Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 153. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about how Airbnb have made changes to their search results that are affecting how you get bookings.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
02:30 AirBnB changes
05:00 AirBnB experiment
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
I don't know if you saw but a couple of weeks ago, Airbnb made some massive changes to not only the amenities, so the back end section that you can check out right now but also to the front end as well. And that has affected search as much as it affected how you use the platform. So one of the main things that they have done is they have made the search a lot more flexible. So now when you go to the front end of Airbnb and your future potential guests looking for a place to stay, you can choose whether you have exact dates in mind or ever, you have got an idea of dates in mind. And this is going to affect you in terms of how many bookings you can potentially get from that platform.
What I want to do is I just want to very quickly look at Airbnb. So as you can see, over the course of the last year, they've been making a lot of changes, changes in the back end with customer support trying to fix the mess that they made in March 2020. have obviously now on the on the stocks and shares in the IPO and they are growing, the demand is there. And what they want, obviously, if you look at it from you know from a 50,000-foot view is that they want more bookings. And as a host, if you go into your action, you've got loads of different amenities that you can take off. And what they are now starting to do when a future potential guest runs a search or it's on the app, or on the laptop, or the Mac wherever it may be, they will go in and they'll put that date. So for example, they'll do the first of September to the seventh of September, are looking for a location and they may want to then tick off a couple of the amenities. So they may want a hot tub, they may want to be child friendly, they may want x y Zed.
Now, the interesting thing is that in the past, Airbnb would only show results for hosts and properties that tick every single one of those boxes. And you know when you look on booking.com or if you look on vrbo or Expedia or insert travel website, they only show what the guest wants. So if they want a hot tub, they will only show properties that have got a hot tub. If they want somebody that has got a full kitchen, they will only show the property that has a full kitchen.
AirBnB experiment
Airbnb is doing an experiment in this, they are seeing what the guest wants. And they are pulling potential properties to show him. And they are telling them so a guest wanted a hot tub, place near the beach, you want it family-friendly, you want it fast WiFi. Now, we've only got one or two properties. But check out this. This doesn't have a hot tub, but it's got everything else. So it's given the guests the option whether to choose it or ignore it. Now this is really interesting, because again, what does Airbnb want it once. And this is their whole goal to go from search to booking in a smooth, seamless possibility, which is what you know, all otas want and just what the host need to get with direct booking website.
But what is it looking to do as well as it's looking to say, right? We know that our guests want x, y and Zed, but let's put something into the search that will say to them, right? So you wanted all these things? It's got 90% of it hasn't got that, can you live without it? Can you still make your booking so it's trying to get people to stay on the site, which is really interesting. So what I would recommend that you do go for your Airbnb amenities. And again, we use Airbnb like any other marketing channel, we don't rely on it, we just use it as a channel and a source when we need to get visibility and bookings. So make sure that all of your amenities are ticked off and boxed off, make sure that you've got plenty of pictures, make sure that every picture has got a caption. Go on update your listings right now because Airbnb is pushing more and more and more unlike they've come out and said the demand is so high on that platform. It's why they have set up customer support teams is why the Irish and the European and the UK brand reached out to me directly to do a webinar so that they can be more, again more awareness in the UK and Europe is that they want properties on there. And if you're going to use the platform, let's do it right, let's make sure that your visibility is there. But as soon as a guest walks through that door it's your guest forever. We've got all the tools that you need got all the training to help convert an OTA booking into a direct booking in the future.
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