VRMA Administrator
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All Airbnb hosts want their property to be booked at the best rate and to show up on the first page of search results, but how can one get there? It turns out that with the right data and analytics, optimizing your listing on Airbnb does not need to be difficult.
A data-driven approach to managing your Airbnb business can help you pinpoint where the problem areas are in your short-term rental strategy and how to fix them. If you’re looking to improve your listing on Airbnb to get booked more often and to show up higher in search results, check out our list of the most effective Airbnb data and analytics to track.
Occupancy Rates
Occupancy rates are simply the number of booked nights in a time period divided by the available number of nights (occupancy rate = booked nights / nights available). This stat tells you how often your property is being booked, which is vital to track the performance of your listing.
Your ideal occupancy rate should be based on a few different factors, like seasonality, day of the week, local events, and average occupancy rates in your market. Your occupancy rate can also let you know if your prices are accurate in respect to your market. Is your Aribnb listing occupancy rate over 50 percent six months from now? That’s an indication that your pricing might be too low. Alternatively, if your occupancy rate is below 50 percent for the next few weeks and it’s peak season in your market, your prices might be too high.
Average Daily Rates
Another very important piece of Airbnb data that you should be regularly looking at is your average daily rate (or ADR). This is the average price a guest paid each night excluding any fees. Keep in mind that ADRs do not take into account taxes or other expenses. This is a beneficial metric because it can indicate how much you can earn on an average night.
You should keep track of this on a regular basis and ensure that your ADRs are in line with your local market. Furthermore, your listing’s neighborhood and comparable properties should factor into your pricing strategy. Analyzing comp sets data could help you understand if you are pricing above or below your competition's average prices.
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RevPAN
Similar to RevPAR in the hotel industry, RevPAN (revenue per available night) measures revenue earned for available nights and gives you great insight into the overall performance of your listings. RevPAN is calculated for a date range, but typically for a month or year at a property listing or portfolio-wide level.
Since it only takes into account available nights in a given time period, it can help easily demonstrate the opportunity cost of maintenance blocks or other blocked-out calendar days that can have a substantial impact on performance. This piece of Airbnb data is a fantastic indicator of profitability, as it’s able to clearly communicate whether or not a property is effectively selling all bookable nights when compared to operational costs.
Response Rate
Your response rate, or the time it takes you to respond to a guest message on Airbnb, is important to track as it is just one of the ways that Airbnb’s algorithm determines your search result position. Maintaining a high response rate (at least 90 percent) is ideal and even allows you to use other host features on the platform, like Instant Book, another feature that will improve your ranking.
Cancellation and Rejection Rates
Being a reliable host is paramount to your Airbnb business, but did you know that it could affect your search rankings results too? Just as the Airbnb search algorithm considers how quickly hosts respond to guest inquiries, it also tracks how often hosts reject requests to book. Airbnb prioritizes hosts that are reliable (i.e., do not cancel bookings often) and who are open to taking bookings. Track the cancellations and rejections of your listing on Airbnb to ensure that you are not doing this too often. And according to Airbnb’s new cancellation policy, hosts can get their account suspended or deactivated if they cancel reservations more than three times in a year.
Review Score
Another way you can potentially increase your ranking on Airbnb’s search results is by having stellar reviews. One of the ways that Airbnb’s algorithm ranks properties is by considering Quality Metrics, such as Airbnb guest reviews. The listings on Airbnb with a higher number of positive reviews will be ranked higher in the search results.
Encourage guests to leave glowing reviews if you believe their stay was a pleasant one, and return the favor by leaving them a review. For reviews that are not glowing, reply to show what actions you took to ensure a better experience for future guests. Potential guests will see your reviews with replies and see that you are a host who cares about their experience and will be more inclined to book with you.
Tools to Track These Metrics
Tracking these Airbnb analytics on a regular basis is vital to stay on top of your performance. There are a few different tools you can use to track your listings performance on the most popular short-term rental platform in the world.
Airbnb: The platform does provide some metrics so that you can track your performance across the platform. While it is not exhaustive, you can check on high-level statistics, like your occupancy rates, by using Airbnb’s professional hosting tools.
PMS: If you utilize a property management system (PMS), you might also find performance tracking metrics on your PMS platform. Every PMS is different and offers different levels of performance tracking.
Beyond: Insights from Beyond enables you to easily evaluate performance with unlimited, free reports. Our team of experts has handpicked the most important charts to drive decision-making for your business, based on years of experience helping customers like you optimize pricing. To utilize your Airbnb data analytics best, we recommend starting with RevPAN, occupancy rates, and ADR charts. They’ll provide you with a solid overview of your performance and highlight the opportunities for improvement. Are you on pace revenue-wise based on where you were this time last year? If not, can that be attributed to lower occupancy rate or lower ADRs?
Beyond’s Insights have the power to extract your Airbnb data and provide you with a platform made to evaluate your listing’s variables in respect to your market. Get started today!
