Six questions that will change the way you market your AirBnB

What if the guests at your local hotel knew about your AirBnB?

You already know you can let your spare room through Airbnb. You run your own business. You’re an entrepreneur who’s achieved everything yourself, successful, respected. But what if you’re missing a trick? What if you could be even more successful?

Imagine for a moment how many guests are accommodated daily by that nearby hotel? Possibly quite a lot. But how many of them know about your individual, calming room facing on to your pretty garden? Possibly none of them. So think about it, how many of them, if they had the choice, would prefer your room to the one they booked at the hotel? Possible quite a few. So how do you go about letting these guests know about what you are offering and become fully booked?

The right question would be ‘where’ not ‘how’

The short answer – it’s easy. All you need to do is to place your listing in the same place where the hotel itself advertises. But where you can do this? Booking.com? Unfortunately, its structure and the way it works does not permit you to advertise your room on the platform successfully. Airbnb do the exact opposite: they are concerned mainly with hosts like you and short-term holiday rentals so they do not include the hotels’ listings. [Valid on the date of publication 08/04/2019]. Wimdu.com has gone forever and won’t be reappearing in the foreseeable future. 9Flats.com was acquired by Booking.com and ended up the same way as Wimdu.

New opportunities from newcomers

Don’t despair! Fortunately, while some are going others are stepping up to take their place. At TheGM, thegoldenmoon.com, you can list your ad right alongside those of the hotels. This new platform allows for the advertising of properties with no category boundaries. This means all types of travel accommodation, including AirBnBs, hotels and every other category you can think of can be advertised under one convenient listings umbrella. This is a brand new approach enabling you to reach new customers and is exactly what you could not afford before.

So, what exactly does it mean for your AirBnB?

When a potential guest of your nearby hotel searches for a place to stay, your lovely room’s listing appears in the search results right alongside it. Now the guest can look, compare and choose the one they like best. From then on, it is up to you to impress your guest with proof of the service and hospitality you have already provided. The better the reviews you have received from previous guests, the higher the chance that your room will be preferable to that of the hotel. But most importantly, this empowers you to reach a market that was previously unattainable.

And this only scratches the surface. There are several advantages provided by TheGM that overcome the limitations of current holiday booking platforms and broaden your opportunities.

Subscribe here and receive ideas about how to save those annoying Service Fees, how to craft a perfect description for your listing, how to write an attention-grabbing title and why you just can’t sell all your availability using only one booking platform. Share your own ideas with colleagues using #newhosting. As always, one head is good, but more are better!