Industry Conversations

We currently charge guests for our Waivo damage waivers a “management fee” of $25/booking. We are moving toward the “self insuring” route but curious what people are charging each reservation to make this happen? I don’t want to deter bookings by charging too much but I’d like to charge enough to create a fund that would actually cover damage.

I’m curious to hear how other hosts are offering Netflix, Hulu, etc. in their units. I am starting to hit the “scalability wall” with the way I’ve been doing it so far.The way I’ve been doing it so far has been to simply have an extra profile under each of my personal streaming accounts. The “guest profile” is named in a way that’s obvious to guests and it sits alongside the profiles for my other family members. My personal profiles are PIN-locked as needed so that people don’t rent movies, change my subscription plan, etc. Netflix is the most forgiving as far as enabling me to use a single account across 5 STRs (plus my personal home). On the other end, Hulu is the most restrictive, as far as constantly booting TVs off and having to go through the “update household” method to get them back on.Once in a while a guest says something like “Netflix/Hulu isn’t working, what do I do?” and I have to tell them to click “update household” and/or to have it send me a cod

Hi I am having issues logging in due to being hacked at my account for hospitable.com like airbnb

 A few years ago I used Guesty as my PMS, and one feature I really liked was their built-in listing optimization tool. It would automatically go into each Airbnb listing daily, slightly rearrange a photo, then move it back a few minutes later to keep the listing “active.” I genuinely believe this helped with Airbnb’s algorithm and visibility. I’ve since switched to Hospitable and now do this manually, but with 50+ listings it’s extremely time-consuming. Does anyone know of software that can automate this (or something similar), or have tips on optimizing listings at scale without so much manual effort?

Hi everyone — I’m curious what solutions people have found for collecting guest email addresses post-booking given Airbnb’s limitations.I’ve tested StayFi Wi-Fi hardware in the past, but it proved unreliable and caused connectivity issues for guests, so I moved away from that approach. One idea I’ve heard is sending a post-stay or follow-up message with a link to a page where guests can opt in to future promotions or property updates.For those who’ve tackled this successfully:• What methods are actually working for you?• At what point in the guest journey do you request the email?• Any lessons learned or tools you’d recommend?Appreciate any real-world insights.

We’re getting 85-90% occupancy on AirBnB. But VRBO has absolutely ZERO bookings. Listings are as identical as can be, dnyamic pricing is synced. Is anyone else facing the same issue?

We are thinking about adding a hot tub to our property. What is the best kind to get and how hard is it to keep clean between guests. Are they worth investing in?

Anyone has suggestions on advertising on social media thats pretty much hands free ?I can’t remember to post and would love to automate that task

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

My guest has asked me to send a confirmation of his reservation. I have looked everywhere and couldn't find anything. I took a screenshot of the reservation and sent that to him but surely there is something more professional.

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?

When a guest enters one of my listings, the property literally springs to life. They are welcomed by name by an AI Avatar on the TV, rolling out a digital 'red carpet' immediately. Within seconds, guests can tell the smart home their ideal temperature, or even mention they're hungry—prompting the microwave to fire up and start popping popcorn.But my favorite automation solves the classic 'Group Amnesia' problem. We've all had bookings where the lead guest knows the rules, but the rest of the group is totally clueless, right? To fix this, I have a motion-triggered announcement that plays the night before departure. It ensures the whole group hears the checkout time and procedures, so no one is left guessing. Or if I need a vehicle moved or the trash to be taken out, I use my mobile smart remote to both program the message and set the motion trigger.When it's time to leave, guests simply load the dishwasher and hit a physical 'Checkout' button on their way out.

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?