Opening your calendar and stay length is the best way to fill your bookings quickly, increase your occupancy rate and make as much money as possible.
Guests will have all sorts of stay requirements and one of these will be how long their visit will be and its up to you to decide how long guests can stay for.
Every host will be different, and some will have differing opinions to mine, but this is what I’ve found given my time hosting on Airbnb and this is what works well for my way of hosting.
Short Stays
At the moment, I only offer short stays of 1–2-night bookings and enjoy hosting for just the one night most of all.
When I first started on the platform, I allowed stays of anything up to two weeks but changed this after the points listing in the long stay section below.
For me, short stays are quick and over just as quickly as they start. If you have troublesome guests, they won’t be around for long as the bookings are short.
A lot of my bookings are guests coming to visit to get the train into London for tourism. Others stay for visits to local shopping amenities for weekend shopping trips, so guests often spend little time in the property and just use it as a base to stay at.
Better feedback more likely
In my time hosting I’ve found that short one night stays are more likely to get a 5 star rating than longer stays of a week or two.
If you’re looking to build feedback, particularly at the beginning, then short quick stays are the best way to do this. As getting Superhost status is a great way to ensure you get more bookings and climb higher up in the search results, short stays can be more attractive early on.
Downsides are that my calendar availability is reduced somewhat. When a guest makes a booking, 1 date before and after the guest checks in and out are blocked and not available for other bookings. This is my cleaning and preparing window for a booking.
Another downside is with short stays you’ll find that you’ll be cleaning more often to turnaround the property more than for longer stays.
Long Stays
Without a doubt, long stays generate more revenue in the long run. I consider a long stay anything 4 days and over, but this categorisation varies between hosts.
Some consider a long stay of a week or more depending on what their usual booking lengths are – a short stay for one, may be a long stay for another depending on their usual trade.
Long stays require less downtime of the property, such as in between reservation dates and require less turnaround times to be added to the calendar. Because of this, you can pass on savings to guests by offering longer stay discounts. Plus the longer the guests stays, the larger discounts you can apply.
To rent my property out with an estate agent with a long term tenant, I could expect a rental value of around £750-£800 for a full month.
Discounts of 10%, 20% or even 30% on my nightly price for a weeklong booking can still mean a good return renting with short term lets instead.
If you’re renting out a spare room in your home, you may find that you’ll bond with the guest a little more and will feel a bit more relaxed the longer they stay as you get to know each other better.
Longer stays and more critical ratings
The downsides of long stays are that I notice an increase in lower ratings the more nights are involved. I guess that guests will settle into the property and start noticing little things or small details that aren’t picked up with a short overnight stay.
Sadly short term lets are prone to bits of wear and tear and this is magnified when a guest has more time to use and spend time in the property.
This makes it sound like my Airbnb is falling apart and this isn’t the case at all, but with more time to spend in the space, guests have more time to criticise and critique.
Another thing that guests can downgrade is the local area, particularly immediate neighbours. My building has two floors above mine so whilst it’s usually a small and quiet building, guests staying longer will have more of a chance to hear noise from other apartments.
I wouldn’t say that my Airbnb suffers from a noise problem, in fact it’s very quiet at night, but again the longer you spend in a place the more you pick up on and notice things such as neighbourly noise.
Long bookings means unpleasant guests are around for longer.
Likewise, if you’re hosting a spare room and the guest isn’t that pleasant or you don’t warm to them as much, a long stay can be more uncomfortable to host. Stays like this can be draining and you won’t want to feel like this in your own home, even if you’re getting paid.
My nightly rate varies from anything from £107-£139 and sometimes even upwards of this for a single night (before cleaning fees) and guests spending £500-£600 a weeklong 7-night stay (which I acknowledge is a substantial bit of money to hand over) may not feel the value for money is there due to how much they’ve handed over.
Despite this, a local hotel offering less can cost around the same as my Airbnb or be slightly less but provide slightly less than my property offers so it’s just the price guests could expect to pay wherever they stay and that’s the going rate.
With stays of 30 days or longer stays which last months, whilst you’ll get a secure and reliable revenue and ensure that your property is booked out, guests can obtain tenants rights by laws.
This will vary depending on where you are and what your countries laws are but its worth checking what rights guests can suddenly obtain. The last thing you want is a guest that won’t leave because they’ve obtained renting rights and knows how to play the game.
My takeaway
I tend to shy away from longer bookings and generally my listing is set up to only allow stays of 2 nights maximum. Occasionally I change this to 3 or 4 nights depending on the time of year but personally prefer shorter bookings.
I like guests to turn up, stay the night and then leave so I can get on with the next one. This way, I find my ratings are higher and I can ensure the property is a higher standard of cleanliness.
As I’m cleaning it so often, guests feel like it’s good value for money and the booking process is quick and cheerful. I’ve found this means happier guests overall and my rate of returning guests is evidence of this.
Likewise, any guests that prove to be problematic will be gone within a day or two, so I don’t have to stress about difficult or unpleasant guests for too long.
You’ll find out what works for you when you host and there is no right or wrong answer. Some guests will ask you if they can stay longer than your booking length allows (as mine often do) and you can adjust the booking to suit them should you wish to.