Hosting tips

Switched from Evolve to managing our own listings recently.  just found out that VRBO rejected most, but not all, of the pix we uploaded.  These were the exact same professionally taken pix that Evolve used.  We bought the pic files from Evolve and I uploaded the same original files they used, which VRBO had no problem with.  Now they are rejected on our listings, and probably the reason we have almost zero traction on VRBO so far.  I have a feeling its the fact that we still have listings with Evolve until we work thru the remaining reservations we had with them.  The listings are no longer public, but they probably exist through the Evolve/VRBO integration, even though none of our remaining bookings are with VRBO.  How do we get this fixed?  Evolve and VRBO both point fingers at each other.  I don’t want to wait another 2 months until we’ve finished all Evolve bookings to delete the account.

Hey Fellow Hosts and Property Managers If you are in a World Cup city, it appears that Airbnb will pay you a referral bonus (and/or a corresponding host account bonus in some cases if you are a property manager) for all new properties brought on board in specific Zips (and postal codes here in Canada) between now and the end of February.  You might be wondering “how is this different than the normal referral program from Airbnb?”. In this case, API-connected hosts (a la you on Hospitable) are ALSO eligible. Under the regular referral program, API hosts are specifically EXCLUDED (BTW - you can ask me how we generally get around that requirement and get rewarded EVERY time we bring on a new account - but that’s a separate tale). Anyway, if you are in Toronto, Vancouver, Boston, Atlanta, LA, Mexico City, etc (World Cup host cities) check out this referral program from Airbnb.

During the off-season, my cleaners have trouble getting staff who are happy to work on Sundays. If I wanted to configure my calendar between now and March, such that if there is a booking that ends on a Sunday, then block off Sunday night (so it can be cleaned on Monday)… and if there is a booking that starts on a Sunday, block off Saturday night (so it can be cleaned on Saturday)… How would I go about that? In other words, “No same-day turnovers on Sundays”, but only for a certain range of dates. I’ve been blocking nights manually for now but I’m curious if it can be done systematically.

I am co hosting and struggling with whether or not to create the accounts (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO) and then hand them off to the owners or have the owners create the accounts.  As a co host, I am doing the heavy listing as in creating and filling in all their information.  I guess it’s a client satisfaction question, but what have you issues have you run into doing it one way or the other?

I was curious if anyone else is experiencing this issue, I got a 5 day suspension on a listing after one guest left a 1star review for checkin (overall 5 stars) 6 months ago and another one leaving a 2 star review on cleanliness (I constantly get top grades here) and 1 star on value. (Overall 3 stars) I understand reviews are subjective (I can’t argue perceived value) but to get a suspension after two moderate-ish reviews seems excessive, no? What’s your experience? And am I wrong in being shocked?

With the substantial increase in commission for Airbnb, I’m now wondering whether to just eliminate some of my mark ups, given I have a price markup for every channel now. Previously they were all set off of Airbnb Airbnb is now I believe, the highest commission rate. Has anyone gone in and just leveled out mark ups given that price increase?

Hi everyone,I’m hoping to get some advice from hosts who have dealt with difficult disputes with Booking.com, especially around fraud and unpaid reservations.I’m currently in a situation where: a guest booked via Booking.com using a fraudulent account no payment was ever received the guest stayed one night and engaged in criminal activity (police involved) the property required professional remediation Booking.com was contacted during the stay but said they couldn’t intervene or cancel Despite everything that occurred, Booking.com issued a commission invoice for the reservation... After disputing the commission, Booking.com closed my account and is now threatening legal action over the charge.I’m curious if anyone has had any success reaching an actual human that understands the STR business at Booking.com? So far, out of all the OTA’s, Booking.com seem

Hi, a strange thing is happening recently that is quite consequential. We have several properties in Durango Colorado. When I search in for Durango, Colorado, the homes are not showing up properly. They may even show up on the 15th or 16th page. When I search for Durango, CO 81301 which is the ZIP Code or other locations in Durango itself, the home show up on the first or second page. I have reached out to Airbnb several times and are not getting any help from them. They are saying things are normal and some listings show up later. However, there is some glitch that I'm not sure how to get rectified. We went from having bookings quite often to almost no bookings. Also, I am using rank breeze and our home is not showing up on the first 17 pages. I spoke to somebody from rank breeze and they also told me that for whatever reason that Durango Colorado search is not producing our home in the search results. Has anybody seen something like this occurred before

Vrbo now lets you upload a 2-minute video for each listing: https://help.vrbo.com/articles/How-do-I-add-a-video-tour-to-my-listingYes, I’ve gone to the trouble, despite any obvious benefits… I guess just a vague hope that listings with videos get ranked higher (no actual proof of this), or that maybe it helps with guest confidence and conversion (no proof of this either). One hesitation I had, though, had to do with the “scam” that some of us have run into, where someone contacts you on-platform asking for a video tour of the property. I’ve never gotten a clear indication of what the actual scam is, other than something to do with publishing a clone listing as an imposter to yours. But it did make me wonder whether Vrbo took into account the possibility of these “scammers” scraping the videos out of existing listings, for nefarious

Wondering if anyone else has run into this issue and if so, how you solved it.  It’s a new and unique one for me.A couple of our properties are fairly large (7 bedrooms).  Our market is extremely seasonal but we keep these houses booked year round.  In the peak summer season they book for thousands per night on the weekends.  In the off-season we often drop the price all the way down to $90 for a mid-week night, which we still make money on and usually convinces a small family of 4 or even a couple to book a large house instead of something else.  For every booking, no matter season or stay length, or number of people, we keep the cleaning fee the same, about $700, which means we employ our same good cleaners year-round fully booked and also encourages people to book more night in the off-season to get a better nightly overall price deal.Last week, I noticed that the weekend of 1/3/26 was still not booked at one of our large houses, which is super rare, especially sinc

What cancellation policy does everyone use on Airbnb? Just curious since they have recently made some changes to their policies 

Hi all!I noticed one of my listing lost its ‘category’ that it was listed under. Then I started to do some digging and I can't find the help support page that used to talk about the ‘listing categories’ on airbnb. I'm wondering if airbnb is going to get away from these categories? Anyone notice something similar?

Has anyone ever gone to the trouble of asking Vrbo to turn OFF the syndication of your Vrbo listings to Google Vacation Rentals (GVR)? Any luck in doing that?The reasoning is that when multiple booking sites syndicate to GVR, it can cause duplicates if GVR isn’t able to match and merge the listing from its various sources. Another reason would be to give guests fewer choices when looking at your listing on GVR, to steer them toward your Direct site rather than Vrbo. I’ve wasted a couple hours so far trying to get support from Vrbo on this. They keep telling me random things such as I need to turn off Instant Book (bogus), or that GVR is picking up my Vrbo listings organically (also bogus). 

Greetings all-  I am a relatively new host (July 2025).  As i have been getting smarter on my listing optimization, I am now generally generating 2-3 times more views than " similar listings" averagingnabout 15 views per day  However- for a week in October, I went 4-5 days in a row of zero views. I had never had a zero views day nor had i ever been under the similar listing views up to that point.  Additionally I got a couple of inquiries during that time which would be impossible without a view.  I contacted airbnb customer service and was told everything was fine with my listing. And then all of a sudden I went from zero to 20 views in one day.    Since that time I have not had any issue until last week when I flatlined all week at 3 views per day despite getting 2 bookings during that time.  Similar listings were avg 10 per day.  Again I contacted airbnb and again was told nothing was wrong with my account.  As I type this at 6AM on Sunday...I show i already

Hosting a new property and owner wants it to be as environmentally sustainable as possible. Is there a good resource to study specific to the STR world?

I have a townhouse unit that is connected to a studio, where guests can book one, the other, or both. The dividing door between the areas needs to be locked unless the the guest books both areas, in which case the door should be able to be opened from either side. Has anyone found a solution to this? I have been unable to find a smart or coded lock with a keypad on both sides. 

Bed sheet brand & color? Whats your favorite and Why?Go!

Received an email today about the new PL listing optimization tool and jumped on it right away. We have used tools like RankBreeze in the past with limited success. We tried it for 2 listings - one fairly new and another 1 year in the making - and I would say that for $12.99, we certainly got our moneys worth. What it offers:Listing check across 9 categories - some only relevant based on time on platform Detailed and specific feedback based on visuals and written words Airbnb rankings based on different guest counts and relative changes in ranking Comparisons agains near competitor set I have attached some screenshots for your reference, but if you are already a PL customer, you can easily drop in some Airbnb listing IDs, opt for the $12.99 one month trial and check out the results. I am not sure I would pay for this as an ongoing subscription unless I have an ultra high rev-gen listing and I want to continuously eval my ran

Why the Host Fee rate differs from transaction to transaction? range from 3.5% to 20%?

I still rather routinely have alteration request errors. For example, a recent guest is trying to alter the reservation from one guest to three guests, and the Airbnb platform is saying this will result in $111 decrease in the price of the reservation. There is nothing in our policies about this at all, and it makes no sense. I have two different reservations that are having issues like this. Anyone else?

I’ve been reviewing our owner statements and noticed an inconsistency in how our commissions are being calculated. Our agreement sets a flat 20% fee on the commissionable base for every property. However, the reservation-level payouts we’re receiving as a co-host aren’t consistently hitting that 20%. Some are coming in at 18%, others at 19.2%, 19.8%, etc.Since all properties are on the same 20% structure, the commissionable base and the payout should always match that rate. I want to make sure we identify why the calculation is fluctuating and get everything aligned going forward.

Hi everyone. just wanted to share something that’s been working surprisingly well in my Airbnb. I added a digital guest kiosk in the unit a few months ago—basically a sleek little station that sells things guests often forget (toiletries, towels, pain meds chargers, snacks, etc.)It’s free to set up, I choose what’s stocked, and I keep all the revenue. I’ve also added a QR code to my direct booking site on the kiosk, which has already led to a couple return guests booking directly with me.Didn’t expect it to be such a hit, but guests mention it in reviews and it’s been a nice passive income boost. If anyone’s curious, happy to share what I’m using. ✌️

I manage $1.3 million in bookings  and 2200 reservations a year and I’m on many platforms. Booking.com is by far the absolute worst. I do everything you’re supposed to do, we require a deposit, we require ID verification all that kind of stuff through charge automation but somehow we still just get absolute nightmare guests. Anytime I have to interact with Booking.com‘s customer support. It is a joke. Case in point, a guest recently Booked for six people at my house, paid the damage deposit, gave the names and ages of the guests, and then 30 people showed up at my house. When I contacted Booking.com about this, they said that they cannot cancel this guests reservation without their consent, which is just incredible. Does anyone have any contact with people that actually work in Booking.com like some kind of higher level rep or someone in the PR team or something? I just don’t understand how their service offerings can be so bad.

Hi. I am very new to Booking.com and I find the platform to just be very confusing. I had one booking through Booking.com and they already stayed at my rental. I cannot figure out if they paid or not. The reservation just says “no payment on file”. I am set up with Booking.com payments but I’m not sure it was set up at the time of booking. I also tried to call customer service and I just get a message that says “down for maintenance”. I’m not sure what I do from here. 

Hello - how is everyone setting up on the taxes % on direct feature - before i create the site it is asking me to set up this  - this is for a unit in UAE ? Thank you