Mastering the Airbnb Algorithm:

12 Listing Tweaks to Boost Bookings Without Lowering Prices

Miami, FL Sept 20, 2026

We hear this all the time: “I’m not booked; all I can do is drop my rate.” Not so fast; there are many more levers to pull before you touch your pricing. Although there are probably more, off the top of my head, here are twelve.

A side note to understand Search

(A quick side note on Search: this is true for any online search, whether it's Airbnb, Google, Amazon, or anywhere else you look for something.) There are three distinct steps each user goes through when looking for something online:

  1. Step one: Search Impression
    The provider offers its best guess of what the user wants, based on the search prompt.
  2. Step two: Search to Click
    The user goes through the results and clicks a link that looks like it fits their search.
  3. Step three: Conversion
    The user makes a purchase, books a stay, or takes an online action.

I’m grouping the factors Airbnb considers, and which influence the guest to book, into these three steps in this article.)

Four Foundational Factors that determine every Airbnb search result

Before we launch into the settings you can adjust, let's understand a few things:

 

Airbnb uses dozens, if not hundreds, of data points to determine which guests see your listing on the first page of search, and no one knows for sure what they are. In addition, Airbnb recently announced that it’s using AI to help guests find homes that best fit their needs (https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/4097).

 

We are certain of four foundational factors in its search. We know this because Airbnb says they are important (https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/39). Here they are:

  1. Quality
  2. Popularity
  3. Price
  4. Location

These factors influence Step One of your guests' booking journey. Arguably, it’s the most important step: if your listing doesn’t show up here, you won’t be booked. Actually, you can’t get booked.

  • If your listing’s quality is subpar, it won’t show up in the results.
  • If no one engages with the listing, it won’t show up in the listings shown to a potential guest.
  • If your price is too high, you guessed it, the listing won’t appear in search.
  • If the location is wrong, no one will see it either.

Notice what’s missing: the cute title you crafted, the amazing photo of your place, the handwritten welcome card on the dining room table, the carefully worded description you slaved over, the snacks you leave for your guests, and the wonderful message you send guests to confirm their reservation.

Don’t get me wrong, these things matter; they’re just not a factor when Airbnb considers which listing to include in a guest’s search. Yet many online “gurus” suggest that rewriting your title, shuffling photos around, or updating your listing will push it up in the algorithm. I’m sorry to tell you, none of those suggestions directly impact search ranking.

Airbnb’s goal is to earn a commission on a booking, so it only presents the best possible option to a guest and makes reserving as easy as possible, since that's when it's most likely to happen. It’s in its own interest not to include a listing that constantly draws complaints, doesn’t foster guest engagement, costs too much, or is in the wrong town.

Understanding the three steps of Airbnb search

Airbnb decides which listings to include in the search results it presents to a guest, based on the dates, number of guests, filters applied, and AI. Check the First-page search impression rate of your listing.

The guest will see your listing like this:

Step #1: Search Impressions

Here’s how Airbnb calls the three steps inside its platform.

 

Step #2: Search to click

This is the first time the guest decides on their stay. And there is very little information to go on: One photo, Guest Favorite or Superhost badge, home type, ranking and review count, AI-generated title, number of bedrooms, beds and bathrooms, price and discount. Check out the Average search-to-listing conversion for your home.

By clicking on your listing, here’s what they will see:

Step #3: Conversion

Once guests look through the options Airbnb chooses and click on yours, they can read your title, description, photos, policies, etc., and decide whether to book. Here’s where you can review Average listing-to-booking conversion.

Once they’ve hit the Reserve button, this is what they’ll see:

We’ll use these three steps to group the settings you can change, so you can track your success directly in Airbnb Insights.

 

You can track your success in your Airbnb Insights and measure how your changes affect your listing performance. For instance, if your listing has a healthy first-page impression but no guests click through to your listing, change a setting that impacts Step 2: Search to Click.

#ProTip: Don't change all settings at once; if you do, there’s no way you'll know which one worked. Change one. Give it 10 days to 2 weeks and recheck your insights. If that worked, change the next one.

Let’s start with the first step:

Step 1: Maximizing Search Impressions

If your listing doesn’t clear this hurdle, no one will see it. Focus on these settings to capture top-of-funnel visibility:

 

(1) Open your calendar.

It’s simple: if your listing isn't available, it can't be booked. Your calendar should be available to be booked at least one year out. The same is true if you already have a booking; Airbnb will not show any listings that aren’t available on dates a guest is searching.

 

# ProTip: Don’t block any days for preparation time. If you block only one day before and another after a booking, and you have 3 bookings a month, you're effectively blocking 20% of your yearly availability!

 

(2) Minimum Stay requirements.

You know your market, its regulations, and how guests stay. But did you know that if you set your minimum stay to 5 nights, Airbnb will not show your listing to guests searching for a 4-night stay? Nor those looking to stay for 3 nights, or those who want a quick 2-night stay.

 

The rule of thumb is to set your minimum stay high for far-out bookings in peak season, but keep it short to fill last-minute gaps.

 

(3) Turn on instant book.

Airbnb wants to make booking as easy as possible for guests. It takes too long if a guest needs to request to book, wait for you to respond, and have a conversation with you before they can make their reservation. So turn on instant book. It will improve your search ranking. (https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1510)

#HANDLEWITHCARE: Turn off “Require a good track record,” BUT not before you have a solid policy in place to verify all guests and have a solid guest-caused damage protection in place. This is definitely a pro move, so please don’t turn this setting off if you run Airbnb as a side hustle. However, it will increase how many guests see your listing in search.

 

(4) Use the good guest discount.

This is the newest option Airbnb introduced recently. Guests with a rating over 4.8 stars get 15% off your stay, and guess who pays for the discount: you do. But it should get you a higher placement in search. It’s also a good reason to review guests honestly and not sugarcoat your rating. It helps future hosts decide who they want to host, and it makes the Good Guest discount valuable for hosts.

 

#HANDLEWITHCARE: The Top-Rated Guest Discount 15% (and the Mobile-Only Discount 10%, for that matter) can stack on top of your existing promotions, rule sets, and non-refundable discounts 10%. Make sure you understand which guest you're trying to attract; with all these discounts on, you could inadvertently discount a stay by 35% or more.

Step 2: Winning the Search-to-Click

Everything we’ve covered so far earns your spot on page one. Up to this point, the guest has had no say in which listing to book. Step two hands control directly to them. Perfect these elements to make that single search tile irresistible:

 

(5) Select your best photo as your hero shot.

In search, guests see only one photo. And a picture says a thousand words. They can scroll through images on the search page, but if the first photo of your listing is of your garbage can, no one will click on it. Let your first five images tell the whole story of your place.

 

#ProTip: Airbnb will sometimes use AI to pick a photo that matches a guest’s search parameters; for example, if a guest is filtering listings by amenities, like a pool, it will show a photo of your pool in the results if your hero photo does not show the amenity that’s being searched for.

 

(6) Make sure your listing details are correct.

Airbnb shows very little information on the search page. Why? First, there’s not much space, so it shows only the most important information needed to decide. Guests look for specific bedroom counts, amenities, or what type of listing they want to book. If your listing isn't set up right, Airbnb will ding your quality rating, and guests will be unhappy when they arrive.

 

(7) Check your pricing.

I can hear you say: “But you said we’re not gonna touch pricing.” I know; that’s why I’m saying check it. Look at your competition and the market and make sure you’re priced correctly. Let’s say you’ve priced your listing at $2,000 a night and comparable listings are going for $200; you’re not gonna show up in search. Or get booked, for that matter.

 

(8) Create Custom Promotions

Airbnb’s custom promotions are one of our favorite tools to use when our calendar is not booked. We use them well within the booking window; that’s the time from when a guest books until they arrive.

  • A 10-14% discount will show a strikethrough price.
  • A 15-19% discount will display a discount banner on the listing.
  • A 20+% discount will get the listing highlighted in marketing emails.

Custom promotions stack with other discounts, so be careful what you’re offering!

 

#HANDLEWITHCARE: Airbnb calculates the base rate for your discount by looking back 60 days and taking the mean value (that’s the middle value of the rates, when sorted from high to low). If you had low prices in the past 2 months, this rate will be very low.

Step 3: Driving Conversions

Once a guest clicks your listing tile, they’re on your page, and it’s up to you to secure the booking. Anything you can do to reduce friction here makes the "Reserve" button an easy choice:

 

(9) Fast response rate.

This metric is the easiest one to control, and with the Airbnb app on your phone, automatic responses, AI answers, quick replies, and suggested replies, there’s really no excuse not to answer a guest immediately. It’s one of the data points Airbnb looks at when determining Superhost status, so answer quickly and kindly.

 

(10) Guest communication

When guests ask for clarification or want to ask about a detail of your listing, how you respond may be the difference between getting booked and sitting empty. Your responses need to be quick and kind.

 

(11) Make your cancellation policies more lenient.

A stricter cancellation policy will lower your search placement. Ease up on your cancellation policy to boost your listing. The rule of thumb is to use stricter policies for farther-out, high-value bookings and flexible policies for last-minute bookings.

 

#HANDLEWITHCARE: If you’re offering flexible or moderate cancellation policies, guests can use Airbnb’s “Reserve Now Pay Later” (RNPL) feature. Guests can reserve a listing without paying any money until a few days before the cancellation policy kicks in. If you’re using one of those two policies, any guest can book your most expensive week (think Christmas through New Year's), cancel a few days before December 25th with no consequence, and leave you trying to fill your highest-grossing week days before the holiday. Oh, and they can book multiple listings in the same city for the same period.

 

Our default cancellation policy is set to limited. We use limited and moderate policies sparingly to attract last-minute bookings, and we use Airbnb’s seasonal cancellation policies to set these dates. We do the same for our high-value time frames, but we set those to firm.

 

(12) Craft a benefit-driven title.

If your title says, "Guest Favorite House in El Portal, 4 bedrooms, 3 beds with a pool," you've just wasted valuable space duplicating data already on the listing tile. Use punchy, evocative phrasing like "Resort-Style Home with Pool House" instead.

Bonus Round: The Long-Term Play

Beyond technical settings, long-term performance rests on foundational hospitality. While you shouldn't chase badges for their own sake, delivering exceptional stays naturally unlocks higher tiers:

 

Improve your rating & reviews.

The best way to deal with a bad review is to avoid it altogether. We do that by ensuring that our process from seeing our listing for the first time in search, to clicking on the listing and finally making the reservation is as easy as possible. The guest experience doesn’t start at check-in; it begins at the second they see your hero image in the search results. Everything you do from that first glance to after the guest departs after their stay impacts your ratings and reviews.

 

Avoid cancellations.

Airbnb measures how often you cancel a guest and how often they cancel their own reservation (see comment on RNPL). You should never cancel a guest. If you set clear expectations, guidelines, and processes, cancellations should never come from you. I bet there’s an exception to this rule, but in the past 2 years we have not canceled a single one of the 100+ Airbnb reservations made at our properties.

 

Become a Superhost (Good).

Don’t chase the badge for the badge's sake; be a great host to your guests. Superhost has some clear milestones you have to hit. Don’t ignore them, but don’t make them the most important thing. You’ll get there. (https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/828)

 

Make your property a Guest Favorite (Better).

Compared to Superhost, Guest Favorite is harder to obtain and to keep. Airbnb limits this to the top 2 million listings (out of 7 million), so roughly 28% of its listings and listings are compared against other listings in the immediate geography of your listing (https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-introduces-guest-favorites).

 

The requirements to become a Guest Favorite are tougher than Superhost, but according to PriceLabs, this designation is worth about twice as much as Superhost.

 

Get into the top % of Guest Favorite (Best).

This is the hardest of the three steps and takes the most time and greatest effort on your end.

Airbnb ranks Guest Favorites with these criteria and more (https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/3495):

“Overall star ratings, feedback in guest reviews, and communications between guests and hosts on the platform

  • Category ratings for check-in, cleanliness, accuracy, host communication, location, and value
  • Host cancellation rates
  • Quality-related incidents reported to Airbnb customer service
    Become top 10%, top 5%, and top 1% guest favorite (hardest but worth most, and these rankings are assessed daily.”

 

I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head, but this should get you started. Let me know in the comments if I missed a setting that impacts search, click-though or booking conversion.

Are You Invisible to AI? 

The New Way Guests Are Booking Your Rentals.

Miami, FL May 27, 2026

What happens when a traveler starts the search for their next vacation rental on their favorite AI?

 

Does your listing show up?

 

Depending on which industry study you read, over a third of travelers are now bypassing traditional search engines entirely. One in three. They aren’t opening Airbnb, VRBO, or even Google. They are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude.

 

This is not a normal search.

 

Guests talk to AI differently. It’s conversational, hyper-specific, and deeply contextual. They don’t just punch in: Miami + Dates + 8 Guests. Instead, they type something like:

 

"I'm looking for a place for a FIFA match in Miami for 8 friends. It needs to be within 10 miles of Miami Stadium but still close to downtown, with a great pool and flawless reviews."

 

Do you know what happens next? The AI doesn't give them pages of endless scrolling. It gives them three suggestions. Maybe five. If those aren’t a perfect fit, the guest asks the AI to refine the results, and three more pop up.

 

Is one of them yours?

 

The major booking channels know this shift is underway, and they are investing heavily in AI optimization to ensure their platforms are feeding data to these AI models. But relying solely on them to save you is a mistake.

AI engine algorithms work completely differently than traditional search SEO. They analyze long-form content, look for deep context, and decipher photos. They don't just skim a list of bullet points. If your listing description is just a dry checklist of amenities, AI will pass right over it.

 

If you think, "I trust the OTAs, they’ll handle it," think again.

 

Airbnb is already changing the rules of engagement on its own home turf. With its latest summer release, Airbnb is embedding AI directly into its own user experience—using it to curate specific reviews, customize search results for individual guest profiles, and rewrite how listings are highlighted.

 

The search landscape has shifted. If you aren't actively optimizing your listings for AI readability, you aren't just losing rank—you're becoming invisible.

 

How is your listing written? And more importantly, when are you going to rewrite it?

#TechTipTuesday

Optimize your listing for more bookings.

PriceLabs Listing Optimizer

Miami, FL Dec 30, 2025

Your listing can rock a spectacular nightly rate, have amazing photos, boast great amenities and a well-thought-out description, but small details can be the reason your listing is ranking #270 in search - and trust me - no guest is scrolling 15+ pages in Airbnb to find you.

 

Enter a new data-driven Optimization Tool.

Pricelabs introduces a new service called Listing Optimizer. And if you’ve ever wondered where your property ranks on Airbnb, you can now definitely know. Pricelabs (str.li/pricelabs) has a large data pool of listings they run dynamic pricing for and have figured out what works in the real world.
 

They now offer optimization suggestions by comparing your listing’s content with that of similar top-earning local listings on Airbnb.

We analyze thousands of top-earning Airbnb listings worldwide. Listing Optimizer compares your content to proven patterns in titles, photos, descriptions, and amenities — then recommends what to fix.

 

Real World Results

We’ve been actively optimizing our listings for over a year now, and with Pricelabs Listing Optimizer, one of our listings went from buried on page 15 to page 4 on Airbnb in one week. Yes, it’s a paid service, but it looks like what they are promising actually works. Our second listing jumped from page 15+ to page 2.

That’s after implementing some of the suggestions that Pricelabs made, while others - like updating photos- will need to wait until the listings are not booked.

So far, Pricelabs is only looking at Airbnb data for your listing and your market, but I think I heard them say that they will expand the data to VRBO as well - although with Airbnb still being the biggest player in the South Florida Short-Term Vacation Rental market, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

If you’re not using Pricelabs for your pricing, you should be. You now have another reason to sign up for the platform if you like making data-driven decisions.

#TechTipTuesday

What tool do you use to optimize your listings?

#MarketingMonday

NO MORE MARKETING!

The Journey is about to begin …

Miami, FL May 26, 2025

In addition to the list of items we address with all our guests, we answer messages with questions about the property, our process, and what to do in Miami or at the listing. We also address messages about changing reservation details, adding services or experiences to their stay, and other inquiries.

 

We carefully craft all messages, especially the automated ones, to speak in our brand voice while still sounding like us, with heavy personalization.

 

So instead of sending a message that says:

 

"Dear Guest, we confirm your reservation. It's your responsibility to guarantee that your group will be the same as your Airbnb booking."

"Dear John, We're absolutely thrilled to welcome you on May 22, 2025, at 4:00 pm for your stay at Miami Pool Oasis! The property is at 123 Main Street in Miami, FL. We would like to verify a few details to ensure that our team has prepared the place correctly. You have reserved the Miami Pool Oasis for a total of 3 guests, are not traveling with a pet, and are checking out on May 28, 2025, at 11:00 am. If any of this information has changed, please update it on the guest portal."

 

Mind you, this is an automated message that is sent to the guest once the reservation is paid AND the guest has completed their guest verification.

 

What are some of the steps in your guest's journey between reservation and arrival that are not in our list?

In last week's #MarketingMonday post, our guest reserved our place.

 

Quick Recap:

  1. The guest found our listing in Search (First Page Search)
  2. They clicked on our listing (Search to Listing)
  3. Our place was booked (Listing to Booking)

So we're done, right? No more marketing, correct? I mean, the guest booked, and we're good, yes?

Not so fast. 

Reserving your home is just the first step in the guest booking journey, which doesn't end until they return home and leave you a five-star review.

 

Marketing is getting a message across to your customer.

To do this effectively, you must understand your brand. That's true for everything we've discussed in the past and will discuss in future posts.

 

Reservation to Arrival

However, in our guests' journey, we find ourselves between the reservation and the arrival, and you know what can happen at any time? Guests can still cancel because of something you said or did. We've had guests cancel because our house rules were too long, we've had guests cancel when they realize that they can't throw a party in our homes, we've had guests cancel, and sometimes we don't know the reason, but we work hard to make sure that we don't give our guests any reason to back out of our reservation.

 

How many steps are in your guest's journey?

Take a minute to walk through the steps a guest takes from making a reservation to punching in the code to open the door to your listing. In our case, there are more steps than you think…

  • Address*
  • Arrival Info*
  • Arrival messages
  • Check-in details*
  • Check-in instructions*
  • Check-in time*
  • Check-out time*
  • Concierge Services*
  • Confirmation message*
  • Door Code and unlock instructions*
  • Driving directions*
  • Experience suggestions*
  • Guest Portal*
  • Guest segmentation*
  • Guest Verification*
  • ID verification*
  • Link to Google map from airports to listing*
  • Number of guests*
  • Online Check-in*
  • Payment processing*
  • Payment verification
  • Payment*
  • Pet or no pet*
  • Property Details*
  • Short-Term Rental Agreement*
  • Tips for travel*
  • Travel Insurance*
  • Welcome message*

[Steps or messages that have a star * are automated in our messaging, and not all steps happen with all booking channels.]

SIDEBAR: Airbnb recognizes the importance of messaging to our guests. In fact, it's so vital to a good guest experience that they track how often and how quickly we respond to our guests. It's the only one of the four Superhost criteria that you fully control - since even cancellations sometimes have to be made due to extenuating circumstances.

#MarketingMonday

New Booking confirmed!

Listing-to-Booking

Miami, FL May 26, 2025

Who doesn't like to read those words? Welcome to another #MarketingMonday post.

Confirmation is the final step in your guest's booking journey. Remember when it began with your listing popping up in the search results, and then continued when the guests clicked your cover photo? 

 

Before you pop the champagne 🥂🍾 and have Airbnb to celebrate with you that a guest is going to be staying at your home, there is one final hurdle for you to clear:

 

The guest has to click that big red "reserve" button

 

Think of the booking journey as a funnel; let's review:

 

The Guest Journey

It begins when someone plans a trip to Miami and decides to stay in a short-term vacation rental rather than a hotel. The chance that your place is the one a guest ultimately books is 1:23,893—be fair, it's closer to 1:15,065 if they are only looking at Airbnb.

However, since no guest will scroll through the 837 pages of search results, we looked at how to stand out on the first page by using the most appealing cover photo among the 18 listings. As 80-90% of Airbnb guests only look at the first page of search results, the likelihood of booking your listing is now around 1:28.8.

 

Once that click on your cover page happens, you only have the first five images to tell your listing's story—but you know this since we've gone through all these steps over the past three weeks.

 

Now, on to the last step in your guest's booking journey:

 

Search to Booking

Everything that happens from now on until a guest clicks that big red Reserve button is the most fragile part of the guest journey. They've decided to like your place enough to warrant a second look. Don't worry - all you can do from now until they book is screw that up, so no pressure.

 

Here's where the rest of your listing comes in—your photos and their captions, description, amenities, reviews, neighborhood, hosting status, house rules, and policies. I think that's most of it.

 

Photos

The images should guide guests through your property, helping them imagine themselves staying there. It's a delicate balance between showing 11 photos of the same couch from every possible angle and a single picture that shows the whole room.

Photos need to be professional-level, with great lighting and styling.

 

Description

The first sentence must make an emotional connection with your guest. Which introductory sentence do you like better:

  • Welcome to the Miami Pool Oasis, a charming four-bedroom house with a big pool and many games.
  • Welcome to The Oasis, a serene Miami retreat where exploration meets tranquility to restore your spirit.

Yeah, we like the second one better, too.

Remember, people are in a hurry and will not read a novel set in your listing. The shorter we keep our descriptions, the better they perform with our guests.

Strike a balance between mentioning all essential features, making it easy to scan, and avoiding boredom for the guest.

Groupings of features and bullet points work great.

 

 STYLISH & PET-FRIENDLY
• Plush pet bed, water bowls, and welcome treats
• Shaded outdoor space and nearby walking routes
• No sacrifice in design or cleanliness

 

BTW, you can take a look at how we write out descriptions here: www.airbnb.com/h/miamipooloasis

 

Amenities

List all the amenities you have. Add amenities your guests are looking for. Listen to your guests. In the beginning, we often heard, "We loved staying here, but it would be great if this place had a _________________." And then, we made sure it would be there for the next guest. Don't be afraid to ask your guests. We do.

Knowing who your guest persona is or having an avatar is helpful here.

Pet-friendly listings have about 5-10% higher occupancy and can command higher nightly rates. If your building doesn't allow pets, you don't need to add pet-focused amenities. If you do, you should charge a pet fee and have written pet policies. You can make pet parents ecstatic by providing snacks and a water bowl.
 

Reviews

What others say about your listing may be the most important factor guests consider when booking your home. It's called social proof, and all you can do is be an unbelievable host with an incredible listing. Don't be afraid to ask guests for reviews; usually, they are happy to leave over-the-moon reviews when they've had a great experience. We have an automatic message sent to all our guests a few days after their stay, asking for a review, unless they wrote one, in which case the message is not sent.

Here's our favorite recent review (well, the private message to us): "You guys are freaking awesome!!!"
 

Neighborhood

Your home can be the perfect fit, and the price may be out of this world, but if it's too far from where the guests need to be, they will look elsewhere.

Ensure you set the guests' expectations so they aren't disappointed when they arrive. It's better to mention the construction site next door now than get bad ratings and reviews because you didn't.
 

Hosting Status

Guest favorite, Superhost status, your response rate, etc, will build trust with potential guests. If they see that it takes you a week to respond or you only respond 70% of the time, that's not good.

Work on becoming a Superhost, being a Guest Favorite, and having a quick response rate (the last one is the easiest). These metrics play a big part in the search algorithm, so you should know the steps Airbnb requires.

You can keep track of where you are on your Superhost journey here: https://www.airbnb.com/performance/superhost

 

House Rules

Nobody reads the house rules. However, your house rules must be there if you want Airbnb to help enforce your expectations. Don't make them so short that you leave out some critical points, but not so long that no one can read them, even if they want to.

The language should sound polite and friendly, not like a lawyer drew them up and you're just waiting to pounce on a guest for any violation. We lost bookings when our house rules were too long. We had them shortened 15 minutes after we got that comment.

 

Policies

Cancellation policies and safety equipment must be completed correctly. Your cancellation policy should be as lenient as you can stomach. (We always look at our direct competition and make our policy match or less strict.)

 

Click the button!

Once you have all these steps dialed in, you should have no problem getting your guests to click that nice, big, red "reserve" button.

 

And you're done!

Well, not so fast. You've finished the guest booking journey, but now the real guest journey begins. We'll dive into it over the next few weeks on #MarketingMonday.

#MarketingMonday

Are you forcing potential guests to click on your listing?

Search to Listing conversion.

Miami, FL May 5, 2025

Our fictitious guest is intrigued by the cover photo and title and is now clicking on your listing!

 

Click-through rate

 

In internet marketing parlance, this moment in time is called a click-through and is measured by dividing the times a search result (in this case, your listing) is displayed by the times it is clicked on.

You can find your click-through rate, or Search-to-Listing percentage, in your Airbnb Insights.

Go to Menu -> Insights -> Conversion -> Booking conversion.

Definition: This number is how often your listing was displayed on the first page of the search results, divided by how many people clicked on the cover image to get to your listing.

 

Mind you, the potential guest has not booked anything yet; they were just interested enough to warrant a closer look. Let's understand what they see:

 

We already optimized your listing title (see last week's post) and cover image (discussed two weeks ago), which appear at the top of your listing page.

 

Here's what else is on the page:

  • Four more images
  • Type of place with the maximum number of guests, bedrooms, beds, and bathrooms
  • Hosting and property status (superhost, guest favorite, …)
  • Pricing
  • Dates
  • Number of Guests
  • Reserve button

Let's look at the four additional photos. Go ahead and pull up your listing; it's okay; I'll wait. Remember when we talked about repetition when optimizing your title? How much repetition is in your photos?

 

Are you repeating your mistakes?

 

"You're funny," you might say. "There's no repetition since there are no words displayed. It's just images." Well, I'm sorry to disagree with you. You're wrong. I've seen plenty of listings where the Cover photo is the interior living space, and the following four images are of the same room.

 

These photos must entice your guests to browse your listing.

 

These 4 photos must show the 2nd-5th best features of your property (the best feature should be in your cover photo). And no, at this point, the guest is not scrolling through all your images - they've just landed on your listing, and before they do anything, they're gone if the visitor sees something they don't like. And you won't capture the final and most crucial step: the listing-to-booking conversion.

We'll talk about that next week. For now, study your photos—are the first five images telling a story about your listing? Or are they merely repeating the same couch in your living room?

#MarketingMonday

Are you repeating yourself?

Miami, FL May 5, 2025

Are you repeating yourself?

Are you repeating yourself?

 

Are you repeating yourself?

 

It's annoying, isn't it, especially if your repetition is costing you time and space. 
 

On last week's #MarketingMonday, we looked at the cover photo on your listing and the immense importance it plays in getting people to consider your listing when they are searching for a place to stay on Airbnb. 

 

It's the most important part of your listing for search with Airbnb, giving it over 3/4 of the real estate of your search result, but did you know how many more data points are squeezed into the result? (No peeking - guess.)

If you said 10, you are correct - here they are in order of the space (or importance) Airbnb gives each one:

  1. Cover Photo (76.5%)
  2. Listing title (38.2%)
  3. Guest Favorite / Superhost (28.6%)
  4. Type of Place (26.2%)
  5. Price (19.6% )
  6. Dates (14.3% )
  7. Rating (10.3%)
  8. Beds (10.3%)
  9. Reviews (8.1% )
  10. Favorite (7.2%)

With the listing title being the second most important item, do you really want to repeat yourself here? That would be annoying and a waste of valuable space.

So let's look at one of the listings on the first page of Airbnb when I search for a place in Miami. If this is your listing, congrats on being placed so highly - obviously you're doing something right.

A bad title for this place would be:

3-bed guest favorite Guesthouse in Miami

Why? Because all this info is available elsewhere in the search results.

The title they picked is much better, since it calls out the property's best amenity (the heated pool) and adds the distance from where the guest is looking at the end.
 

Next week, we'll talk about "Search to Listings conversion," but for now, work on your listing title.

Have you crafted your listing title so it doesn't repeat itself and adds to the other info in your search results?

Nobody's booking your listing (if they can't see it)

#MarketingMonday

Miami, FL May 5, 2025

I know this sounds simple, but if a guest can see your listing, they won't book it. And the only thing guests have to go on is your cover photo.

Have you ever thought about the first photo on your listing? You should. Must it be the absolute best photo you have that explains your property?

 

First page of Search

Your listing's placement is determined by a bunch of factors in the Airbnb algorithm, including your listing's availability, nightly rate, superhost status, guest favorites, guest search history, etc.

 

So, how often is your property featured on the first page of Airbnb? Well, Airbnb calls this metric "first page search impressions," and you can find this number under

 

Menu -> Performance -> Booking Conversions

 

Once Airbnb shows your listing in search results, your cover photo is the only thing that keeps your guests from scrolling right past it.

 

What makes a great cover photo? It needs to entice a potential guest to book your place. It needs to show off the best feature in the best light.

 

How do I make an image my cover photo?

Selecting your cover photo is very easy. Go to your Listing editor, click "All Photos," then "Manage photos." Then simply drag the photo you want to be your Cover photo to the very top-left of all photos.

 

Track your new cover photo's performance.

Leave that photo in place for two weeks and see if your first page search page impressions change. Make a note of where you start and take note again after two weeks. If your results haven't changed, select a different and better photo. And repeat the process.

 

Feel free to share the percentage of your listings' first page search impressions here, and update that number in a few weeks.

#MarketingMonday

 

Next week, we'll talk about "Your Listing Title," but for now, work on getting your cover photo selected and set up.

What's in a name? 

#MarketingMonday

Miami, FL Apr 28, 2025

Have you ever googled your listing name? 

I bet that your guests have. And if your listing name is "4 bedroom Miami house w/ pool," your listing is probably not gonna show up on the first page at all - ours didn't, but a lot of homes for sale and other non-related links populated the top 10 search results.

 

Name your listing something unique.

 

A descriptive name is valuable in search - take ours for example:

Miami Pool Oasis

Looking at the first page in Google Search: 

  • 60% results are our listing on different channels, 
  • 20% of results are for other listings, 
  • and the remaining links go to non-short-term vacation rental listings.

 In other words, three-quarters of the listings on Google's front page end up with our property.

 

One of the ways that we make that name stick on Google, is to use the listing name as our "custom link" on Airbnb listing (it's all the way at the bottom of your listing editor. 

 

Can you guess what our custom name is? If you said www.airbnb.com/h/miamipooloasis, you'd be correct.

 

Now take a look at Google's first page results. Notice anything to the right of the links? 

Do you see the same panel when you search for your listing name?

One day is killing your business!

Miami, FL Feb 28, 2025

Would you be surprised if I told you that one day is blocking over 26% of your booking calendar?

Remember COVID? Airbnb (and all other channels) required hosts to block a full day before and after each booking.

We came to love those extra days of preparation–it gave us a chance to make sure our listings were spotless; the extra day slowed down the hectic pace of back-to-back bookings and made sense during the pandemic; after all, we wanted to make sure that our listings where clean and healthy (we even ran an Ozone machine in that extra unbooked night).

Preparation days kind of snuck in.

After the lockdown ended, that preparation day sorta stuck around, but we failed to realize that one day was killing our business.

 

Let's say you have a guest arriving on Friday and staying for the weekend. Adding just one day of preparation results in your Thursday (the day before check-in) and Monday (the day after check-out) being blocked in your Calendar for 5 days for a 3-day reservation.

 

Wait, it gets worse

To add insult to injury, Airbnb adds these blocked days to your Occupancy rate, so in our example of the three-night booking, Airbnb will show you a nice, healthy occupancy rate of 5 nights (40% higher than your actual booked rate)!

Now, before you go and call Airbnb to complain, they do have a good reason for counting the blocked days: if some of your bookings come from other channels, Airbnb will show them as blocked nights, so the occupancy rate is correct again, unless you're blocking nights before and after that booking on the other channel, too.

 

Your listing is dropping like a rock in Airbnb's Search Results!

Let's look at this differently: Say you have just one booking per month (I hope you have many more bookings than just one, but let's assume one for this example). Adding a day before and after that booking blocks 2 days.

"But it's just 2 days," you say, "so why worry about that since the prep day makes my life easier?"

Well, do the math: 2 blocked days * 12 months equals 24 blocked days, or 3 1/2 weeks, that a guest can not book your listing, and–more importantly–your listing does not show in the search algorithm for 24 days because Airbnb does not display an unavailable listing, and blocked is just as unavailable as booked.

  • 2 bookings per month, block 1.6 months per year
  • 3 bookings per month, block 2.4 months per year
  • 4 bookings per month block over a quarter of your year

With 4 reservations a month, YOU'RE TELLING YOUR GUESTS THAT YOU DON'T WANT THEM FOR OVER 26% OF YOUR AVAILABILITY.

And you're still wondering why the Airbnb algorithm doesn't show your listing? Would you show a place that is only available for 3/4 of the year over one that is always available?

Remember, this calculation does not include days booked by guests, but only the days you blocked for preparation.

 

You're blocking even more than you know.

Oh, and one more thing - remember our 3-day weekend booking from earlier that blocked Thursdays and Mondays?

Look at the last booking in our March Calendar:

 

It would have been impossible for our guest to book (or even find our listing on Airbnb) because the prior guests would have checked out on the Sunday before the last March booking. That would have blocked Monday, the day our guest is checking in.

 

That one day would cost us a 4-day booking.

 

If you want to turbo-charge your listing, set your preparation time to None and return all those empty days to your Calendar.

 

Here's how to set it correctly:

  1. Click on your Calendar in Airbnb
  2. Click on the Availability under Settings
  3. Scroll down to Preparation time to put it to None.
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