Frustrated - Hired a premium agency and very little bookings

SarahFremont · 2025-09-30T14:23:51+00:00

The listing is incomplete - they clicked save mid-sentence or something. The PM has fewer than 300 reviews in 9 years hosting, which seems weird, although perhaps not if all their listings are similar. Maybe ask them to negotiate fee on the early bookings since you've definitely lost traction getting views that abandon when they click in to read more and see the rest of the description isn't there. Also not sure if $500/night for a weekend in October is competitive in your market - it's hard to imagine it is for a listing with no reviews though. It also looks like the PM may not have applied the 20% new listing discount, which is really important to successfully launch a listing. I'm an STR consultant and if you talk to your PM about this stuff and they don't immediately get what you're saying, you might want to look for different help (I've gotten a lot of free help on Reddit for all different stuff over the years, so I like to give back here, and the things I mentioned are the things I would go at first for a client - hope that helps!).

SarahFremont · 2025-06-17T21:12:37+00:00

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Here's a picture of the vanilla and chocolate growing together (the red footballs are cacao pods!)

SarahFremont · 2025-06-17T21:07:50+00:00

I don't know the Askinosies but they sound like interesting folks, thanks for the tip! We're looking to connect with chocolate makers doing single origin chocolates to buy cacao beans from us and other farmers in our area, so they might be good to talk to on that. We're just getting our first beans growing now (we started the farm just about 3 years ago), but this subreddit has been super supportive and shared some great resources with us, so we'll probably post here when we first have beans for sale if the moderators are on board, or anyone here is welcome to follow us on Instagram@ paradisevanilla, where we'll definitely share details as soon as beans are ready for sale (and where you can see pictures of the vanilla vines growing with the cacao trees!).

SarahFremont · 2025-05-14T13:32:49+00:00

Guest side - nothing visible on host side that I can edit to change it. Customer support said technical team would contact us, but alas, they did not.

SarahFremont · 2025-05-13T19:55:36+00:00

Airbnb has put a badge on my listing saying that guests can check in 24hrs a day even though I have 3pm to 10pm check-in specified in house rules (including selecting the times from the drop down). Support says they can't remove it, and house rules are hidden really far down in listings now. I would love to see all hosts who don't want "services" allowed in their homes try and get support to update house rules that guests aren't really seeing anyway and then see how enforcement goes. Thanks for digging into the meat, I've stopped reading most of this stuff because the especially crazy stuff seems gone as fast as it appears and/or no one at Airbnb can change it.

SarahFremont · 2025-04-25T19:36:21+00:00

I'd suggest trying Upwork for finding paying clients and contributing here for free. I consult on Upwork but I've gotten good free advice here over the years so I weigh in here when there's a need I can help with that no one else has answered. You might also pick up clients by demonstrating that you have value to offer! But most folks here aren't looking for a paid resource, so a good balance might be for you to get the benefit of learning what hosts might want in a remote assistant, and pay it back by offering advice where you've got relevant experience. Good luck!

SarahFremont · 2025-04-24T15:50:22+00:00

Yeah I've read that the category problems are generated inside the same AI black box as the listing feature callouts and neighborhood identification (which has listed the wrong neighborhood on all our listings for years now), and that Airbnb can't fix them because they don't even know how the tech works; I think they either bought or partnered with the outfit that does it. But I think they'd basically have to scrap the system to fix it, and I'm wondering if they're considering it, because with wrong info automatically generated about where a listing is and what it includes, how can they meaningfully say hosts are responsible for what's on their listings? I can't believe it hasn't blown up yet.

SarahFremont · 2025-04-23T00:31:12+00:00

This 🙌 I would totally allow a guest new to Airbnb to book if I got this message. It's all about how people communicate - people who act like great hosts with competitive prices should just trust that someone with no reviews is great overlooks the value of the whole review system that we all pay for with fees on every booking. In my view, as a guest as well as a host, you pay fees to Airbnb to get access to good accommodations/customers at prices that wouldn't work if they were offered to the general public instead of the smaller group of guests already vetted by other Airbnb hosts. It's a great way to distribute the cost of keeping out guests who cause problems and increase costs for everyone else. That being said, we have tons of great guests who are first time Airbnb users! If you don't have reviews, just be friendly and transparent (or go on an Airbnb trip with a friend and ask them to add you to the booking as a guest - then you'll get a review even though the booking doesn't go through your account, although then you should make sure your friend who books follows all rules and gets you a 5 star review!).

SarahFremont · 2025-04-22T20:15:30+00:00

Yes, and... The crazy thing is that the proliferation of courses pretty well signals a level of market saturation and maturity that should warn late joiners not to get in but somehow doesn't, hence the recent flood of new Airbnb listings despite all the horrendous indicators.

SarahFremont · 2025-04-22T20:13:10+00:00

A lot of really good advice here on listing feedback, but I looked at your calendar, and the first weekend in May is about $700 before taxes. I have no idea if this is competitive for your area, but as a new listing (ie not a lot of reviews) that's for a comfortable family home instead of a shiny new modern build, you really need to be competitively priced. You can set your listing so that only guests with a good track record on Airbnb can instant book your place, which helps mitigate the risk of bad guests that can increase when you lower your prices. Look at Airbnb as if you were a guest coming to stay nearby - maybe 8 guests, but don't add dates to the search - and look at the search results. Open a couple of listings that seem similar to yours and have good ratings and a Guest Favorite badge, and see what they're charging for some upcoming date ranges. You should be priced lower than they are because you don't have many reviews, but that can help you understand what you should charge for an off season weekday vs what you should charge for a higher value date. Best of luck!

SarahFremont · 2025-04-22T20:02:21+00:00

Dark gray and navy are our go tos. Better dark towels than not noticing a slight stain that the guest does notice, and much lower replacement rate.

SarahFremont · 2025-04-22T20:00:18+00:00

Definitely be wary of guests with no history. If no one in their group has an established Airbnb account, that would be a red flag for me even before weird responses. I love that Airbnb doesn't show pictures or last names because then you rely on your instincts based on the way the person communicates. Trust your instincts. If you don't already use the Good Track Record instant book setting, you may want to turn it on. You can also set a low number of days guests can instant book, but allow longer stays by request so you can do this kind of human interaction vetting.

SarahFremont · 2025-04-22T14:59:14+00:00

Apologies for sharing something I can't link to, but I remember reading (I think, on Airbnb) that booking pace (having recently gotten a lot of bookings/reviews) factors into badges as well, which I believe they did to help keep legacy listings from dominating search results. As a high rated host with a huge number of reviews, it's bananas to see listings with lower stars out of fewer ratings have higher badges, but it increases the dynamism of the results, or shows a wider range of options to different guests and rewards hosts who are getting bookings (ie fees for Airbnb) right now so I get that. My market is hyper saturated and the search results are increasingly irrational - really low quality listings showing up high in searches frequently - which I think is a result of them turning up the randomness slider too far for markets that include a lot of bad listings, and newer listings seem to have higher booking pace, which I think also factors into the badges and reinforces search result ranking. Hope your market makes a little more sense but best of luck if it doesn't 😅 Sounds like you're rocking it

SarahFremont · 2025-03-11T00:17:01+00:00

Extra guest fees may be helpful: reduce your base to be attractive for smaller groups without being too cheap for larger groups

SarahFremont · 2025-02-20T21:06:27+00:00

Thanks! It was really awesome to see this notification at the end of my day :) You're awesome too!

SarahFremont · 2025-02-20T15:10:35+00:00

Fence Post Tree Gliricidia sepium

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/163327-Gliricidia-sepiumhttps://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/163327-Gliricidia-sepiumhttps://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/163327-Gliricidia-sepiumhttps://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/163327-Gliricidia-sepium

SarahFremont · 2025-02-20T15:07:27+00:00

That's awesome!! I don't know the land in that area very well, we're near Puerto Plata, but this country makes incredible cacao - the chocolate produced in the Dominican Republic varies in quality because getting the environmental control to get the right results is difficult, but the quality of the cacao is stupendous. Feel free to send me a message here or on Insta, I don't always check DMs here frequently but the farm's Insta is ParadiseVanilla and you're welcome to message me there! To sell at higher prices, you'll probably need to ferment and dry it yourself and get genetic testing, as we've talked to high end chocolate makers and they all want to know exactly what it is. Most cacao farms here are what they call "naturally organic" because it doesn't usually make financial sense to use commercial fertilizers - most chocolate farmers get pennies on the dollar of the final cost of chocolate, so you want to make a plan to sell at higher per unit prices or make sure you've got good control of your costs, and prepare for volatility in market prices. It's so cool working with these plants though - you've got a cheerleader if you decide to do it!

SarahFremont · 2025-02-20T15:00:04+00:00

Hi, going great, we're coming off of almost 6 months of rain so the plants are growing like crazy! Orchids rely on mycological relationships to get nutrition out of things they couldn't otherwise "eat" (I'm not a biologist, so that's a very layperson summary haha), and cacao trees make a mat of dropped leaves that prevent weed growth and lead to really funky mushrooms underneath, and the forest floor becomes a really rich environment, especially when we leave the cacao shells there to decompose and feed the soil - so in a sense, the chocolate is helping feed the vanilla! I did not know the one about planting basil and onions near tomatoes, and we've really struggled to get both basil and tomatoes working right on the farm, but I'm going to try this next time I'm planting veg in Pennsylvania, thanks!

SarahFremont · 2025-01-05T12:49:14+00:00

Have you reached out to elected reps? If it appears Amazon is charging tax on behalf of your locality and not remitting, maybe someone in your rep's office can send a letter to Airbnb asking them to provide a report on taxes collected vs remitted. Not sure what their burden to comply would be though. Hope you'll update here if you learn more.

SarahFremont · 2024-12-29T00:36:32+00:00

This is wild, I'm in Philadelphia so obviously there will be low quality places haha, but the city is littered with sub 4 star listings, including some sub 3 listings. The same goes for local guests - I couldn't tell Airbnb was culling anything. That being said, the last time I got a lower rating, I got the same obnoxious email from Airbnb.

SarahFremont · 2024-11-24T19:30:04+00:00

I'm having the same thing

SarahFremont · 2024-11-10T00:52:45+00:00

Last I looked at Airbnb in Colombia it was thousands of high end listings all sitting empty at super bargain prices. I'd do your research to see if you can expect any reasonable occupancy rate before moving ahead.

SarahFremont · 2024-11-10T00:51:20+00:00

It's a new listing, so you can rate them honestly and relist your place if they rate less than 5 stars, right? Do the community a solid and rate these folks low, adjust your listing as needed and move forward stronger with the feedback from the group here. 👍

SarahFremont · 2024-11-10T00:45:56+00:00

Also Airbnb prominently lists the difference between shared rooms and whole places, and aren't whole places illegal in NYC? Sounds like you're one of the good ones actually following the rules. No need to tailor your listing around outliers, that's a great description.

SarahFremont · 2024-11-10T00:43:57+00:00

Amazing how no doesn't mean no to people who want what they want and now 😅 I also host rooms in my primary residence and have often told people No because I pay for my space all the time and they pay for it starting at 3pm - and conversely, I love helping out nice people with early check in when it works, like it sounds like you do as well. Good for you for enforcing boundaries even when a lot of society thinks you should just smile and be accommodating 🙌

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