This checklist is designed to help you earn your first booking fast. From syncing your calendars to setting up your rates, find out how to get your listing ‘booking-ready’.
Checklist: Get ready for your first booking
When your listing’s new, it can be a challenge to get those first few bookings. To help with this, we’ve created a checklist of key actions you can take to make your listing a booking magnet. Now go forth and conquer — we’re rooting for you!
Booking-ready checklist
Calendar
Having an up-to-date calendar is key to getting bookings and preventing cancellations. Make sure that your calendar’s ready by taking care of these steps.
- Sync your calendars — Managing multiple calendars for your business? Leverage calendar syncing to save time and avoid double-bookings. Calendar syncing automatically keeps your calendar on our platform up to date with any other calendars you may have on websites like Google, Booking.com or Airbnb.
- Double-check your availability — Because people and technology can make mistakes, it’s important to double-check that your calendar shows the correct blocked and unblocked dates. Pro tip: You can also put on your ‘traveller hat’ and search different dates on our website or app to confirm that your calendar shows the correct availability.
Learn how to adjust availability
- Review your booking window — Choose how far in advance and how close to the stay date you’d like to accept bookings. Pro tip: Many travellers make holiday plans a year in advance or more, so it’s a good idea to set your window over a year in advance to make sure you can capture those bookings.
- Confirm your minimum stay settings — We recommend keeping your minimum stay to three nights or less. That length of time maximises the number of searches you appear in and helps fill all available nights in your calendar.
Rental rates
Travellers care about cost. In fact, price is the most important factor in booking decisions for the majority of travellers. That doesn’t mean you need to ‘lowball’ your rates to get bookings — but it does mean it could pay to be strategic with your pricing. Take these steps to maximise your rental income while staying competitive.
- Add custom rates and discounts — Scroll through your calendar and make sure the rate you see on each date is the rate you want to charge. Pro tip: It’s a good idea to add custom rates for any busy seasons, public holidays or special events in your area to ensure that you’re earning top rates for those premium dates.
- Add weekly and monthly rates — Fill up calendar blocks fast by offering guests a price break for longer stays. To implement this strategy, simply set up weekly and monthly discounts.
- Review your payment terms — Paying for the full stay upfront may be a barrier to booking for some. Consider allowing for more flexibility by letting guests break up their payment into instalments.
Property details
Travellers often make the decision to book or not based largely on a listing’s property details page. Take these steps to make yours the type of listing that gets travellers to stop scrolling and book your home.
- Preview your property like a traveller — Preview your listing to see what travellers see when they look at your property online. This is a great way to any identify updates you might want to make to your photos, description and amenities.
From your dashboard, click on the image of your listing above ‘Dashboard’ to preview.
- Review your photos and add more — Stunning pictures drive bookings by helping your listing stand out from the rest. Review your photos, upload more and add captions to really make your place come to life. Pro tip: Take photos that pop for best results.
- Add more property amenities — Maximise the number of times your listing shows up in searches by adding every single amenity your property has to offer. Pro tip: Seriously, no detail is too small. Travellers often filter searches for properties by their amenities, and you don’t want to miss out on a listing view just because a box isn’t ticked that should be.
Policies
When you first go live, we choose certain default policies on your behalf. However, you know your needs better than we do, so be sure to review these policies and update any preferences you’d like to change.
- Review your cancellation policy — By default, we select a ‘relaxed’ cancellation policy. On this policy, guests will receive a full refund if they cancel more than 14 days before check-in. They’ll be refunded 50% if they cancel seven days before check-in.
- Set up your house rules — House rules put you in control of the types of guests who can stay at your property. Travellers have to agree to your house rules before they can book your place.
To review your cancellation policy and house rules, go to your dashboard and visit ‘property’ then ‘rules and policies’.
