9 Tips for Facing an Unoccupied Month

Have you ever looked at your BNB schedule and see that after your current guest, you have no one booked for the next 30 days. It does give you a sinking feeling, especially if you’re relying on the income to survive.

Does your reservation calendar look like an empty beach? (photo of Drake’s Bay, CA north of San Francisco – by Challen)

There’s a number of things you can either try or consider since running a BNB you can’t really go out and start rounding up guests passing by with a lasso.

Here’s 9 tips, not in any particular order:

(1) Update your website or listing with new photos, better photos, or a catchy write up or title. So many listing around her promote Stanford, and if the listing actually resides in or near Stanford, that’s a good boost.

(2) Try lowering your prices under the next relevant search level. For example, lower them under the next $50 mark (i.e $250, $300, $350, $400, $450, etc). Searchers may be setting upper price limits to narrow down their choices.

(3)Take some faith in how guests tend to book your listing. Maybe you’ve had a lot of guests book within a week instead of two months ahead (like we’d all like to see that).

(4) Try “Instant Booking” (Airbnb). What this allows is for greater exposure to your listing as your will show up for both “Instant” and non-instant, instead of just non-instant listings.

(5) Try removing the extra guest costs if you are using them just to make the cost calculation easier.

(6) Update you listing to become more friendly to a guest. For example, use a keypad or other self-service mode of entry. This way a business man or woman doesn’t need to call you at 2 am to get a key or wonder if the key is actually in the hideaway place that you wrote.

(7) Offer something special (like food or other service), make the stay more attractive.

(8) Keep the darn place clean inside and in good order outside. It doesn’t matter of the guest is staying at a mansion or Motel 6,they want a clean place to stay. No one likes to stay in a beater. Take very positive steps and make amends in the listing and comments to make your listing a non-beater if yov’ve been reviewed as being on the dirty, trashy, or nasty side.

(9) Treat each guest and inquiry with respect and respond as soon as possible (if not immediately). Remember, you are in the hospitality business, not just a landlord or property manager. In fact, you may be the only ambassador of your town or neighborhood that the guest from another country may ever know.

Please like, share, comment, follow my blog or contact me if you have any questions, or if you’ve got some nice tips.

CKY