While Airbnb bookings can be relatively easy to obtain in the high season, roughly from October to March when the hoards of tourists descend on Sydney and especially our iconic Eastern Suburbs, it can be a little quieter in the months in between.

However, if you’re worried about the relatively quieter months there’s little need to be if you find yourself in the “top performing” listings, as illustrated below using last year’s Airbnb data. If, however, you’re starting to see a significant drop off in interest and bookings and believe that your listing might not be in the “top performing” listings then you’ve come to the right place to get some tips on what you can do to move your listing up the “performance league”.

Keep an eye on the events calendar and tailor your listing to those events

There are still plenty of events taking place in the months outside of the high season – such as the Winter Festival, Vivid Festival, City to Surf and International Food Festival – and the trick is to be aware of these events and tailor your listing accordingly. This can include updating your listing heading to include the major event and updating your description and photos to really sell the benefits of your property related to the event or time of the year.

Stand out from the crowd with your photos and description

First of all, your photos must be of a high standard, if they’re not people having a quick browse will look straight passed your listing. Make that opportunity of a first impression count.

Secondly, in your description make sure that you sell the lifestyle and experience of living in your property and not just your property as you’re most likely not selling to a local. Let them know what’s great near by and how easy it is to get there from your property.

Make sure it’s priced right

1. Make sure your nightly rate is competitive for per person, not per room

Look at your competition and make sure that you’re competitive on price per person per night. We often see people make the mistake of pricing their property per room and ultimately overpricing.

As an example, if you have a property with 2 queen rooms but only want it occupied by 2 people, then your competition is the properties that cater for 2 people, not the properties with 2 queen rooms that are happy to have it occupied by 4 people.

In this example, if you try to compete on room numbers and set the nightly rate the same as your perceived competition (2 queen rooms with 4 occupants) then you’ve just doubled the price on your nightly rate per person in comparison.

Bonus tip: the occupancy rate of your competition is also important. Look at the bookings that they have, if they have very few bookings the chances are that their price isn’t competitive enough. If they’re fully booked out maybe their price is too low. Adjust yours accordingly.

2. Reduce your price as the dates get close

While nightly and occupancy rates vary for properties and areas, the following is a good guide for the occupancy rates for high performing Airbnb properties outside of the high season.

If you don’t have the means to dynamically optimize your pricing based upon the day of the week, neighborhood, seasonality and local demand (see Our Services for more details) there are things that you can do manually to give you an edge over your competition who keep their pricing static.

Leading up to the final 10 days before the vacant dates, start to reduce your price by 5% each day up to 7 days out. From 7 to 0 you may want to continue to drop 5% each day, reduce your rate to a bargain price, or hold out for a price that you’re most happy with (but increasing the risk of not receiving a booking).

Bonus tip. Airbnb seems to notice when you’ve dropped the price of your listing, even by $5, and rewards you by increasing the visibility of your listing.

Example price reduction:

Get those 5* reviews in at the end of the high season to carry you into the "off season"

To give yourself a bump in the Airbnb search results at the end of the high season or beginning of the low season you can treat your guests in an extra special way so that when we move into the relatively quieter months you’ve got great 5* reviews carrying you into the quieter months.

Keep your listing high in the Airbnb search results

As always, the higher your listing the greater your chance of getting more bookings. For information on how to achieve this you can refer to our previous blog, How to rank higher in Airbnb search results, where we've provided some tips.

Want to see how our services can help your property stand out from the crowd? Visit our home page or get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.