give your listing a competitive edge during
the pandemic these days many of our guests are worried about the spread of
covid19 as a host you can easily put your guests
minds at ease with some simple additions to your
amenities slight changes to your listings
and reviews from guests all while differentiating your listing
tune in to this week's video to find out exactly
how spoiler alert this video is not about cleaning and sanitization
welcome to another episode of airbnb uncovered
i'm matt the creator of airbnb uncovered.com
and airbnb super host on this channel. I uncover some of the best kept hosting
secrets as well as share with you everything
that i've learned after hosting over 3 000 guests
my tips tricks and best practices are focused on helping new hosts earn more
revenue attract the best guests and achieve
super host status faster over the weekend some friends and
i were discussing travel in the age of the pandemic
i had a couple of friends who said that they were fine with it and they're
actually in the process of planning a few trips this summer
but they were the minority in the group the majority were pretty apprehensive
talking about concerns over safety in the plane the cleanliness of their
accommodation and finding conscientious places to eat
as a host there's not much we can do about plane travel or
restaurants but many of my recent guests are traveling by car and preparing meals
inside my listings but chances are they're still having
some concerns about their accommodation there are three main things you can do
to put these concerns at ease and make your listing stand out
while doing it the first is to revise your amenities to
include items that will help your guests feel safe
in your home the second is to highlight these steps that you are taking to
protect your guests in your listing and the third and final
one is to let the reviews tell the story
about your additional steps you'll notice i didn't mention cleaning
and that's because if you follow my channel
you'd have already seen my videos on cleaning and sanitization during the
pandemic if you missed them then you can click on
the little i in the upper right hand corner of this
video to watch them so i'm going to assume that you've got
lots of info on cleaning and sanitizing so this video is all about the other
things that you can do to make your listing stand out and make
your guests feel safe and secure so let's start with
amenities you can easily dazzle your guests by providing simple
and inexpensive amenities things like snacks shampoo
soap personal hygiene items and the like but in the age of coronavirus i think
you've gotta go a little further you should now include virus prevention
items in my listings i'm now providing my
guests with some basic personal protective equipment i'm
providing things like a small bottle of hand sanitizer
a few disposable medical masks lysol wipes and disposable gloves
and i'm doing this for a few reasons the first is
well selfish i'm okay with hosting during the pandemic
but i do not want my hosting business to be the source of a spread
so by leaving these items i'm giving my guests all the tools they need to stay
safe and to protect my local community the second reason is that as a guest to
a strange city finding these items could be a bit of a
challenge especially if you've just run out like
how are you going to buy a mask when you've run out of them and they're
required in every store finally i want my guests to feel safe in
my homes providing these items does exactly that
and it demonstrates to guests that i'm taking the pandemic
very seriously and therefore it should instill confidence in my cleaning and
sanitization efforts throughout my homes and it's again all about making guests
feel comfortable and safe another point along the same
lines and something that my instagram followers will
already know is that you should be storing your cleaning supplies
in obvious places so that your guests can easily find them
while i wouldn't consider cleaning supplies to be an amenity
i'm mentioning it here because i think that it creates the same
feelings of security and concern for my guests
they know that i'm conscientious about the pandemic because i'm giving them
every tool they could possibly need to stay safe
and healthy with the additional ppe amenities added to your home
you now want to communicate them to your guests via your listing
add a few lines near the top of your description to highlight these
additional items you could even take a picture of your
ppe equipment on display in your home and then add that picture as one of the
first few pictures on your listing another important thing
you can do is to add covid friendly icons to your main listing picture
you can get step-by-step instructions by watching my instructional video
that i created a few months ago and you can watch it by clicking on the little i
in the upper right hand corner like i said it's from a couple months ago
and it doesn't mention an icon for ppe and that's because i didn't think of it
back then but i've just created a new icon and
i've added it so please don't be alarmed if you see it
mentioned or if you don't see it mentioned in the
video and don't worry if you're not tech savvy
i've got you covered the video goes step by step
and has screen captures showing exactly how to do each step
the feedback i've gotten so far in the video instructions
has been that it's really easy to do even if you're not good with the
computer the last part of this strategy is to
engage your past guests to help you tell the story of your additional ppe
amenities and this part is powerful because
reading about the additional precautions you're taking is going to mean
even more if it's reported by another guest
and this is generally because past consumers sorry
consumers believe past customers experience over a message from a company
or a service provider it's the adage that products with lots
of positive reviews will sell better than those with either
no reviews or a couple negative ones and to see an example you don't have to look
any further than our very own airbnb platform
listings with lots of great reviews always outperform
listings with just a few reviews or none at all
so you might be asking matt how do i get my guests to write about the ppe
amenities that i left for them well the simple answer is that you ask
but just wait i'm not suggesting that you tell
your guests what to put in the review what i am saying is that you want to ask
them if they'll consider it i'm sending a message to my
current guests during their stay that says something
like this hosting during the pandemic has been
pretty hard hopefully you notice that i'm doing
everything that i can to prevent the spread of covet 19
and to make you feel safe in my home hopefully you've also noticed that i'm
doing additional cleaning and sanitization as
well as providing some key personal protection items like the
hand sanitizer the mask the disposable gloves
and the lysol wipes you saw when you arrived
if you think that i've done a good job with this could you kindly note that
i've provided these items in your review i want future guests to know that they
can feel safe in my home if you're not comfortable adding this to
your review and i completely understand or maybe you
disagree so if so please let me know so that i
can improve but please remember that we both write
our reviews blind meaning that we won't see each other's
review until they're both written so there is no way for me to hold this
against you i want your review to be as honest as possible both the good and the
bad or something something like that
for many of us competition has been heating up during the pandemic
there's lots of listings not a lot of guess so creating sources of
differentiation is going to pay off in more bookings and
higher rates to differentiate from your competition
i'm suggesting that you add some basic ppe to your listings
make your cleaning products and equipment available to your guests
and communicate these actions communicate these actions by modifying
your listing description to highlight these editions and upload a
picture of your ppe amenities to your listing
as well ask your guests to help you tell this new story
in their review hosting during the pandemic has
it's it's been hard i'm hoping that the tips i just provided in this video
they're going to help you get more bookings earn more five star reviews and
achieve super host status faster if you think that i helped you to do
that then please give this video a thumbs up and rate it highly if you're
asked if you want more content like this then
please check out my other videos and consider subscribing to my
channel once you subscribe you're going to want
to click on the notification bell so that you won't miss out on my new
videos that come out weekly thanks again for watching and
until next week bye for now
you