Every host’s first step is to prepare their property for a great guest experience. But how can you know you’ve thought of everything before receiving your first visitors? The good news is that you won’t have to spend time searching for a secret recipe since it has already been tried and tested by other successful hosts. With this in mind, we’ve put up a detailed Airbnb host checklist to help you get your place ready for guests.
Use this checklist to get your short-term rental company off to a good start, from stocking up on key amenities and supplies to brainstorming ways to optimize your everyday operations.
What Kind of Amenities Should Airbnb Hosts Provide at Their Rentals?
It should come as no surprise that tourists prefer well-equipped rentals, particularly if they want to stay for a lengthy period. According to an Airbnb poll, facilities are one of the most important components in providing a positive visitor experience.
The general norm is to supply all creature comforts, plus a few more. However, if you want to provide a genuinely unforgettable experience, there’s more to it. Here’s a quick rundown of what your visitors expect from you as a host:
1. Additional features
Adding a “wow” element can help you get more favorable feedback. To create a more hotel-like experience, provide free access to streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, leave a welcome gift, or provide luxury amenities and bathrobes with slippers.
2. Necessities and Equipment
Each space in your home should be equipped to carry out its intended purpose. Your living area, for example, should have a soothing atmosphere with a comfortable sofa, coffee table, TV, and so on. Your bedroom should be built to help you get a good night’s sleep, so invest in a good mattress, bed linen, and thick drapes or shades.
3. Exceptional cleanliness
Your property’s condition may make or break your guests’ experience. The COVID-19 epidemic has elevated the standard for cleanliness, and just dusting and sweeping the floors will no longer suffice. Enhanced cleaning procedures should be followed, and safety items like masks and hand sanitizers should be included on your checklist.
4. Effective and timely communication
It’s critical to be able to respond to visitor requests quickly. To guarantee timely responses, it’s a good idea to use vacation rental software like Lodgable to improve your communication between guests.
A Checklist for Stocking Essential Supplies and Amenities for Airbnb Hosts
1. Enhance the guest experience by offering extras.
It’s to your best advantage to include finer information to your Airbnb host checklist if you want to earn favorable ratings following each guest changeover. You should supply goods that will please your Airbnb visitors and elevate their stay from excellent to exceptional, in addition to required furnishings and basic facilities.
Here is a list of optional extras you may include in your rental:
- Board games
- Welcome gift (a bottle of local wine or champagne, healthy snacks, a bottle of water, and a discount at a local cafe or shop)
- Luxury toiletries
- Bathrobes and slippers
- Smart devices (home assistant, smart lock, smart thermostat)
- WiFi booster
- Universal charger and adaptors
2. Go through the fundamentals
It’s a good idea to start with the essential supplies and conveniences to make your visitors feel at ease. Guests need to know that your home has all of the necessities, such as bath towels, toilet paper, and hand soap, and that they won’t have to pack their whole house into their bag to spend a weekend with you.
3. Must-haves for Different Guest Types:
If particular sorts of people frequent your vacation rental, be sure it’s well-equipped to meet their demands. To provide a pleasant stay for families with children, for example, you must go beyond a basic checklist and include the facilities and materials required to create a child-friendly environment.
Here’s a list of things you’ll need to provide, depending on who your home attracts.
- Safety items (baby gates, cabinet locks, and window locks)
- Families with children
- Crib and a small mattress
- Portable crib
- Extra leashes
- Blankets and pillows
- High chair in the kitchen
- Sippy cups, cute plates, and bowls
- Toybox
- Coloring books and pencils
- Washer and dryer
- Pet owners
- Water and food bowls
- Pet toys
- dog beds or cat beds
- Extra collars
- Cat scratchers
- Crates
- Treats
- Dog gates
If you want to attract a certain sort of visitor, state that your vacation rental is “kid-friendly” or “pet-friendly” in the title and description of your listing, and it will appear in search results, allowing you to reach out to the right people.
A Checklist to Get Your Vacation Rental Ready for the First Guests
It’s time for your house to shine on the Airbnb site and land its first reservations once you’ve acquired all of the nitty-gritty furnishings and supplies and added the additional bells and whistles. Here’s a checklist to assist you in creating a superb listing and earning your first 5-star rating.
1. Make an eye-catching Airbnb listing
Taking aesthetically appealing photographs and writing an interesting headline is just half the battle. The next step for every Airbnb host who wants to earn money is to build a fantastic listing.
Though it’s difficult to stand out in a sea of 5.6 million Airbnb listings, you may still win the hearts of your prospective visitors by taking this step seriously.
Here are some helpful suggestions to keep in mind while you work on your Airbnb listing:
- Write an appealing and informative property description. The general idea is to highlight your unique selling points and explain an experience that your visitors could have while staying at your property.
- Add a bio a profile photo, and authenticate your identity to your Airbnb profile.
- Briefly outline your home rules to minimize unnecessary questions and confusion with visitors.
- Create a unique offer to entice first-time customers.
- To make the booking procedure go faster, enable Instant Book.
- To increase the visibility of your listing, post it on social media and invite your friends and colleagues to do the same.
2. Take high-resolution photos and write a captivating title
Let’s face it: we all judge a book (or read your rental) by its cover, namely the cover picture in the listing when picking an Airbnb to spend our holiday in. When combined with positive reviews, beautiful photographs may work wonders for your listing, assuring high occupancy levels all year.
As a result, hiring a professional photographer to take attractive images of your home is highly suggested. You may, however, go the DIY approach and snap your images to save money. Here are a few pointers to remember:
- Before the photography, clean up your room and remove any clutter.
- Allow natural light to enter by opening all curtains and blinds.
- Take photos at eye level so prospective visitors can see your home as if they were there in person.
- Use the Rule of Thirds to improve your compositions by turning on gridline mode.
- Use a variety of shots, including wide, mid, and portrait views.
- Choose a cover photo representing your property and capable of attracting your target audience.
The next stage is to develop a catchy title for your ad. To nail your listing title, use these guidelines:
- In the headline, emphasize your unique selling proposition (USP) (your major advantage compared to competitor properties).
- To cram more information into your title, use acronyms.
- Don’t use all capital letters in your writing.
- Avoid using general terms like “good,” “pleasant,” and “beautiful” in your titles.
- Make use of all 50 characters to provide as much information as possible about your short-term rental.
- Create a title that speaks to your target Airbnb visitors (consider your Airbnb guests’ expectations while creating a title).
3. Maintain Your Rental
Every time a new visitor checks in; your property should be pristine. Even a single hair in the bathroom might detract from the overall favorable impression, so make sure your property is spotless before your visitors come.
Follow a rigorous cleaning checklist to avoid missing hidden nooks or hard-to-reach crevices. Cleanings may be more fully completed if you use a checklist.
4. Put together a welcome package
Experienced Airbnb hosts understand that they must go outside the box to generate a wow impact and convert a one-time visitor into a repeat customer. Putting together a welcome gift is a terrific way to put your creative abilities to work and wow your visitors.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a welcome gift, consider the following suggestions:
- Begin with a welcome message sent before arrival, which will contain a digital welcome book and a set of house rules. Guests would enjoy the chance to review them before checking in. In addition, the digital welcome book may serve as a handy resource that they can access at any moment throughout their stay.
- Fill your welcome basket with food and a bottle of water. Crackers, local cheese, chocolate, chocolates, and a bowl of seasonal fruits are all good options. You may also include a bottle of local wine or champagne. Because your visitors’ health and safety are your top priorities, be sure to inquire ahead of time if they have any allergies.
Brand the things in your welcome package to create a consistent visitor experience. Add your business emblem to the welcome basket, for example, and make sure it’s designed to match your property’s taste.
Increasing Your Business Efficiency with a Growth Checklist
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” as the cliché goes. Success in the short-term rental sector does not come easily. However, by improving your company efficiency and reducing your many hosting chores, you may take a significant step toward being a successful host.
To increase the efficiency of your company and save time on day-to-day operations, use this Airbnb host checklist.
1. Make use of a pricing tool that is dynamic.
Every host is concerned about whether their rental is reasonably priced. You don’t want to overprice your rental since it will turn away prospective customers. At the same time, pricing it too cheap implies you’ll be losing money.
To make an educated selection about the greatest nightly rate, researching your market and comparing your rivals’ rates and products may sound like a wonderful idea. However, gathering and analyzing all of the data required to develop a well-thought-out pricing plan may take too long.
Automation is a game-changer when it comes to price. Pricelabs, beyond pricing, and AirDNA are dynamic pricing systems that are aimed to assist hosts to maximize income by tweaking their nightly prices in reaction to market swings. Lodgable has partnered with AirDNA to offer dynamic pricing directly integrated with its core software.
2. Use Vacation Rental Software to Automate Your Routine Tasks
You must manage several operations at the same time while managing your rental. Responding to guest communications, updating a property calendar and availability (or calendars if you manage listings across other platforms), coordinating cleanings, seeing your guests, writing reviews, and so on are all on your daily to-do list as an Airbnb host.
Automation solutions may assist you in taking control of your various ordinary activities in today’s age and time. Vacation rental software like Lodgable can make all of the difference for your Airbnb.
3. Hire a cleaning and property maintenance company.
For any host, cleaning is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks. If you start outsourcing it, you’ll be able to save a lot of time. Depending on your budget, you may engage a subcontractor or a professional cleaning service.
The same may be said for your rental’s upkeep. Building a network of dependable subcontractors to assist you with any issues that may emerge at your property would be excellent.
4. Use BI Tools to Grow Your Business
Finally, to take your company to even higher heights, you need continually be aware of the current industry and market trends. This information will assist you in making better business choices and setting more proactive objectives.
Business intelligence solutions like Alltherooms, Transparent, and AirDNA can help you delve deeper into vacation rental data and analytics, monitor your rivals, and follow industry standards to ensure you’re on track to achieving your objectives and becoming a successful host.
5. Create a self-check-in system.
The latter seems to be winning in the fight between a traditional in-person check-in and self-check-in. Self-check-in is becoming more popular among hosts and property managers since it saves time and effort for both parties.
A self-check-in may be done in a variety of ways. Lockboxes, electronic and smart locks, and key exchange services are available options. You won’t even need physical keys with a smart lock since your smartphone will operate it.
You may also use a keyless entry service such as Lynx. Lynx enables you to operate your door remotely and get notifications whenever it is opened.
Key exchange services such as Keycafe can also help you set up a quick self-check-in process. You may leave your keys in one of the SmartBoxes for visitors to pick up whenever it’s convenient for them with Keycafe.
