Julian Sage:                         00:00                     In this episode we’re talking about Airbnb Plus and if this is something that you should actually be using. So stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                         00:06                     Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life then subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation, where we’ll be talking about starting automating and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Julian Sage:                         00:33                     Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and I’m with Jon Bell and we’re talking about Airbnb Plus. What is this service and is this something that actually helps you make more money in your vacation rental machine? So Jon, with over 30 listings now I’m sure that Airbnb Plus has been something that you’ve played around with. Can you talk about your experience with it and has it actually really helped you make more money?

Jon Bell:                               00:54                     Absolutely, Julian. With five plus listings myself, it definitely has shown me that there is some benefit in going Airbnb Plus. Let’s also think about what plus means to our guests. Plus means that the place is verified for design and comfort. So when people are looking for something that they already just want a good feeling going into, similar to just go into your favorite brand hotel, they look for Airbnb Plus.

Jon Bell:                               01:26                     Let’s also go back to search optimization. When you go to Airbnb, your plus listings typically stay on top of your regular listings. This means you get higher placement even over top of the regular listings. I’ve gotten reports back from Airbnb plus basically showing me how my plus listing books over top of my other listings. In one month I was able to pull in an additional $2,000 over my competition, which was technically myself because I had other apartments in the very same building. This apartment in particular was the bottom floor apartment. It wasn’t even elevated off the ground. So what that tells me is that they do a lot more with their plus listings than they do with their regular listings. Again, that pool is just a little bit smaller than everybody else that’s got listings out there. And let’s not forget that Airbnb just announced another class of listings.

Jon Bell:                               02:26                     That’s Airbnb locks, right? That means your services are really going to be top notch. So when people are looking for those things, they really just go in and they say, Hey, this is the tier I want to be at. When I travel to some other city or place, I’m going to book st Airbnb plus listing because I just don’t want any drama. I just want to know that, Hey, somebody did put some eyes on it. It is comfortable. It’s supposed to be all these things. It has all of these amenities, right? That’s what’s most important to a plus listing is they actually look at all of the, and they let you know that, Hey, these are there and you need to have them per reservation. So Airbnb plus for me is a yes, but there is a big BUT. Airbnb plus says that it can only be your sole source of booking channel for this listing.

Jon Bell:                               03:23                     So what does that mean for me? That means that as long as I’m on Airbnb, this listing is a plus listing. When I decide to put it on multiple platforms, there’s a button that you get that says leave Airbnb plus. Yeah, click that button. You are gone. You could market it anywhere you want to go. So for everyone we’ve been talking about, Hey, get comfortable with one platform, you could use 100% of what it can offer on Airbnb before spreading out to multiple platforms. If you get selected for Airbnb plus, don’t be afraid to accept it in between that period of you using Airbnb and then trying to move to another platform. So use it for that gap. See the benefits. If it works best, if you feel as though that it just really good, you could leave that listing there and deploy all of the other listings out to multiple platforms. Then you can compare. That is one of the joys of having multiple listings is I can compare a bunch of different data points, different things, and this is one of those things that I can do.

Julian Sage:                         04:31                     Until next time, host nation, keep on hosting.

Julian Sage:                         04:38                     Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review because that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community, and I then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation. Talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.