The incredible growth rate experienced by Airbnb and by the whole short term rental economy is attracting more and more people to join the platform and rent out their places.
In order to keep pushing the acquisition of new listings worldwide, Airbnb has been undergoing many different activities, including the launch of a host specific referral program and a renewed an ambassadors community.
Additionally, we recently discovered a brand new section of the Airbnb website incentivizing real estate owners to list their spaces and let them be managed by experienced Airbnb Superhosts.
This move de facto positions Airbnb against the many Property Management companies - like Airsorted, Hostmaker or BNBsitter - that have recently been surfacing in different cities, and opens new monetization perspectives for both Airbnb and its host community.
A new opportunity to recruit new hosts
Until today, Airbnb has basically been offering a single product: a platform that puts in contact hosts with an accommodation with people that need a place to sleep.
Who works in the hospitality business will perfectly know that the job of a host doesn’t end with a guest sending a booking through the Airbnb platform. The actual stay is what will require most of the efforts and care to ensure the possible best experience for every guest, leading to a virtuous circle that will bring more customers in the future.
The tasks of a host can be summarized in 3 main categories:
- Marketing: publishing a listing on Airbnb is the first step, but successful hosts know that they will have to do more to be sure to receive bookings. Standing out from other listings, maintaining an always updated calendar and continuously optimizing prices are all activities needed to maximize the chances that guests will book a stay.
- Management: hosts need to dedicate a good amount of time to answering questions and communicating with guests before, during and after their stay… plus, they also have to manage reservations, do check-ins and welcome guests in person!
- Turnover: maintaining a clean, well presented and fully supplied accommodation is one of the most important factors affecting guests’ satisfaction (and reviews!). Guests are often not aware of this, but hosts with a busy calendar sometimes don’t have an easy life to ensure that their place in perfect conditions for their stay.
If you are thinking that these are a lot of things to do… well, you’re right! Hosts needs to dedicate a good amount of their time if they want to offer a great stay to their guests.
In the past Airbnb tested a few activities to help hosts complete time consuming tasks (like cleaning or key delivery for example), and in 2015 launched Host Assist, a curated selection of partner companies offering services that can facilitate the life of a host.
However, even if not every property owner has the time, the resources or the willingness to be a full time hospitality professional, many of them are still interested in the potentially higher financial rewards offered by Airbnb (compared to traditional housing rentals).
How does the new service work?
To cater the needs of this category of potential users, Airbnb will soon allow property owners to become Airbnb hosts while letting to someone else to fulfil the hospitality duties on their behalf in exchange of a mutually agreed fee.
In the new section of the website (that for now seems to be available only for Japan hosts), property owners can discover the advantages of the platform and get in contact with experienced Airbnb users that - thanks to their experience as Superhosts - know well how to run a successful business on Airbnb.
>After telling Airbnb where your property is located, you will see a list of all the Superhosts that are available to help with their host services in the area.
On this page you’ll be presented with an overview of the profiles of each host, including:
- their average review score (always between 4.5 and 5 stars)
- their reviews count
- the distance from your place
- their service fee (usually ranging between 10% and 20%)
- knowing the hosted stays, you will be able to calculate also the review rate (e.g. what’s the % of guests leaving a review after their stay)
>If you want to receive more detailed information you can navigate to the Additional Host profile, where you will be able to learn more about the host, see their Airbnb stats, the verification status, and read about their hosting style.
>If the information provided is enough to convince you that a specific host could be the right fit to support and manage your Airbnb business, you can send a non-binding enquiry with the details of your property (exact location, type of accommodation, size) and any specific need you might have.
You will be able to specify if you want to list a new space on Airbnb, but you will also be able to request help to manage an existing listing.
>And just like when you want to book an accommodation for your stay, Airbnb suggests to start the conversation with multiple hosts, in order to find the best fit for your needs.
>As soon as a host replies, you will receive an email to which you will be able to answer, just as for every other Airbnb conversation.
>Given that the functionality is still in testing phase (for now only a few selected Japanese hosts have been added to the platform), it will require need some fine tuning before being rolled more globally… but having talked with quite a few Superhosts about it, we expect many of them to be willing to give it a try.
Superhosts can be the Property Managers of the future
During the 2015 Airbnb Open held in Paris, the company announced the introduction of Host Mentors, a scheme that had similar goals, but that failed to gain adoption.
Airbnb has been working on the additional hosts project for a while, and it’s safe to assume it might have been one of the big news set aside for the next Airbnb Open, coming up this November in Los Angeles.
With the release of this new program, Airbnb seems to have better understood how to make use of the host community to acquire and train new hosts.
While a good part of the user base is nowadays using Airbnb to generate a side income, thanks to the upcoming changes and product launches, we can expect more and more hosts to become all-rounded hospitality professionals, offering not only their own accommodation for rent, but also managing other properties and facilitating the discovery of local experiences.
Airbnb never showed love for property managers (be them individuals or companies), since their goal to maximise their clients’ bookings and revenues inevitably brought them to work also with other platforms.
It’s important to note that by adding further monetization possibilities for its most loyal users this might change, as Airbnb will be able to generate a much stronger lock-in effect, decreasing the need to rely on competing websites.
At the same time, by introducing a more direct and human point of contact in the figure of an experienced Superhost, it will be possible for Airbnb to reduce the level of anonymity that often characterizes the many properties offered by owners that have to rely on third parties to rent out their accommodation.
However, if on one hand going after real estate owners with the support of Superhosts might help Airbnb to grow the quantity and increase the quality of its supply, on the other hand it might lead to further clashes with cities like Berlin or Barcelona, where the activity of professional hosts offering short term rentals has been strongly limited, due to the claimed negative effects on the housing price market.
Would you make use of the support of an experience Superhost? Or would you be ready to offer your services to help other hosts if you could earn extra money? Tell us in the comments below!
We are building a platform to help companies offering Airbnb Property Management to be discovered by thousands of hosts… If you want to be among the first to be included at launch, get in contact with us!
