How to Increase Views on Your Airbnb Listing

As a new host, you spend a lot of time preparing the house, taking photos, and creating a complete listing. You pour hours into writing your listing description that is just a tad bit longer than a tweet! Your cleaning team is in place, the house is stocked with essentials, and you are ready to go. A lot of new hosts struggle with why their listing doesn’t book very much or at all. There are two key elements to increasing views on your Airbnb listing.

Can People Find Your Listing?

You might not be getting a lot of reviews because your listing is hard to find. How do you check this? Easy, you should look for your listing as if you are an Airbnb guest looking for somewhere to stay. First, activate Private Browsing or Incognito mode on your web browser, or if you don’t know how to do that, log out of Airbnb. Then, search for your listing as if you were an Airbnb guest looking for the same occupancy and dates. Use dates that are able to be booked (preferably dates in the near future). Note how long it takes to find your listing (without moving the map). If it takes a while, this should be the wake-up call you need.

What Do I Do to Make My Listing Easier to Find?

Airbnb listings that show up first in the search results get more views because they are the first options people see. Think about how often you make it to the second or third page of Google before clicking a link. Airbnb is the same! Luckily you can improve your search rankings to make it more likely that people will view your listing.

How Can I Monitor My Search Rankings?

You don’t have to spend hours doing 20 searches a day on Airbnb with different dates to figure out your search rankings. You can use Hospitable’s market reports (Formerly Smartbnb) to get a DAILY report of how your listing is doing in the search rankings.

My Listing is Easy to Find, Now How Do I Increase Views?

Search rankings are the first major factor, but in order to get a listing view, you need guests to actually click on your listing. There are only two aspects of your listing that you can control in order to get potential guests to click. The first is your photos, primarily your listing’s main cover photo. We highly recommend using a professional Airbnb photographer to take your photos.

Tips for Your Airbnb Main Cover Photo

• Use the best photo of your listing, preferably one that features your listing’s best amenity. This could be a hot tub, a spectacular view, a grill, or even a trampoline, anything that makes your listing stand out.
• The photo should be in focus, bright and colorful, and grab the viewer’s attention.
• Do not use a vertical (portrait) photo. Black borders on your photo in the search results will detract from your listing’s appeal.

Your listing’s name is the other thing that will grab a viewer’s attention and increase views. It is even more important than your listing description. You only have a small space to tell them how your listing stands out.

1. Start the title with a positive, descriptive adjective to describe to the guest what the experience will be like. Rustic, luxury, cozy, modern, and amazing are all great adjectives to begin with.
2. Next, you should say what kind of listing you have: cabin, chalet, house, townhouse, apartment, condo, etc.
3. Then, you should list the best amenities with the rest of the space. “Close to the ocean.” “Amazing mountain views.” “Walk to downtown!”

Increase Views, Then Increase Your Booking Rate!

Once you’ve successfully increased your Airbnb views, you’ll want to focus on your booking rate. Your Airbnb booking rate is the percentage of people that book your listing compared to how many viewed it. What’s a good booking rate? That depends on your market.