HOW TO GET LONGER BOOKINGS
I’m going to teach you how to get longer stays in your vacation rental even more monthly stays it's been commonly believed that monthlies are more passive but short-term stays are more profitable. In this section,I’m going to show you that that's a myth you can make more profit on monthly stays. I’m also going to showhow you can mae more than you might have made scrapping for smaller bookings. I have over 100 properties on Airbnb and I have a lot of housekeepers to manage, so having longer stays and more monthly stays or at least a good percentage of them helps me run my business be. Longer bookings means I need less staff it's a huge factor. At the end of this section, I’m going to give you a crazy fact about the monthly housing marketthat will help you again get more monthly stays.
The section is going to be broken down into a few parts first off why longer stays. We're going to talk about all the reasons why you might want longer stays instead of shorter stays, then we're going to talk about how to get them. First we're going to talk about amenities. What kind of amenities are good for longer stays, what people actually want when they're staying more than just a few days. We're going to talk about copywriting how your description should be written to get more longer stays and we'll talk about pricing strategy as one of the main ways to also increase the length of stays that you have. All these are factors know them all and you will get longer bookings.
Why longer stays? There's a couple main reasons why I prefer longer stays than shorter stays. Recently because of all the parties that have been thrown on Airbnb because of coronavirus I think the first one's very much obvious: people who stay for two months aren't throwing raging parties on the weekends. Your home is less likely to be victimized by a party people disrespecting your home. Airbnb made parties illegal but that still has not helped. We had to kick out a party this weekend in Philadelphia. It still happens, Airbnb doesn't have it under control yet. Longer stays mean high less likelihood that someone's going to be a consistent raging partier and you're not going to have problems with your neighbors every weekend.
Number two: is it's more passive. With one or two properties you may not notice this but as you begin to grow the number of guests checking in per day requires a certain amount of work: there's turnover housekeepers have to clean, inventory restocking is needed, the guests need help checking in, those guests might have issues immediately after check-in. The very next day when they check in they might need some extra stuff, there's going to be a settling in time for every single guest that you have. There is also a greater risk that there's going to be problems during checkout: someone not checking out on time, forgetting to return the keys, parking passes et cetera. In my experience that the risk of someone making a mistake in a three-day stay is likely the same mistake like risk as in a two-week long stay.
We’ve also noticed that Sundays are our heaviest cleaning day. Most people check out on Sundays so if you can have longer term stays that overlap those main days. For us on Sundays, if we have stays that stay through Sunday, that means we have less of a workload spike on Sundays. Which means we need less total housekeepers on standby to work on Sunday. What's important for this too is when you get big like me you want to give your employees or your housekeepers contractors consistency. If they only can come into work on Sunday they're not going to exactly be loyal to your business you want to give them good consistent work throughout the whole week. Having a spike of housekeeping on Sunday means you need extra part-time staff along with your full-time staff. Managing your vendors and your contractors can be assisted through longer term stays.
Here's how it's possible that you can actually make more money on a long-term stay than on a shorter stay. If you get a long-term stay, that guarantees you occupancy for every single date filled on your calendar. We especially like this during slow season where we have to lower our rates more in order to get full. If I can lower my rates ahead of time and get a two month long stay in a slow season where everybody else in the community is struggling to get 50 or 60% occupancy. If I can give away a good fair rate for two months straight and just lock that reservation in I can guarantee that I’m going to make 600 or 800 dollars like in profit per month on that monthly stay because of the mechanics the monthly stays. The fact that I don't have to pay a housekeeper to come in clean six or eight times see during slow season or when you have to drop yourprices, you're going to have your housekeeping fee. Then you have the money on top and you get to keep that stuff and if you don't charge a lot or enough above your housekeeping fee you're really not putting much towards all of your base costs like rents or utilities and so your end of the month profit could be much lower.Even though you made $2600 at the end of the month, just like I did, I only had to pay my housekeeper onceand you had to pay your housekeeper like 10 times.
Now your cost in the middle goes up because of the frequency that someone was traveling for a lower cost. If you preemptively give someone a better rate on a monthly stay, you can become more profitable than having to fight to get bookings and having some empty days because some empty days during the month will lower your average nightly rate. Your average nightly rate is how much money you made for the whole month divided by the days in the month. If you were full half the month at 100 a day your average nightly rate is 50because half of your month was unbooked.
How to get monthly stays: amenities
Let's talk about how to get these monthly stays. There are a few key amenities that you absolutely have tohave for people who want to stay your place longer term. Longer term people have needs that short term people don't have. For example, parking. I don't care if you're in a big city if you want more monthly stays youneed to come up with a parking solution and advertise parking is included with the stay. Next thing you knowsomeone who drove into town for a business contract is staying for a couple months needs a place for their car and for them they'll book your place because you have parking. That's a big deal. Next is laundry. You either have to provide laundry service or provide washer and dryer in your complex or in your home. This is important because anybody staying more than a few days is going to want to wash their socks. This is going to be that case and if you don't provide laundry you become way less of a likely like candidate for a monthly stay because there are so many places out there that have washers and dryers. It's going to be important you have that as a bare minim offering to get your monthly stays. You need to stock up on linens towels all the creature comforts amenities such as like coffees and things like that. You want to make sure that that place isready to relax into. You want someone who can you know drop their luggage and not have to worry about dealing with anything aside from maybe a grocery run.
In the first week of a monthly stay, you want them to have everything that they need: toilet paper extra towels extra sheets etc. That way they can settle in and stay for a while. This is going to lead to reviews that your reviews say you're good for a long-term stay. Your guests will tell people if your place is not qualified for long term. You also need to have a fully stocked kitchen. People who stay for longer periods of time are muchmore likely to cook. If you invest more money, put it in the kitchen out of all the places aside from thebedroom. The bed is the number one purchase for an Airbnb but second for long-term stays stock up on kitchen stuff. Make your kitchen fully equipped for any type of chef or traveler. That guest will want to use youbecause they're going to feel so good about the fact that they can cook their favorite meals with the type of tools they're used. It also increases your long-term stays as well.
The last most prized amenity for getting monthly stays is availability. If you have two or three day long stays in the middle of your month, you cannot get monthly stays. You actually have to deter guests from booking short term stays too far in advance so that way your calendar can be open for a month to three months at a time in order to then get those booked. If you're not 100% available for the length of stay someone's looking for, you don't show up at all so they cannot ask you to bump someone off the calendar because they cannoteven find you.
How to get monthly stays: listing description
Next we're going to talk about how to write your listing to get more. Let’s look at some of my titles for some of my listings because this is going to help you understand how we pull this off. I have got multiple monthly stays at an apartment complex in fort worth and the name is “Stylish apartment near downtown ideal for long stays.” We put it in the title ideal for long stays and we do this with multiple units that are identical and we just put a b c or d at the end of them so that way we and they can know that we have multiple units when they'researching.
Here is how the description is written: “these newly built apartments offer the perfect combination of beautiful and convenient right off highway 35 directly north of downtown fort worth. They have a spectacular view of the city line. The high-end mattresses provide a beautiful sleep and a professional housekeeping and management team will make you have a wonderful stay every time.” In this listing description we are trying to sell consistency, quality sleep, and the fact that this is a newly constructed apartment on the river just north side of fort worth.
The listing also says, “The property has a beautiful pool and gym wonderful and new appliances and athoughtfully decorated interior perfect for longer stays.” What we did again is reiterated that it's perfect for longer stays. You just need to embed these details into your listing. Reinforce the phrase, “longer stays.”What I would do with this listing that we've done with other ones is that make a bullet pointed list of all theamenities that we offer like fast wi-fi fully, stocked kitchen, stuff like that, and put that all in in a easy to readand kind of a fun way. Then, when someone's scrolling through your listing they'll see that.
Did you know description or that the photos are the most important part. Six out of every 10 Airbnb travelersthe first thing that they do is they scroll through the photos they don't even read anything. Let me describe for you another property. This one is in Richardson, TX. Three of the four have longer stays in them. Let's talk about the photos as per why people choose to stay in this property long term. In these photos you'll see that the cover photo for this specific listing is a gym and then inside of our photo reel we show the outside of the space. We show the pool, we show the gym, we show that it's next to a whole foods which that shows that we're close to a grocery store that someone might want to shop at. That's important too.
There is another listing another one in city line and it has a super long term stay. We're talking like four months plus on this one. Let's look at the photos for this we lead with a photo of the living room not a big deal but it is one of our most vibrant photos it pops a little bit more than the rest of our photos. We did like a blue and yellow theme and I really like the theme so we led with that again. We show photos of the pool, gym,etc., but this one has comprehensive photos of the kitchen. We're talking about pots and pans out on the stove we're showing the cutlery the wine glasses the coffee station. We're showing all those things in the photos so that way that stuff doesn't get missed. That's been extremely important for longer term stays. Of course you have to do good with the regular amenities like an ironing board and an iron and all the otherthings that you think are actually important but again focus on long-term amenities that some people may or may not have and offer those as a way to be competitive against other hosts for longer stays.
Pricing Strategy
Let’s talk pricing strategy for longer stays. There's really two parts of pricing strategy here that I need you tounderstand if you want to get more long-term stays. One is you need to know what people are really willing to pay by the week or by the month in your in your neighborhood. There's going to be a supply for monthly staysand you have to be in there somewhere inside the competitive bracket for monthly stays in order to have a good consistent amount of bookings. Monthly travelers are not the ones that tend to want to like go getsomething more luxury than normal for a monthly stay. They're looking for somewhere to live and most people when they're looking for somewhere to live they're highly cost conscious. Monthly stays people are more cost conscious so you need to find a way to get into the price range and per city this changes. Then you need to set that as like your base rate minus monthly. An example of one of our units: base rate minus monthly. The unit that has the photos of the kitchen it's $101 a night plus weekend rate which is probably about $140 a night. Maybe even just slightly more and then a 28% discount on monthly stay. What this does for us is if someone wants to book on the weekend they have to pay 140 a night on the weekends plus the cleaning fee so a two-night stay is a little over 300 bucks but if someone wants a book by the month they're paying about eighty dollars a night which is two like you know two thousand four hundred dollars per monthto stay here and we've noticed that in this area of Dallas after fees and everything if our reservation cost is under 26.50 per month. We get a lot of monthly stays in this area of our portfolio so knowing that number that we need to come down to is important and then inflating your prices to prevent shorter stays and then usingyour monthly and weekly discounts to get down to the competitive rates that's how you get that locked in. Ifyou just offer $80 a night across the board people will book for three days and then five days and then book through the weekend and they'll cover your dates, and you won't be able to get a monthly stay at eighty dollars a night. The three day or four-day long stays are going to prevent that. That's the key to pricing strategy.
Corporate Housing
There are also corporate housing companies that do this professionally. What they do is they go find a customer like a business that's willing to pay for monthly stays and then they can find an apartment complex and then they go sign a lease for the length of that stay now four-month long leases that corporate housing companies pick up are more expensive than regular monthly leases. In a market where the monthly lease for one bedroom is $1,500 dollars a month, they're paying like $1,800 a month for the monthly maybe even as high as $2,000 per month. Then they rent the furniture for two to four hundred dollars a month and then they add cost of utilities, maybe $150-$250 a month for internet cable electricity. Then they add a $1,000 a month in profit. Normal corporate housing companies that offer monthly stays are taking regular rent plus $500 plus$250 plus $400 that's like over $1,150 right there. Plus $1,000, so they're collecting $3600 a month on a $1500 per month apartment. $1500 if it was a year-long lease so by signing you like long-term leases. By owning your home, your holding cost is much lower so you should believe that you can get monthly stays in your market. If there are corporate housing companies out there doing it, you can do a better job. You shouldnot rely on Airbnb for your monthly stays, you should widen your net and get more. You should get on VRBO,Facebook marketplace, Furnished Finders, one of the many travel nurse websites, etc. There is a website called kego we got some monthly stuff off of kego. You should also have your own direct booking platform.You should do outbound calls start calling companies that house traveling nurses, relocation recruitment, etc.Go put in more work to get those monthly stays if you want them. If you go out and find them and sell thedeal you can sell it at a greater markup because they didn't come to the marketplace and compare prices.You sold them on you without price comparison. You sold them on convenience.
Ladies and gentlemen that's how the monthly market works. I encourage you get on Airbnb, VRBO, Facebookmarketplace, and identify what those monthly prices are to stay competitive. They change per platform. Thenfind out what corporate housing companies are charging for monthly stays and start to develop a comprehensive pricing strategy to get your listings more long-term stays. Then go in and rewrite your listingstalk about long-term stays in your title your description add the photos that show you have those key long-term amenities that keep people who want to stay with you. Show a photo of the parking space if you're in a city that people don't typically believe that there's dedicated parking prove it in the photos and then of course be an awesome host don't suck be nice to your guests get good reviews and you'll get lots of long bookings.
