How to Increase Views on Airbnb (& Maximize Visibility)
As an Airbnb host, it can be challenging to make your property stand out in a short-term rental market that is ever-increasing in popularity. Wondering how to get more views on Airbnb?
Follow these tips to not only increase the views of your listing but also effectively market your property to the right customers and climb your way up the Airbnb search rankings.
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How to Increase Views on Airbnb
To enhance your Airbnb visibility and successfully increase Airbnb views, you need to develop a strong marketing approach. This involves creating a distinctive brand, actively engaging with customers on social media, fostering relationships with local businesses, and compellingly narrating the unique story of your property. Additionally, incorporating high-quality promotional photos and videos, crafting an eye-catching title and description, and implementing a competitive pricing structure are crucial steps to not only increase the views of your Airbnb listing but also to gather five-star guest reviews.
Airbnb Marketing Ideas for Hosts to Boost Traffic
Some of the most effective ways to market your vacation rental property on Airbnb include creating a brand and telling a story, engaging on social media and developing digital marketing techniques, and working with local businesses. Let’s look at some of these important factors in more detail:
Creating a Brand
The first step to marketing your short-term rental property successfully on Airbnb is to establish your brand. This doesn’t mean pouring thousands into creating custom branding and materials, but rather designing a consistent scheme with which to market your property or properties.
Coming up with a business name that you can use consistently across all of your social media platforms, the Airbnb site itself and within the property develop trust amongst customers and brand loyalty. A simple logo and website can help create a consistent message and also aid in marketing your business on Google, but they aren’t compulsory.
To begin thinking about your brand, ask yourself the following questions:
- What emotions do you want your guests to feel when they stay in your property?
- How do you want your guests to describe their stay to their friends and family?
- What features have influenced the design of the property?
Social Media
The next step is to begin sharing your property on social media accounts. This means posting great photos, engaging videos, and informative written content related to your vacation rental business.
If you have an Instagram account, this could include sharing high-quality photographs of the property itself, local amenities, activities in the surrounding areas, and the setting of the property. You could also share short videos, and reels, showcasing the best activities to take part in in the local area or some unique features of your property.
If you have a Facebook account, this could include sharing customer testimonials, links to local bars, restaurants, and activities, and showcasing the design of your property.
Engaging with potential customers outside of the Airbnb platform is one of the best ways to draw the attention of new guests and retain existing ones, year after year.
Influencer Marketing
You might want to take social media marketing one step further with the help of social media influencers. Depending on your location and your budget, you can employ popular content creators on social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok to visit your property, create content, and share their thoughts on their social media accounts.
Digital Marketing
Running an email marketing campaign, amongst other digital marketing strategies such as search engine optimization for your website, can be incredibly effective at retaining existing customers and engaging new ones. You could send out an email newsletter monthly letting your mailing list know of upgrades you’ve made to your property, local events taking place that month, or changes in your pricing. Websites like Mailerlite and MailChimp are great options for Airbnb businesses.
Collaboration with Local Businesses
One of the most effective ways of marketing your Airbnb profile and rental property to customers is via collaboration with local businesses. Perhaps this could be a local restaurant, a boutique store on the high street, or an activity center that is popular with tourists. Look around your local area, identifying potential partnerships. By sharing each other’s services online and with your customers, you can develop effective referral strategies, often motivated by discounts for one or both of the services using a discount code.
Story-Telling
Finally, many Airbnb hosts find that communicating the story of their property with customers is an incredibly beneficial tool in drawing more visitors to their listing. In your Airbnb listing description, why not answer the following questions?
- How and when did you come to own the property?
- Why did you decide to let it to guests on Airbnb?
- What experience are you trying to create for your guests?
- What makes your property unique?
Learn more about how to make your Airbnb listing stand out.
How Do I Drive Traffic to My Airbnb Listing?
If you’re looking to drive more traffic to your Airbnb profile, ask yourself the following questions: are your photos and videos high-quality? Is your Airbnb title eye-catching? Is your pricing competitive, and do you have great guest reviews? Each of these factors will influence the number of clicks and bookings you receive on Airbnb.
High-Quality Photography
The photographs and videos of your property on the Airbnb platform are some of the most important factors to your success. They can be the difference between a potential guest mindlessly scrolling past, and standing out from all of the competitors on the page.
Investing in a great set of photographs is well worth doing, and you’ll be able to use the photos for many years to come. Consider the most important features of the property and display these photos first in your advertisement. If you’re strapped for time or don’t know how to take great photos, consider hiring a professional photographer in your area who specializes in interiors and rental spaces.
Read more about how to write great photo captions for your Airbnb listing.
An Eye-Catching Title
Grab the attention of potential customers with an eye-catching Airbnb title. Use emotive language, capitalize on the unique selling points of your property, and provide all the information that your potential guests need to know. This includes relevant keywords for your space and the area that guests may be searching for when looking for a place to stay.
When crafting your Airbnb title, prioritize the most important details and steer clear of repetition. With Airbnb’s updated 32-character title limit (expandable to 50 characters when editing), make every character count. Utilize abbreviations like ‘BR’ for ‘bedroom,’ ‘DT’ for ‘downtown,’ ‘AC’ for ‘air conditioning,’ and ‘&’ for ‘and.’
Here are some examples of effective Airbnb titles:
- Secluded Private Villa w/2 Doubles & 2 Bathrooms
- Cozy Wood Cabin Overlooking Large Lake
- Modern Townhouse Perfect for Family Getaway
A Captivating and Informative Airbnb Description
In addition to having an eye-catching title, outstanding Airbnb listings also feature a well-crafted description, which includes a descriptive summary and space sections to highlight the unique features of the property. Because guests cannot physically experience your space until they stay there, your Airbnb description acts as their initial impression of your place.
This is a great opportunity to convey to your guests what it would be like to stay at the property, using visual imagery to highlight key aspects of the stay, including amenities, standout features, and interesting places in the area.
Make your Airbnb description informative and easy to read by incorporating bullet points and paragraphs, avoiding large chunks of text. It’s also a good opportunity to include 1-2 testimonials from guests, as many prospects may not scroll all the way down your listing to view the guest reviews.
Here is an example of an effective Airbnb description:
Read more examples of catchy Airbnb titles.
A Competitive Pricing Structure
Once you have the attention-grabbing title and great photographs, it’s time to think about the pricing aspect of your listing. Consider leveraging tools like ‘Airbnb Smart Pricing.’ Airbnb Smart Pricing is a feature that automatically adjusts the pricing of your listing based on hundreds of various factors. These factors include demand, seasonality, local events, and other market dynamics to optimize your listing’s price. The goal is to help hosts stay competitive and get more bookings by adjusting prices dynamically. However, you can still manually set your minimum and maximum price limits.
When starting out, it’s generally advisable to begin listing your property at a lower price than competitors with properties of a similar size and with similar amenities, and then gradually increase your prices over time.
Keeping your prices low initially means that you have a higher chance of attracting more guests and filling up your calendar. It’s always better to set lower expectations and exceed them than to set high expectations that you cannot meet.
Generating Great Guest Reviews
On short-term rental property sites like Airbnb, good reviews are everything. During the first couple of months of letting your property especially, your attention should be on providing the greatest possible guest experience. Guests who are wowed by the attention to detail, customer service, and cleanliness of your property will be far more likely to leave those all-important five-star reviews.
Read more about how to attract more guests, and how to respond to negative reviews.
Why is my Airbnb Listing not Getting Views?
If you’re not getting many Airbnb views, it’s likely because your listing is not performing well in the Airbnb search algorithm. Implement these top tips in order to boost your listing and increase Airbnb traffic:
- Assess your pricing, taking into account tools like Airbnb’s Smart Pricing. Lower prices often appear more attractive than higher ones, and listings with significant cleaning fees, substantial deposits, and additional guest fees tend to be less appealing.”
- Strive for Superhost status, as achieving this designation can not only enhance your credibility with guests but also significantly boost your visibility in Airbnb rankings. Superhosts often perform better on Airbnb’s algorithm, and their occupancy rate (47%) is nearly double that of standard hosts (27%). Download my Airbnb Superhost Checklist.
- Maintain a fast response time: Strive to reply within 24 hours. Quick responses to guest inquiries contribute to a high response rate, one of the factors considered for Superhost status. This includes accepting or declining reservation requests and pre-approving or declining trip requests.
- Minimize cancellations. Frequent booking cancellations can negatively impact your ranking in Airbnb search results. If you must cancel a reservation, kindly ask your guests if they can initiate the cancellation from their side, providing them with a good reason for the inconvenience.
- Cultivate great guest reviews. Deliver outstanding service and encourage positive reviews to elevate your position in Airbnb search results. This includes ensuring an easy and smooth check-in and check-out process, maintaining a clean and comfortable space, and promptly addressing any issues that come up.
- Monitor your availability. Applying restrictions, such as limited availability and minimum stay requirements, can affect your occupancy rate and may result in your rental property listing not ranking as high in search results as desired.
- Offer instant booking. Allowing guests to instant book provides them with the convenience of securing a reservation without the need for pre-approval, ensuring a smoother booking process and potentially increasing the number of bookings for your listing.
Want to know more about optimizing your listing for Airbnb’s algorithm? Take a look at my Airbnb SEO Bible.
Conclusion
Hopefully, the tips provided will give you a good foundation for your Airbnb SEO strategy and help you to increase your views on Airbnb. Your Airbnb listing service as a guest’s first impression of your space and determine whether they make a booking.
If you want to increase Airbnb views for your listing, develop an effective Airbnb marketing strategy, and ensure successful conversion of views into bookings by following these top tips:
- Create a brand
- Engage with customers on social media
- Develop a digital marketing strategy
- Create relationships with local businesses
- Tell the story of your property
- Write an engaging title and description
- Show your property in its best light with high-quality photos and videos
- Ensure your pricing is competitive
Struggling to write an attention-grabbing title and informative Airbnb listing description? Get in touch to find out more about my Airbnb copywriting services.