How to improve Airbnb's ranking for vacation rentals

Learn how to improve your Airbnb listing ranking as a vacation rental owner. Make your listing more visible in Airbnb search and get more bookings. Check out our Airbnb guide for hosts for some important tips on how to list your vacation rental on Airbnb.

Ranking: How Airbnb ranks your listing

When ranking listings, Airbnb uses an algorithm – like Google – that is constantly being adjusted. How exactly this algorithm works is not known. However, we do know that it considers over 100 factors, which can be divided into three main categories:

The three most important Airbnb ranking factors

The needs of the guests

Location searched, location of where the search occurs, previous searches, clicks, guest’s wish list, etc. Unfortunately, you can’t influence this as a host.

The listing

Rating, price, location of the accommodation, possibility of immediate booking, quick responds. Here you can do a lot as a host: optimize your ad and provide guests the best service you can.

The travel details

Number of guests, length of stay, early booking, or short-term booking, set maximum and minimum price. Here, as a host, you don’t have much influence. However, make sure that all important information about your holiday home is included in your ad. This will ensure your ad will be displayed correctly when potential guest’s use Airbnb’s filters.

How to optimize your ad for Airbnb

Understand the needs of your guests

As a host, you need to understand the needs of your guests. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and think about what they are looking for and how you can meet their needs. Consciously design your ad to meet their needs. For example, guests want a vacation home with a pool. Make sure to show your pool in your main photo and mention it several times in your description.

How does Airbnb evaluate whether you know the guests’ needs?

Clicks in search results

How well your ad matches the guests’ needs is shown, for example, by the number of views, i.e., clicks on your listing by different users. After all, if they aren’t interested, they wouldn’t click, right?

Number of booking requests

Another important factor in the algorithm is the number of booking requests. After all, if your ad doesn’t look good, no one will want to book.

This is how the search results are sorted

Guests define the search by entering a date range, number of people, location, and other filters. If there are hardly any listings on Airbnb that meet these criteria, Airbnb adds listings that are similar.

This also happens with flexible search. When arranging search results, Airbnb says it also considers information it has from guests’ previous searches.

Jump-starting recently activated listings.

It takes up to 24 hours for your listing to be visible on Airbnb. Airbnb’s algorithm gives preference to new listings when displaying them to give new hosts a good start.

Location of the vacation rental

Airbnb shows popular accommodations further up in the Airbnb search. These are often located near landmarks, etc.

What you can do as an Airbnb host

• Optimize your ad: Your ad needs high quality photos, a detailed description including listing of amenities. Some guests search and are specifically looking for an apartment with a pool or barrier-free entrance or a pet-friendly vacation rental.
• The more open dates for booking dates you offer; the more bookings are possible.
• Flexibility in the length of stay is worthwhile: waive minimum or maximum stays and get more bookings and good reviews.
• Pricing: Offer discounts for new listings or low season.
• Relax your cancellation policies: Hosts who switched from strict or moderate to flexible cancellation policies after April 2020 saw their bookings increase by 10% or more, according to Airbnb.

Conclusion

The ranking of your listing in Airbnb search depends on many factors. Not all of them you can influence. Therefore, you should take advantage of the opportunities you have: Make your listing as appealing and as informative as possible!

This way you most potential guests will find you; it will lead to more bookings and ensure your guests are well taken care of with excellent service. This will bring you good ratings! The path to becoming a superhost is not far away!

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