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My Golden Airbnb Calendar Strategy

Bruno Oliveira

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Hello,

I going to describe a strategy that I implemented in the calendar for managing my Airbnb apartments some months ago that totally made a difference for my financial comfort and returns.

Before that, just a quick intro, I live in Brazil and I am deeply grateful to MJ and all the concepts that I learned with Unscripted and TMF . So, this is a small action that represent my give back...

I manage 2 small 1-dorm apartments in São Paulo, Brazil. It's the largest and richest town in Brazil, ~18 million people. It's the financial center, Business center and services center in the country.

So, going down to the strategy:

  • MAIN GOAL: to not "break" the calendar with 2 or 3-day bookings in future period
  • I created 3 categories for the Rules I use in the calendar:
    • SHORT: less than 20 days to the date
    • MID: between 21 and 60 days
    • LONG: more that 60 days
So, in the Calendar, I navigate to:

Settings -> Availability -> Trip Lenght -> Add another requirement/requisite
(my system is in Portuguese, so if someone could please adjust the correct names in English)

And then I add one requirement for each of the 3 categories I mentioned above:

  • SHORT: Minimum of 2 days
  • MID: Minimum of 10 days
  • LONG: MINIMUM of 60 days

So, by doing this, it means that you will not be accepting too short bookings (let's say 2 days) for periods that are still far in the future, which could "break" your calendar and prevent you from being exposed to a guest search that needs a longer stay (70 days, for example).

This gives you a much better cash flow forecast, because what will start to happen is that you will start receiving larger "blocks" of bookings. You will also be able to fine tune the rules for "lost" lonely 1 days, since you could be allowing 1-day bookings for days that are kind of lost between longer bookings.

Besides, this will heavily optimize your time answering the chat requests and will also support you to have higher prices!!

I hope this help you guys have a much better time and cash flow efficiency, as it happened to me!!

Kind regards,

Bruno Pires de Oliveira

PS: I know it may not be too clear now, but I will make improvements in this post as I re-read it more times...
 
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Last edited:

Valhalla

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Hello,

I going to describe a strategy that I implemented in the calendar for managing my Airbnb apartments some months ago that totally made a difference for my financial comfort and returns.

Before that, just a quick intro, I live and Brazil and I am deeply grateful to MJ and all the concepts that I learned with Unscripted and TMF . So, this is a small action that represent my give back...

I manage 2 small 1 dorm apartments in São Paulo, Brazil. It's the largest and richest town in Brazil, ~18 million people. It's the financial center, Business center and services center in the country.

So, going down to the strategy:

  • MAIN GOAL: not "break" the calendar with 2 or 3-day bookings in future period
  • I created 3 categories for the Rules I use in the calendar:
  • SHORT: less than 20 days to the date
  • MID: between 21 and 60 days
  • LONG: more that 60 days
So, in the Calendar, I navigate to:

Settings -> Availability -> Trip Lenght -> Add another requirement/requisite
(my system is in Portuguese, so if someone could please adjust the correct names in English)

And than I add requirement for each of the 3 categories I mentioned above:

SHORT: Minimum of 2 days
MID: Minimum of 10 days
LONG: MINIMUM of 60 days

So, by doing this, it means that you will not be accepting too short bookings (let's say 2 days) for periods that are still far in the future, which could "break" your calendar and prevent you from being considered by a guest that needs a longer stay (70 days, for example).

This gives you a much better cash flow forecast, because what will start to happen is that you will start receiving larger "blocks" of bookings. You will also be able to fine tune the rules for "lost" lonely 1 days, since you could be allowing 1-day bookings for days that are kind of lost between longer bookings.

Besides, this will heavily optimize your time answering the chat requests and will also support you to have higher prices!!

I hope this help you guys have a much better time and cash flow efficiency, as it happened to me!!

Kind regards,

Bruno Pires de Oliveira

PS: I know it may not be too clear now, but I will make improvements in this post as I re-read it more times...

I think it's clear what you're trying to do and it's great you've installed a formal system to achieve your goals from the property. I go totally the other way with my properties, I do weekends 2 day minimum but otherwise allow any bookings and allow price discrimination to achieve my goals (minimum hassle, maximum profitability, super happy guests). I believe this gets my listings maximum exposure because a listing with a 60 day minimum will not show up when a future guest is doing some browsing for a trip in a few months and selecting some favorites to keep an eye on. I'm sure we operate in incredibly different markets but that's my reasoning and strategy.
 

biophase

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I'm about to get into the Airbnb business with a new property. Since this will be a higher end property I like Bruno's method here. I'm going to hand this off to a property management company. But my plan to do 5 days minimums on peak season and 3 day minimums in low season. I don't foresee many people renting more than one or two weeks at this location as it is a ski town.
 

Bruno Oliveira

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I think it's clear what you're trying to do and it's great you've installed a formal system to achieve your goals from the property. I go totally the other way with my properties, I do weekends 2 day minimum but otherwise allow any bookings and allow price discrimination to achieve my goals (minimum hassle, maximum profitability, super happy guests). I believe this gets my listings maximum exposure because a listing with a 60 day minimum will not show up when a future guest is doing some browsing for a trip in a few months and selecting some favorites to keep an eye on. I'm sure we operate in incredibly different markets but that's my reasoning and strategy.

Hi Valhalaa,
thanks for your reply. I got your point... There are many other variables that must be considered when choosing the strategy (not only regarding occupation rate but also price and proffity) to each period.
But when you say that you may be loosing exposure if you work with a 60 day minimum, I assume that your property is located in a region with lower demand. Then, it could make sense.

Anyway, that's exactly what I'm aiming when I define a 60-day minimum for periods that are in the future, after 60 or 80 days from now. I REALLY DON'T WANT to be exposed because I'm aiming longer stays so that I maximize future occupation with lower bookings.

And then, I work with 2 and even 1 day booking for bookings that are to start in a date that is closer than 30 days from today. Because, these available days are the ones that are remaining and haven't been booked yet, which with this strategy, tends to be very few ones. But again, this depends on other variables that may be different for your property (like: cultural, maybe your guests book with more advance than mine; or demand that could be lower).

So, to sum up, I believe this strategy could be used for any property in any location, since you adjust the minimum days for your demand and other specific variables.

I even use different number of days for both defining the categories I use (SHORT, MID and LONG) and for the minimum number of days for the booking, according to how the calendar is currently.
 
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Last edited:

theforamyst

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Do you rent out the whole houses or only 1 (or a couple) rooms? Is it correct that Airbnb offers 2 types of hostmenships; one where you rent out the whole house and one where you rent out only 1 or a couple of rooms and so you can stay in one of the non-rented out rooms yourself (guess they call this the bed and breakfast model)?
Would you apply your strategy to both models?
Do you do something different in regards to these 2 models?
 

YanC

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I like your idea, I had the same recently as I'm looking for a way to minimize one night stays, which are a bit of a hassle. I'm in the short term rental game myself, in France.

I lived in Sao Paulo for 2 years, just out of curiosity in which neighborhood are your units located?

Do you rent out the whole houses or only 1 (or a couple) rooms? Is it correct that Airbnb offers 2 types of hostmenships; one where you rent out the whole house and one where you rent out only 1 or a couple of rooms and so you can stay in one of the non-rented out rooms yourself (guess they call this the bed and breakfast model)?
Would you apply your strategy to both models?
Do you do something different in regards to these 2 models?

Yes, you can either rent a bedroom or a whole apartment.
 

theforamyst

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How and how much does ABB earn? Do you think this is too much?
What do you like about ABB?
Is there any competitor to ABB?
 
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YanC

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How and how much does ABB earn? Do you think this is too much?
What do you like about ABB?
Is there any competitor to ABB?

They take 3% on the host and 8 to 12% on the guest. You could say it's a lot, but at the same time it's like they handle 90% of your marketing and put you in front of millions of customers so... As I add units I'll work on my own website though, I prefer that extra 15% to be in my pocket. And if you read MJ's books, you know you want control over your business and not depend exclusively on someone else.

They have a bunch of competitors, Booking is probably the biggest. HomeAway is a significant one as well. There's dozens more but I don't use or know them.
 

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