Hello. Welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are. Thanks for Visiting.

And this is the Hosting Hot Hotline. If you wanna get your hosting questions answered here on the hosting hotline, go to hostinghotline.com or comment on our videos on YouTube, and we are going to answer questions from you here in the podcast every Tuesday. And today's question is from mkhs5098 from YouTube. And the question is, it's on our video about lowering your price and how we think that's a lazy option and it's costing you money. And this viewer says, I'm a new listing and it's been a month and not a soul. House next to me has a pool and seems to be booked all the time. My rates seem okay, maybe market is saturated or maybe guests don't want to pay almost 30% in fees.

There's a lot to unpack here, so let's just, let's get into it. Um, this is incredibly frustrating. We do not wanna discount that at all because we get it. You've put your heart and soul into this property, whether it's buying it, designing it, prepping it, all the things, and launching a listing is hard. Um, you've been, you've been live for about a month now and not seen any traction. Whew. It's okay. It's easy to a start a starting point to things outside of your control. We know that's the kind of reaction thing to do. How can we just decide that it's, it's the pool, it's the market, it's the fees. We gotta take a deep breath. We gotta reframe our mindset here, okay?

Because it's, the truth is that you are not just hosting. You are running a business and as the CEO or the owner of that business, your job is to look at the data, identify gaps, and then take action. Not just hope that Airbnb figures it out or figures it out for you, or that, oops, I made a, you know, a terrible decision and I'm just gonna, you know, not do anything about it.

What we wanna share here is we've been, we have been flipping this on its head a little bit with a lot of hosts. If you were going to start all over again, would Airbnb your be your only pathway? So for this, uh, for this question, we wanna ask you, if you were starting any other small business, a restaurant, a clothing boutique, a landscaping business, you most likely just wouldn't put your offer on let's say a, uh.

On DoorDash.

On DoorDash and cross your fingers and hope that that was gonna bring you all of your business. So I just, I just wanna share that again, we have to look at the OTAs as just marketing channels for us. It's not our business plan.

And we also have to strengthen our language and ask better questions. Annette and I we're just talking about this very topic of how her and I need to ask better questions and be very thoughtful when we open our mouths, when we're in amongst other business owners or we're with our mentor. And we wanna bring that same thought work to all of you, because when you ask better questions, you subconsciously show up in a different way and you, before you even ask the question, when you pause and say, is that the best way I can ask it? Or is this the best question to ask? Sometimes you can answer the question for yourself. That is not to say, to be scared about asking questions. Please don't. Don't be quiet, right? We want you to speak up. We want you to get more information. We want you to be willing. To even look foolish 'cause I have to give myself that permission that I may not know what a good question is or a bad question is. But this, the way this question was posed has a lot of vague language in it.

And here's the deal. For everybody listening that's maybe been open for a while and haven't had this challenge, I want you to check yourself. You will come to a point in your business where you are not going to see a soul, and so you're gonna have to do this same work. So don't flippantly think that this episode isn't for you because you are booked and blessed because we have not ran into a host that has not had at some point in time that a challenge with their calendar and getting booked. So this is where we tell everybody to start the, some of the language that they use, my rates seem okay. We need data here. Okay. Compared to what? Compared to whom? Without that data, that's a guess. We, we can't say, my rates seem okay. We gotta say my rates are in line with my competition. My rates are out of line. Like we can actually get data that shows you exactly what percentile you are falling in and with your exact competition too. 'Cause right here we're gonna share where we think she's probably there probably looking at the wrong competition.

Well, the next phase of her question is neighbor has a pool and seems booked all the time. So a lot of hosts do this. We're picking on this host right now, but she's, he or she is helping.

We're helping.

Yes. So he or she is helping us. As an example of just the words that you use 'cause we hear this word seems a lot and we also hear the word feels a lot because we want to avoid the work that it takes to look at the data. And I get it, I get it. But seams is not data. Maybe the neighbor is not booked as often as you think, or maybe their pool is the needle mover that attracts a different guest profile altogether. If they have amenities that you don't, then they're not a true comp for you. And if they have the same beds and baths as you, same proper, but obviously you're in the same location and you're missing that pool. Okay. And your, your number, your, your pricing is in line. With not having the pool, with that being an exact, exact comp, that is information we need to know. And how much more money are they making than you?

And this is where, just plug really quickly for like a dynamic pricing software. This is stuff that you, you do have access to.

Yes. You'll know how much this pool brings in for them.

Exactly. So you don't have to go, you know, if you're, we, we do want you to connect with your neighbor.

Yes.

If possible. But if you don't want to, you don't have to go knock on their door and ask for this data. It is available. And again, every host listening, this data is available to all of us. No matter where you are in the entire world. So you do have to, you know, connect with the proper tech and understand that. This next one is painful, market is saturated, and fees are the problem. Oh, um, if fees and saturation were the whole story, then would the neighbor, the neighbor, wouldn't be booked. Right? We also wanna share if the market is saturated. This is for everyone. If you thought that you felt that was backed by data ahead of time. We probably should have thought about that before we opened our business. Right?

It's not funny. I'm not laughing at them.

But truly, like, I think now we're just feeling that because we're not getting booked the way that we thought that we would.

And we've all been there.

Yes. If, if everybody that's driving, walking on the treadmill, washing dishes, I know you're shaking your head right now because we too, everyone has had like. You know, said the separation story before, but truly those are just those, the fees are the problem or the saturation. Those are distractions from us doing the real work, and that is improving our pricing strategy and our overall listing. So we are gonna give you some action items, CEO, we need you to sit down at your desk and we are gonna do some auditing. We've gotta take this very, very seriously. So we're gonna have Sarah walk us through the three steps. Like these are the, the top three things that we would do today to start remedy in this.

Step one, your listing presentation. And I'll add a caveat. Sometimes we're so close to our property and we're so attached to it emotionally because of the work it took to, to set it up like we talked about at the beginning of this episode, that we can't look at it with a strategic eye anymore. We think it can do no wrong. Right? So bringing in a truth telling friend or another host who has experience and knowledge can sometimes be helpful. You'll have to let your ego down 'cause it is hard to hear the truth sometimes, but everything starts with telling the truth. Mm-hmm. That is where you can find the other side of the rainbow is when you start understanding the truth, embodying it, and make taking action from it. So we need to audit your photos. Are they professional? Are they outdated? I've got, I've got a listing right now with outdated. They're professional photos.

Well, hopefully hers aren't since she's brand new.

Well, but this is, we're helping everyone.

Yeah, no, for sure. I know.

And yeah you're right. Are her photos professional? Correct. Are they well lit? Are they showing off your best features? Is your description clear? Guest focused? Does it highlight unique value? And if the answer to that is yes. We need to reposition the way we're saying it because your guest avatar isn't clicking with it.

And here's some basic stuff and because again, we do listing audits all the time with our private members, is your property even bookable? We have people going, we're like, wait, your calendar's booked. We couldn't try to. You would be shocked how many people we go in and they're like, oh my gosh, there's a glitch with my calendar. Something's blocked. The weekend's not open. I'm making crazy minimum stays. Look at that. So look at your fees. Um, do you have, is your cleaning fee? Is your are, do you have extra guest fees? Like really go ahead and try to book your own property. Seriously, this is part of that listing audit. Have someone else look for your property. Look it up. Try to book it and see what. Actually happens. I actually want all of you to do that today just and even as a guest, go on Airbnb as a guest and try to book someone else's property and just feel about, see what that friction is and what happens, and then go to your own and see what happens. And just kind of do some comparisons there about confirming that you are bookable and you are creating a, as least amount as friction as possible for people to book your property.

Step two is understanding that you have a true competitive set. So who are your real comps? Not the house with the pool if you don't have a pool, but properties that are similar in size to you, same amenities as you and target guest as you. And what are their rates, their reviews, what are their booking patterns? And that's where we can learn and reposition ourselves against those true comps. Step number three are reading your analytics. On Airbnb specifically, you can dive into your insights tab. You have to turn on the professional hosting tools and make sure that they're offering that to you. But once those are turned on, you can see if you're showing up in search, what is your conversion rate, where are the guests dropping off? These are important metrics to know and to track, and what benchmarks should you try to hit. We have a YouTube video all about the secret Airbnb setting that can improve your listing by 300%. It's one of our most popular videos for good reason. We'll put the link to that in the show notes, but there is definitely work to do. I'm telling you when it comes to, Annette and I are doing this right now. We have a paid in our website that we are testing constant and we are, when I tell you we are changing a word, we are changing, uh, a subline to be the headline. We are changing the photo. One thing at a time, testing it, seeing if that makes a difference. And we don't, they don't teach you that, right? You don't know that as your host, when you start, when you start. But the way the human brain works, we have to tap into that so that if everything else is working and our guest isn't converting, there's something wrong with how we're positioning our product.

So we just, again, we're gonna do the, we're gonna do the work on the actual listing, and then we're gonna do the work on our own mindset. We really don't want you to start blaming the algorithm, blaming the fees or market saturation. That is a a road you do not wanna go down. I don't want any of anybody listening to this show going down that road. I don't want you participating with other hosts in that kind of blame game. We just don't want you to fall in that very common pitfall. We want you to be very successful as a host. We know that you're gonna be in this for a very, very long time. You will have highs and lows, ebbs and flows. We're gonna get you through it because successful hosts, they take control where they can. And for us, that is extreme ownership. And you can take control of your listing because if you're waiting for Airbnb to rescue your listing, you're gonna have to keep waiting. So we've gotta take some action today. And your listing, it is your responsibility. So every day that you're not taking that action is another day lost. So there's are, there are things that we all can do every day to improve our listing.

And as we wrap up, a reminder, and you all know this, but it's a good reminder. Every once in a while that hosting is not passive. It is active. CEO level work business ownership level work. After one month with no bookings, you don't need patience. You need urgency, and you need strategy. Audit your listing. Study your comps, adjust your rates, improve the questions that you ask, and leverage your short-term rental analytics immediately. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are. Thanks for Visiting.

Talk to you next time.