Optimise your tourist accommodation

Today we bring you a series of tips so you can optimise your tourist accommodation. That is, make it more profitable - dedicate less time to managing it to maintain the same or a higher level of income. This post will give you some tips to optimise your Airbnb and save time in its management.

Where are you most inefficient?

If you want to optimise your Airbnb, you must first be able to answer this question: What do you spend most of your time on? That is, where is there more room to optimise your tourist apartment? Here is a list of the main categories of tasks related to the daily management of your accommodation. Write down on a sheet of paper the hours you dedicate to each one every week:

• Communication with guests (before and after booking)
• Cleaning
• Check-ins, key deliveries and checkouts
• Writing guest reviews
• Purchase of supplies
• Maintenance of tourist accommodation
• Updating listings and calendar

Do you want to know what your net income per hour is? Very easy!

1. Multiply the hours you have noted above by 4 –to get the monthly hours–.
2. Calculate an average of the accommodation's income per month. Try to include a full year –this will compensate for high and low seasons.
3. Divide the average monthly income by the hours you dedicate per month. There you have your income per hour worked!

🔢 Do you want to delve deeper into the finances of your tourist accommodation? Download the free Airbnb financial calculator.

Once you have this overview of how you invest your time, we can now put these tips for hosts into practice to optimise your tourist accommodation.

Communications with guests

If you have already been managing your tourist apartment for a while, you will have noticed that guests always ask the same questions:

• How far is your Airbnb from the airport/station/whatever?
• How many people can your accommodation host?
• Do you accept pets?

If you are just starting out or only manage one apartment, try saving a document with frequently asked questions. Once you have compiled it, simply copy and paste those answers. It's a good way to optimise your tourist apartment. On the other hand, if you need a more professional tool, for example, because you manage several tourist apartments, then take a look at these Airbnb automatic response software tools.

Cleaning tourist apartments

Instead of having one or two sets of sheets and bath linen, keep 4 or 5 ready to use. This way you won't have to rush to wash the clothes, dry them and put them back before the next guest arrives. This system will allow you to optimise your tourist accommodation with little effort. This cleaning checklist for tourist apartments can serve as a basis. Cleaning your Airbnb yourself can be exhausting. If this is how you feel, consider hiring an Airbnb cleaning service.

Airbnb guest check-in and checkout

Guest arrival and departure is one of the areas where there is most room to optimise your tourist accommodation. In fact, according to Cohosting's Tourist Rental Survey, changes in check-in and checkout are the most common requests among Spanish hosts.

Instead of making your guests wait to hand them the keys, you can opt for any of these locks for tourist apartments. Depending on your budget, you can use digital locks, combine the Raixer smart lock for the entrance door and a key safe. For checkout, simply instruct your guests to leave the keys in the safe or inside the property. Unattended check-in will save you a lot of time –and money– and you will be able to optimise your tourist accommodation. In addition, you will be able to be more flexible with your guests, making it easier to offer early check-in and late checkout without leaving home.

Writing Airbnb reviews

Writing Airbnb evaluations used to be a black hole of time –a drawback when it came to optimising your tourist accommodation. The reason? You need to personalise each of the reviews you leave for your guests. In addition, it must be added that you must do it quickly. This way you ensure that the stay in your accommodation is recent and you can write it faster.

🤬Have you received a bad rating on Airbnb? Take a look at the post where we tell you how you can respond to it and learn from it.

If you want to go a step further in optimising your tourist apartment, you can take a look at this compilation of the best technology for tourist apartments. There is a section on streamlining review writing.

Purchase of supplies for Airbnb

There are certain things in your tourist apartment –such as toilet paper, coffee, tea, welcome gifts, etc.– that you must buy regularly. Do not make these purchases weekly: most of these products are non-perishable, so you can buy them in bulk monthly. Regarding administrative management, try to separate tickets and invoices from your personal life from those related to the tourist apartment. This way you can optimise your Airbnb and save time with tax matters. Do you need help with taxes? Download the free Airbnb tax guide.

Maintenance of your tourist apartment

To optimise your tourist accommodation, you must pay special attention to maintenance. Your guests will use your Airbnb more like a hotel than a home. It is normal for guests to be less careful in your apartment than in their own homes. Therefore, maintenance is essential... Better safe than sorry! You can optimise your tourist apartment in maintenance if you compile a list of items to inspect recurrently. For example:

• Check window closures, blinds, and curtains.
• Verify that drains are working correctly.
• The oven works well.

Update Airbnb listing and calendar

The listing for your tourist apartment must be updated with the services you actually offer. As you learn what guests value most about your Airbnb, write it down. Dedicate some time each week to update your Airbnb listing title and description. To keep your Airbnb calendar synchronised, there are two fundamental methods. On the one hand, update it manually to take advantage of special events and increase the price accordingly. In the post about Airbnb events and prices, you have a spreadsheet to systematically note these increases.

Use automation tools to optimise your tourist accommodation

The other option is to try some of the Airbnb pricing tools. This way you can set dynamic prices for your tourist accommodation –something similar to smart pricing, but with more control options. There are other holiday rental software tools that, in addition to pricing, include other features that allow you to fully automate the management of your Airbnb. In this way, you will be able to optimise your tourist accommodation professionally.

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