Intro:
Airbnb is starting their path to destruction by silencing hosts, charging unreasonable fees and ultimately gutting the hosts investment. Even though hosts are supposed to be partners on the platform, they are considered nothing more than a nuisance that can be handled through Airbnb’s roundabout, incompetent support team.
In this video I will discuss why I’m leaving the Airbnb platform and why you should consider it as well so that you don’t end up losing your investment.
Why I’m leaving Airbnb:
I’m deciding to move away from Airbnb in order to do direct bookings. So I’m not leaving Airbnb completely, I would just like to get to the point where guests are booking directly through my own website. For instance, I’d be fine with using Airbnb 25% of the time and have direct bookings being 75% of the time. I just don’t want to be fully reliant on their platform when it’s progressively been getting worse for my business.
In recent years it’s become more and more a theme that Airbnb is gaining more control over my business by keeping my property on the platform. Whether they are controlling my listing from the support side, the pricing perspective or the SEO side; which is the part that even allows my listing to be seen.
The Airbnb Support team is a joke with how they handle issues and are completely guest oriented. Most of the support is only reading off a template and you can only reach someone after 5-10 calls in order to obtain some real answers. Do you understand how long that is to wait? It’s absolutely insane.
My favorite example of this is when a guest cancels their reservation and doesn’t want to pay the cancellation fees so they have Airbnb support go after you to refund the guest. You clearly have a policy that should be followed, however you have to adamantly defend your position. You can avoid all of this headache through owning your listings.
CTA:
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Making the decision to create a direct booking website will allow me to have all of the control when it comes to my business. Which if you haven’t heard, Airbnb is working on rolling out the 15% fee they used to charge to the guests, to the hosts. The fee that hosts have paid to this point has been 3%, so it’s quite a large jump in fees.
And if you think about it, Airbnb is really only a marketing platform for your business. Every business out there has to do some kind of marketing in order to obtain clients, so why would this be any different? Your decision to have a short term rental makes you a business owner. So you can own this process yourself or hand it off to a management company that should be doing the advertising for you and most likely will be in process of having a direct booking website!
Now I own a management company called “BNB Monthly” and would love to help you maximize the revenue potential of your property while minimizing the headaches associated with a short term rental. So make sure you click the link the description to schedule a call with me today.
Having said all of this, I do not hate Airbnb nor am I saying it hasn’t been good for me. It’s just not continuing to do good for me like it did when I first started out. And frankly, it’s important that you take your own business seriously by evolving the way you do things.
Because a platform that doesn’t value you as a partner, is no longer a partner. With the change in fee to 15%, do you really think it will stop there? They are just replicating how other platforms with their reach do business. Just like how Amazon charges between 8-15% for every item sold and this is before any fulfillment fees. So it’s not just Airbnb, it’s the industry.
Now it’s not all doom and gloom, but it is up to you to be accountable and educate yourself on how to evolve your business. You can’t be stagnant in todays world, but I promise that if you put in the effort, you will benefit greatly.
That’s all I have for today, please subscribe and leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts on Airbnb as a platform and if you are interested in a direct booking website. Until next time, peace!
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