Airbnb is a household name. There is no denying that the platform has revolutionized how we travel. With high investment in technology, community building, and business modeling, short-term rental hosts can replicate the overwhelming success of the Airbnb platform within their own properties. This blog post will cover marketing, automation, and investing techniques you can utilize in your short-term rental strategy.

Host Tools provides an automated, unified calendar for short-term rental hosts, allowing you to seamlessly list on all major channels. Start your free trial today! 

How to Use Marketing in Your Airbnb Strategy

Airbnb’s success is in no small part due to its marketing initiative–and its one you can replicate. You’ve likely heard their famous slogan “Don’t go there, live there”. Airbnb rose to unprecedented success because it sold an experience rather than a bed. As a short-term rental host, you can maximize your property’s potential with upsells, guidebooks, welcome baskets and more. 

For example, you can upsell an experience like providing champagne upon arrival for your honeymooners. Or, greet your guests with a thoughtful welcome basket (and feature it in your Airbnb photography!). These experiences will promote and sell a memory rather than a simple place to lay your head.

You know your city best. Provide a neighborhood guidebook in your house manual to show off the best parts of your city, and make your guest feel like it’s their home too. Airbnb promotes its efforts to cultivate community. The target guests want to live within a community. Think about what types of guests you’re trying to attract, and market to those interests. 

If your Airbnb is near a national park, highlight its quick access to your favorite hiking trails. If your property is in Las Vegas, show off your go-to nightlife spots. These incredibly personalized details is what makes short-term rental succeed, and will make your property shine. 

While you’re at it, create Facebook and Instagram pages for your properties. Airbnb itself encourages user-generated content from its hosts and guests. Use this tactic to your advantage. Potential guests browsing for a rental home love to see content created by real people who have stayed at your property.

Utilizing Automation in Your Airbnb Strategy 

Airbnb has been utilizing the latest technology since its inception. Be sure that you have optimized your listing for Airbnb’s complex search engine. 

It’s important to automate as much of your business as possible. Airbnb has served as an intermediary between millions of guests and hosts, and they have been successful because they have embraced technological advances in the industry.

As a host, it is vital that you automate as much of your short-term rental business as possible. From guest communications to check-in and cleaning crews to guest reviews, automating your Airbnb’s needs will aid in exponentially growing your business. The Host Tools platform is an affordable and highly-effective resource to optimize your Airbnb’s automation.

The Investing Strategy

Another proven successful Airbnb strategy is investing. It can be extremely profitable to purchase multiple properties with the purpose of renting them out as Airbnbs. Or, consider rental arbitrage for the same purpose, and grow your business with much less up front capital.  When you automate hosting it will make running multiple Airbnbs remotely extremely easy. Investing in short-term rentals allows you flexibility with listings and the ability to earn a lot of income with little physical involvement – if you automate.

Don’t forget that short-term rental guests look for a lot of interpersonal communication with their host. If you automate communication with Host Tools you can easily manage many, many properties, while still giving guests tons of personal attention.  Investing in rental properties will take some work upfront to get the properties up and running. But after initial set-up and automation you’ll be able to let this strategy run itself.

Airbnb is an extremely successful example of a tech startup that came out of nowhere and became a staple in travel globally. Their methods are not unique to them, and with a bit of strategy you too can reap the benefits of their successes. Mimic Airbnb’s strategy by:

• Marketing your Airbnb as an experience, not just a building

• Cultivate community by promoting local experiences

• Encourage user-generated content with Facebook and Instagram pages

• Automate as much of the hosting experience as possible

• Consider investing in properties with the sole purpose of using them as Airbnb’s. 

Airbnb is a flexible and dynamic business that focuses on community and relationship building. Your individual properties can utilize these same techniques to reach superhost status and always have a booked calendar.

Host Tools provides an automated, unified calendar for short-term rental hosts, allowing you to seamlessly list on all major channels. Start your free trial today!