or a shared room in the historic center of some European capital?

Be sure to set up your listing as comprehensively as possible and show your future guests what makes your rental unique. And after a number of successful bookings and positive reviews, you could even get Airbnb Superhost status and appear at the very top of traveler searches!

4. Take advantage of Airbnb’s API connection to Smoobu

What makes the connection between Airbnb and Smoobu so special?

There are two types of connections between reservation calendars: the API connection and an iCal connection. The former, which is the one between Smoobu and Airbnb, allows you to synchronize a whole range of information in real time about both the reservations received on the booking portal and the guests who make these reservations.

An iCal connection, on the other hand, is less complete, as it only synchronizes the dates of the reservation and the name provided by the guest. In addition, it has a cyclical update that on average can vary from 5 minutes to half an hour. The risk of calendar synchronization delays and thus overbooking is high.

The API connection between Smoobu and Airbnb will allow you to avoid double bookings, which is one of the worst nightmares of all vacation rental hosts.

5. Manage Airbnb’s prices, bookings, and messages from Smoobu

The fact that the API connection allows you to exchange a large amount of information between different booking portals and Smoobu gives you other advantages.

• You can have a panoramic view of all your past, present, and future bookings on the Smoobu Cockpit.
• You can view statistics on your occupancy rate, earnings per portal, cancellation rate, guests and more.
• You can centralize and automate your messages. Prepare a welcome message template with the check-in time for your guests on Smoobu, and it will be sent at the pre-determined time directly to your guests through Airbnb messaging system.
• You can manage prices per night directly from Smoobu, without having to manually update your listings on Airbnb and other sites. To optimize this aspect, consider using one of Smoobu’s integration for dynamic pricing.
• You can automate your guest reviews, which will dramatically increases your chances of receiving a review back. Find out more here.

Once you connect Airbnb to Smoobu, you will be able to directly manage several aspects of your listing: nightly rate, maximum and minimum length of stay, prices per additional guest, cleaning fees, pet fees, extra charges, rule sets, check-in and check-out days, lead time and more!

6. Use Smoobu’s additional features to enhance your Airbnb guests’ experience

The short-term rental market is very competitive. In many cases, there will be dozens of other similar rentals in the area of your vacation rental property. For these reasons, differentiating yourself from the competition is important, and offering minimal services may not be enough in many circumstances.

With Smoobu’s features, you can enhance your Airbnb guests’ experience. Automated communication and pre-written response templates will allow you to answer all queries in a timely manner and increase your response rate. With the personalized digital Guest Guide, you can share expert advice, make sure your guests know all the house rules for an enjoyable and worry-free stay and offer additional services for extra income. Not to mention all the additional services you can offer through Smoobu’s integrations.

An optimal guest experience allows you to earn positive reviews, which are one of the key pillars of Airbnb’s ranking.

7. Two-sided review system: best for you and your guests

Now, Airbnb relies heavily on reviews, both from guests and hosts. In fact, not only will your vacation rental be rated, but you will also be able to rate the guests on several aspects. Were they clean and communicative? Did they follow the house rules?

This two-sided review system gives you a minimum guarantee when a guest books your vacation rental property. In fact, if they behaved terribly during their past stays and received many bad reviews, it would become hard for them to book other properties on Airbnb because of their bad reputation.

8. Enjoy safe bookings with Airbnb’s guest identity verification

Airbnb’s system verifies the identity of your potential guests by analyzing hundreds of factors in each reservation. Not only will it block guests who are at high risk of throwing parties or damaging your property, based on their booking history, but it will also allow you to avoid guests with fraudulent identities.

9. AirCover: Save money in case of accidents with Airbnb guests

The safety of users, whether guests or property managers, is very important to Airbnb. For this reason, the booking site decided to introduce a comprehensive insurance protection program in 2021: AirCover. In addition to the guest identity verification mentioned above, AirCover provides liability insurance and deals with protection against property damage caused during the stay by guests who have booked on Airbnb. For possible damages caused by guests, Airbnb offers protection of up to $3 million. The protection covers the following types of damages:

• Pet damage
• Art & valuables
• Income loss (for example, in case you have to suspend your activity because something broke during a reservation and needs to be repaired)
• Auto & boat
• Deep cleaning (needed due to unexpected damage caused by Airbnb guests)

10. Secure your profit thanks to Airbnb’s low guest cancellation rate

Another perk that shouldn’t be underestimated of listing your vacation rental property on Airbnb is the low cancellation rate. According to Airbnb’s global data, the cancellation rate by guests in 2022 was under 15%. This means that, in most cases, your bookings on Airbnb will be successful and that you can rely on the profits generated on the booking site.

Conclusion: list your vacation rental on Airbnb as a Smoobu host

As a vacation rental owner or host, you have plenty of reasons to list on Airbnb. Our advice is to create a quality listing (which costs you nothing), connect it to Smoobu, and wait a couple of weeks. On average, it takes very little time to get a reservation on Airbnb. According to data from 2022, half of the listings activated between July and September of that year received their first booking within 3 days! Ready to get started? Use this link to list your vacation rental on Airbnb.

With Smoobu’s channel manager and additional features, you can easily manage your listings, and you’ll be able to grow your short rental business and your profits. In case you are not yet a Smoobu user, test our product with our no obligations 14-day free trial.

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