New Airbnb Hosts: How to Optimize Your Listing | Luxury Costa Rica Airbnb

I just got done recording a consultation call with a host of a luxury rental in Costa Rica he found me through my book but he hadn't reviewed me yet if you've read my book and you haven't reviewed it it really does help me out and I wanted to share that consultation with his permission with you we're going to cover three main things which is photos text and title the interesting thing is he read the book so he had a foundational knowledge but I was able to clarify some things and I hope that helps you out as well it really is the geographic center of Costa Rica so from where I am you are a 2-hour drive to keos which is a very popular National Park Beach surf area as is Haka which is about an hour away you are also 2 hours North to La Fortuna where some of the active volcanoes are 35 minutes to the airport typically we price based on occupancy which means our occupancy tells us what to put our price at we want to be 100% 90% occupied we're 70% we're lower our price we're over occupied we're higher price but in your case if we don't anticipate full demand if we just anticipate weekends we don't want a price on occupancy because then we'll be we'll be lowering our price too much because it's not realistic to get 100% occupancy so we need to be realistic with what actual occupancy can we get on a monthly basis and that's what we'll use to price our listing okay do you anticipate with what you know now that this listing could be filled Monday Tuesday Wednesday just as much as Thursday Friday Saturday during High season yes so Costa Rica is roughly 9° north latitude but the season is a bit reversed so the dryer season and the tourist season is really November through May and then the lower season would be miday through August September in that case that's a good sign so so let's first go to the listing by the way real quick we'll get back to the video but if you're enjoying it and you subscribe YouTube will send you future videos when I publish without you having to remember we want to make your online listing different I can look at your listing and see that it looks differentiated someone's going to look at it and be like that's differenti so that's a huge benefit if you have a mediocre house and you have great photos well the guest goes there and they're like I'm I'm actually one right now that had great photos they really did this place up and I got here and I I I was like wait I I mean I booked it a month ago but I was like is this did I book this place and then I looked online I was like okay yeah they had colors and plants and this and that and but you don't have really that risk it's probably going to look just as nice as it is on the photos so I'd say your photos are like a seven out of 10 and in real life it's probably a 10 out of 10 so we want to get the photos up to a nine or a 10 out of 10 you can hire a photographer or when you go down there I have a video on how you can take photos yourself with your camera I I give you instructions on the techniques that I use to take photos of my own listings so these photos I took with my phone so you can you can see probably pretty quickly the difference in quality from this and yours so yeah well it looks different lighted for sure yeah but this is just on I mean this was an evening photo in this particular room but this is just my my phone we got 23 photos so the number the quantity of photos is good you have a four bedroom you got 23 photos I have 30 photos I also have a four bedroom so the quantity is important because I I notice that often times when hosts include more photos than they did typically the best photos are at the end because they don't understand the photo layout is how the photo layout matters in terms of the guest booking process how you took the photo is a a square but you can actually Andra room on the right and side is ranking on Airbnb so you can see mine here is is that we got an extra a little extra space on both both ends yeah yours definitely looks like a rectangle so back over to the action here all right but that looks that I mean it looks like a nice photo and you got the balcony there that's great so we got the bathroom here in Suite another nice looking photo another good photo the pool living room this could be a cover photo because it looks so unique I would move the camera a little bit to the left because no you don't really know what that looks like and that's what you want in the cover photo it's communicating a lot but I don't know what it is it's communicating a pool it's communicating a view it's communicating good design and I want to know well what's the second photo all right we've got a dining room within the kitchen we got a view bathroom so this is a nice photo I'd move this up so that I move this dining table is much better than this dining table so I've moved that one up because we've you might you might have this one because it has the view on the right maybe and it's and it was like breakfast that's where we always have breakfast okay yeah I wasn't even thinking about that and I didn't even notice actually the coffee so you know something I'm realizing recently is the amount of data loss humans have with everything even if we're talking verbally so you're trying to communicate something in your reality and your perspective breakfast we have the coffee maker but so much data is just lost in all communication so what I saw here was a a table and A View to the right and the table was in the kitchen you're thinking about it more experientially when they get there that's probably where they have the coffee that's like a surprise and Delight feature I'd say and and also the other thing is we already seen the view in a few other photos so that view is less impactful now and this one looks visually it looks premium it it fits in with your your house more so you know it's a formal dining area and I thought well people aren't really going to be into that so much so they're they're realistic they're they're going to use that coffee table more but it's kind of like a sauna my experience with sauna is a sauna looks really cool and so you want that up front but no one really uses a sauna someone might book your space cuz you have a sauna so that dining table that dining table looks really nice not many people are going to use it they're not going to set the dining table and have a big dinner but it looks really nice and what we're doing right now is we're just attracting the eye the experience is when they get there this is a floor plan it's it's way too detailed this is something you might be interested in we've got I I do a floor plan as well it is not cheap but I it's probably the product that I recommend more so than any other product it's drawn handrawn and painted with the colors of your house your room is yellow the room on there is going to be yellow so is that uh TV or what is that uh I'm projecting Netflix on it oh okay oh got it okay so I sell another product I won't have you buy it but I'll I'll I'll edit this for you to put the Netflix logo on there instead to make it very obvious oh okay all right we got an outdoor dining with a barbecue in the back the desk I had moved the desk up when when you talk about like re-shooting the problem that I have is I'm in LA and I'm not back in Costa Rica until January I've got to run with what I've got to get it going I can reorder I can adjust color or stuff like that in the meanwhile there's a principle I have called one of a 100 and to be a successful Airbnb host you have a 100 decision in front of you and the more you can make correctly the more successful you'll be this photos I'd say your quality is like seven out of 10 you can boost it up to a nine out of 10 with your phone it's not going to break you it it will help but I think waiting to January is fine in terms of photo layout I'm going to tell you that now that I've now that I've seen this I do like your first photo as an alternate I would do that photo that I recommended this one here I would keep number two as number two the third one is going to be this bathroom here I would say number four is going to be this experiential one here five will be the pool so the first five are very important in this first cover photo you can see the pool but they still want to see it let's make them look at a few more photos and this is a very nice pool photo so okay so we're at five there six will be that dining table seven will be the desk eight will be this Netflix thing and then the next photo is going to be this this blue bedroom and then the yellow bedroom and then the entrance then we'll do this breakfast table and then the waterfall the water feature for the pool this view I do like but I would like you to when you go back there I would like you to step back so that we can see the the frame some kind of a window frame so people know they're standing actually inside and looking out I think that was all the photos let me I know I didn't say some and that just means just put them on the end or I'm going to tell you which ones I would delete right now as well I would just delete the ploor plan it's just too detailed we want to label these bedrooms and bathrooms the bedrooms are very obvious cuz they're different colors but the bathrooms let's label bathroom one bathroom two bathroom 3 half bath oh okay if you want to do with the entrance first do that entrance first the second one can still be this one here and because you have it have you had any inquiries I've had one I don't know how they found me but I've had one and I put it up on Friday oh okay so you're brand new all right so we've got the photo what the next what we're going to do is I'm going to read the text okay so this is short text so it'll be quick try and put yourself in the guest shoes so for you you told me verbally it's in the it's in the geographic heart of Costa Rica but what does that mean to a guest if I'm a guest booking here I don't really know what that means 2 hours to this National Park 2 hours to the coast 1 hour to the capital 30 minutes to the airport that's a better description that centrally located yeah and and we want uh we want bullet points it's easier for the guest to process that data it also sets you apart from the competition I'm looking for keywords here so gated that's a keyword manicured grounds not really a keyword because the guest is looking at the text after they seen the photos so they know that it's manicured they've already seen it's it's how the house looks but gated that that is something that people might be interested in blue TI infinity pool they've already seen that Gourmet Kitchen they've already seen that personalized music system tell me about that every bedroom and many other rooms almost every room has its own Sonos individual stereo system excellent bedroom also has its own electric scents where they can select from two different scents every bedroom has its own balcony its own bathroom and its own universal charger I know I just I was just kind of trying to I include some things that just set me apart from others I I've got a a 7500 SQ foot home in the middle of 18800 SQ foot Costa Rican homes your home is 7500 square feet how was a guest supposed to know that well I didn't think that was important is it at that point it's important it looks like maybe 3,000 7500 is gigantic that's like a castle it's a differentiating factor for sure and I think my long text is better your long text or is that in Vero but probably VR VI what's your opinion about I do have a paragraph that says this is not a house for partying we limit the number of guests we only allow those that are registered there are poisonous frogs there are big bugs and there are an occasional snake there's a balance there between making something sound much worse than it is and thus preventing guests from staying with you who otherwise wouldn't complain at all and being honest so the the house rules it depends how much of an issue it is if it's a really big issue then we move it up we move it up to the title we move it up to the text make sure they're seeing that but if not then we can just keep it in the house rules how large is that projector screen I think it's 6 feet wide 2 m wide and a meter and a half tall so we got some numbers in there I added the meters you were telling me that your place is different than the guest and you even mentioned some things in our call that made it very different than your competition but they weren't highlighted in the listing and that was partly due to you not knowing if the guest would care or not about that how big the house is that's also a good point how do we know if the guest cares about that how do I know if the guest cares about that anything that differentiates you in a positive light bigger home is better than a smaller home is something you want to keep if you have too much then we have to be careful about well the hierarchy what's the the best thing should be at at the top and we shouldn't have too many maybe we bring something to the lower I just wanted to cover one more thing which is your title so what we could do for the title there is we could do various things we could add the size of the home the title needs to be just straight up what are your amenities what is a guest getting you got that projector you have uh inite bathrooms you have the scent maker you have the size of the home you have the infinity pool we don't want to put in our title what they can already see from the cover photo I've seen some of those funky titles you know 10 ft to Beach private parking slash blah blah blah and I thought wow that seems so weird and then I looked at the other homes in the area not a one has that they're all they all say kind of the same thing does that help with the search is that why you recommend amenities no it doesn't help with the search it helps with the guest search reservation flow we're just trying to communicate as much information to the guest as quickly as possible and this is my strategy so my strategy says luxury Villa Central Costa Rica that doesn't communicate anything to the guest the guest is going to pay you 340 bucks per night what am I getting if I'm a guest what am I getting I can see by the photos I can see by the text but I want to if I'm the host now I want to communicate as much information as I can to that guest as quickly as possible and the title is your most important text all right so I have the title here I just I just want to add on one more thing I mean I'll give you an example there something like that or okay and I also actually have an airbn title generator which will ask you questions and lead you through the process all you do is answer the questions and press generate and it'll give you depending on how many answers you questions you answer potentially like unlimited you know thousands of options but it just presents you one at a time thank you very much all right all right until next time happy hosting and if you by the way if you don't mind leaving a review on that book that that does help me out a lot

Channel: Optimize My Airbnb: I Help Airbnb Hosts Make Money

Views: 1,508

Keywords: airbnb tips, airbnb, airbnb host, optimize your airbnb listing, costa rica, airbnb costa rica, luxury airbnb, airbnb listing, airbnb review, airbnb in costa rica, airbnb expert, how to rank higher on airbnb, airbnb rank, airbnb photos, airbnb listing text, improve my airbnb, how to optimize my airbnb listing, how to improve my airbnb listing, airbnb optimization, best airbnb listing, airbnb help, airbnb title, airbnb success, airbnb new host, new airbnb host

Id: ExYaZ5RlxjM

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2023