Help - I stopped getting new bookings

Falling off a cliff

Lately, we have seen a number of posts regarding the number of bookings slowing down or, in some cases, completely stopping.

This can happen slowly over a few months or very suddenly, with one month having 80% occupancy and the following month having close to 0% occupancy.

Many articles refer to this as the ‘Airbnb bust’. Our view is not that this is an Airbnb bust, but simply supply and demand finally leveling off. This occurs at different rates in different markets.

The Cliff Vs Slow Ramp Down

In some markets, acquiring an STR license is complicated, so supply is going up slowly. In other markets, such as many cities in Florida, the regulation is very light, with no cap restrictions. We have seen an explosive growth in supply in these markets—new Airbnb listings.

Demand IS still increasing, but the supply is increasing FASTER.

Supply grew about 16% in the last year. Again this is NOT spread evenly.

Demand is still growing at a steady pace, but a bit slower. Airbnb Q4 2023 saw a 12% increase in bookings compared to a year ago. This is a healthy growth. But supply in some areas outgrew this by, let’s just say, a TON in some areas.

In a few places where we have our properties, if we search the area in the mid or slow season, it is now NOT uncommon to see 1000+ listings.

If you are not on page 1 or 2, then suddenly, your new reservations can stop.

There is one big reason why this decrease may not be gradual. Airbnb has a sophisticated algorithm to determine where you are placed in a potential guest search. No one knows exactly how this algorithm works, but its key ingredients are well-documented in various posts, YouTube videos, etc.

The algorithm has two goals: maximize revenue for Airbnb and create happy guests that come back.

Have you ever wondered why you can not sort the search results by total price? Or why are taxes NOT clearly visible on the main page? This is definitely related to the maximization of revenue for Airbnb criteria.

To create happy guests who will return to Airbnb, the algorithm will order the properties it thinks are most likely to be a good match for the potential guests.

This means that if your listing drops slightly in a market with a lot of supply, you can suddenly appear on page 3 or 4 and get 0 new bookings.

Below are two items that can cause your listing to drop off. I’m sure there are others, but these two are easy to observe and measure.

1. When a guest cancels a booking. Your listing will drop off for a day to a couple of weeks.

2. If you get a 3-star or lower review AND the review contains certain keywords your listing will drop. We are not 100% sure what keywords seem to trigger this, but from our own experience, words and phrases indicating need maintenance or inaccuracy seem to cause this.

How bad is this drop-off? On the well-performing properties, it's just a couple of days. Your listing may have two or three days being buried, then bounce right back. How do we know this? We monitor it closely.

Here is one of our properties that is almost in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd placement every day of every month. A canceled booking can drag it down to as low as 20th place, but only for a day or two.

The various colored lines indicate our placement or ranking when someone searches for an Airbnb with a capacity for 10, 9, 7… people in this location. It is a big house so the placement when searching for 2 or 3 or even 4 people is not relevant.

Climbing the Rankings

Luckily there are many things we CAN do to increase the ranking in Airbnb. In addition, if the number of new bookings is still really low, you can increase your exposure by listing in additional channels such as Vrbo, Booking.com, Google, and your own direct booking site. There are many other niche channels that can be really good for certain markets.

Good reviews help a lot, so you should elegantly beg your guests to write a good review and rate you 5 stars. We will write an article on various strategies for this in the future.

Yes, you do need a property management system to easily list in multiple channels, synchronize the calendars, have the same set of email notifications, etc. We will be writing an article shortly on our favorite property management system, Hostfully. We would not be where we are today without Hostfully.

BTW, if you do sign up for Hostfully, please use our Hostfully Affiliate Link:

Back to climbing the Airbnb rankings. First - review these Top 10 tips

For an existing listing, we would recommend:

1. Update the listing description. Make sure it is a good story and describes your place well.

2. Review the photos. Often, a listing that has been around for a while now has outdated photos or shows old furniture. Always remember you want a light background and an almost overexposed photo.

3. Try new main photos. This is an art and not a science, but your main photo can really drive new bookings. Experiment a little bit. We have one property where not only do we allow dogs, but we use one of our photos with our dog. The bookings went thru the roof.

4. Track your progress. There are a couple of tools for this, but we really like Rank Breeze.

   You can also do this manually. Simply open a new browser in private or incognito mode and search your market. Then, count where your property appears. This is how we started back when we had one or two properties.

Tracking your progress the easy way

Rank Breeze is really straightforward to set up and use. They have a 7-day free trial. If you do use them, please use our Rank Breeze Affiliate link

We use them for:

• Keep track of our competition

• Keep track of our Airbnb ranking

• Determining which changes work and which changes do not.

• Examining keywords to add to our listing

They have other cool features but we mainly use the above 4 items.

Let’s look at these in more detail one at a time.

After signing up, add your listing. This is easy, and they have tutorials available.

Keeping track of your competition

Spend some time looking for 4-5 well-performing Airbnbs in your market. Add them with a single click, and you can now track their performance and daily rate compared to your property.

Keep Track of your Airbnb Ranking

This is the number one item we use. Once a week, we check all of our properties and see their exact ranking. Our goal is to stay in the top 7. When someone searches in an area our property is in, our property shows up in the top 7 positions, so a potential guest will see the photo and our property title. There are MANY potential guests who do not scroll past page 1.

Determining which changes work and which changes do not.

This is an important item. You can make changes that could cause your placement to go down. For example, you might think of an awesome new main image. However, after changing it, your click-through rates go down, which would cause your ranking to also start to decrease.

We advise making one change at a time and tracking what change you made in Rank Breeze. Here is a good example. We made the first change and appeared to have a downward trend. Three days later, we reversed the change and made a different change. Then, our ranking began rising and was now in the 5-10 range. This is still okay, as it is on the first page. Have patience.

Remember to NOT make too many changes at once. This is like steering a ship. Once your ship, your Airbnb, is going in the right direction, let it keep heading there. The red vertical lines are changes that we track.

Please use our Rank Breeze Affiliate link if you want to try them.

Final thoughts

There was a time when any Airbnb property was profitable in certain cities. When the occupancy rate is 80% or 90%, you will rent any place, with any description, with any photos, and with a less-than-stellar property management methodology.

During the hockey stick Airbnb boom, new property management companies came out of nowhere and claimed your success was due to their secret sauce. Large property management companies such as Vacasa grew extremely fast and acquired others. Vacasa, as an example, sometimes had guest experiences that mimicked their stock price

The owners of these poor-performing properties are part of the Airbnb bust, and they are getting fewer bookings now. Some are barely hanging in there. However, supply and demand are now beginning to equalize in some cities.

For the first time in a while, we see markets such as this where the supply is finally leveling off. Many poor-quality Airbnbs are transitioning to Long-Term Rentals, or the property is being sold. The top-quality Airbnbs will remain profitable, although with some downward pressure on a daily rate.

For example, there are over 5K Airbnbs in Tampa, FL. Although the number of Airbnbs has grown only 6% in the past year, it has decreased in the last few months.

Looking at occupancy we can see a big difference between 2021 and now in 2023/2024. We have a lot more empty Airbnbs now in 2024.

In the long run, this is a good thing. The really poor experiences some guests have had, such as staying in a place with broken windows, an AC that broke during their whole stay, misleading photos, or waiting 2 hours for a physical key, or a kitchen with barely anything, will soon be a thing of the past. The well-equipped Airbnbs, where guests have a very good ‘Experience’ will stay remain. The poor ones will be weeded out.

Is your Airbnb one of the ones that is well-performing? Is your listing top-notch? Do you know your ranking?

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Wondering if cohosting is right for your property? Let’s talk it through — reach us at info@AdventuresInAirbnbs.com

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