Tell me about your client with beach rental properties in North Carolina.
She is a coaching client that started with me couple of several years ago. We met when I was speaking at a Keller Williams real estate event This past winter, she reached out to me because she was thinking about selling her beach house Airbnb. becuse it was not performing well. She was getting fewer and fewer bookings, and generating less and less revenue.
She is a great person in a great market, so I volunteered to do a listing optimization and take over revenue management to get her property turned around.
Begining the Turn Around - Increasing Occupancy by 25%
I started this Airbnb turnaround with a full optimization of the listing, during which I found some settings that had changed over time. It's not uncommon for hosts to play with settings and then forget what they'd done and that leads to listings getting out of whack and begin the downward spiral of page rank on the Airbnb platform.
Once I got the listing all optimized and started doing all the things I do multiple times a week as an Airbnb revenue manager, the client's revenue started increasing. In April her booking values were up $2,400. In May her gross booking values were up $5,100 and $2,500 in June. How did this change in revenue happen? I was able to increase her occupancy approximately 25%.
Okay, that's fantastic. What is this client's occupation?
She is a fantastic real estate professional in her 60s.
How Sucessful Airbnb Listings Slowly Fall Apart
Do you thing being a busy working professional created the situations that led her to ask you to take over revenue management for her Airbnb?
As a real estate professional, you're pulled in a lot of different directions, as we are in most professions... so it's not uncommon for people to let their attention move away from managing their listing on a day-to-day basis and they end up maybe not touching it for several weeks or months. Then it kind of falls into disrepair.
We talked about the listing optimization, but aside from that if you don't stay on top of your pricing, markets are always changing, competitors are always coming into the market, and if you're not keeping track of where you are in terms of search placement - it's very easy to lose track of all those details if you're not watching it very closely, I think that's the situation with this client, she's focused on her real estate business.
What An Airbnb Revenue Manager Does To Boost Occupany & Revenue
Specifically, how were you able to help this client with her issues of low occupancy and her nightly rates?
Well, it goes back to starting with getting a listing optimized, right? So if there's flaws in the listing, it's not gonna show well in search. It is also essential to find the price that meets the market demand on any given day.. Once bookings start flowing in, a property's booking velocity becomes important for getting better search placements for future available nights, and it becomes self-reinforcing that a place that fully booked now stays full going forward.
What expertise of yours created these great results?
I would say my experience as a host with over 5,000 reviews, revenue managing my 14 Airbnb properties and doing revenue management for my clients. When you just have one listing, it's hard to test things. It's difficult to see patterns. It's difficult to see trends. But through managing our portfolio and those of our clients for maximum occupancy and revenue, I've developed pattern recognition and confidence in knowing what works.
Has this client asked you for additional help since having just one property with you?
Yes, the client has two other properties that were being used as longer term rentals. After seeing the results of this first property, she's now inclined to covert those into short-term rentals to increase the revenue generaged from them.
Okay, so having gone from almost selling her short-term rental because it wasn't making money and wasn't booking, through working with you as a coach and then also as a revenue manager, her initial Airbnb is now making significantly more money,.. in the thousands per month, and that's motivated her to turn to long-term rentals into short-term rentals because she realizes how much more revenue is possible?
She realized she leaving money on the table keeping her other properties as long-term rentals. I also think the peace of mind that by engaging me for revenue management that's not even more time coming out of her daily and weekly schedule. She has me as a revenue manager that will be watching those properties and ensuring that they are maximizing their cash flow.
So anybody with a busy career can still have one or more short-term rentals. The key is to have somebody besides yourself in charge of revenue management to make sure you're maximizing on your investment
What Airbnb Investors Should Look For in a Revenue Manager
I would say in hiring any revenue manager, you should ask how many properties they own and manage for themselves. Followed by asking how many properties they manage for clients. Then examine the results and occupancy track record for each property. The proof is in the "doing." Anyone can read an article or watch a YouTube video and call themsleves a revenue manager, but you want someone who actually owns their own Airbnbs and assists clients. That's the real test.
Word of advice: even if a family member is trying to be helpful, if they've never done revenue management, having them take over is probably not the best idea because they don't know metrics to look for, what to track, what to change, what to touch multiple times a week to make sure that a listing stays occupied and generates maximum returns
It goes back to what I said before about pattern recognition. And if you have one property and it's at 50% occupancy, well, maybe that's what you think is normal. Or if you're at 60% and you think it maybe should be higher, you just don't have that optic to know that if you're managing 15, 20, 50 properties, that to be expected to have occupancy at the 90% to 95% range
And also just if you're super intelligent and trying to educate yourself, and you're not an Airbnb revenue management expert, you can get a lot of conflicting information on different groups and social media. And trying to sort through all of that and wing it while managing housekeepers for the first time, guest messaging for the first time, while trying to help out a family member, it's too many pieces to juggle, and I think it's one of the most critical pieces for success, particularly for those that are looking for financial freedom
I agree. It's the most critical piece for success and the easiest piece to outsource
So if you have an Airbnb that's booking under 90% per month and want to make sure you're not leaving money on the table, book a free 30-minute Airbnb Revenue Managment Call with Culin. His joy is in your success!