Whether you’re an Airbnb host as a full-time business or renting out your spare room for some extra cash, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to be able to do it well. Creating your listings, taking photos of your property, ensuring the calendar is accurate, confirming bookings, etc. And that’s just the beginning. There are various tasks you need to complete before and after every booking to ensure a pleasant experience for your guests.

Yet after all the hard work already put in, your bookings don’t seem to be going up and the calendar remains empty. Especially in the middle of a pandemic when travel is limited, every booking you make is valuable. It makes you wonder if it’s even worth it.

While each host’s situation is different, checking out what the competition is up to should give you an idea of what steps you can take to improve your situation.

Here are four reasons why you should check out your competitors today.

1. Gives you a benchmark

How is your pricing compared to other vacation rentals in your area? Too high? Too low?

If you’re just starting out with Airbnb hosting, checking out what other Airbnb hosts in your area are already doing would give you a good idea of how you should price your property and what to provide. It would also give you a chance to see how much revenue you can potentially make. Doing a search on the Airbnb site for available properties in the area and checking out each listing or using Airbnb’s own pricing suggestion tool are a few ways to do it. 

But if you’re short on time or want to see more in-depth information in a given area at once then using a vacation rental analytics platform would be the best option. This type of platform can provide you with a breakdown of various metrics such as the occupancy rate and average daily rate of your area over a period of time. You can easily slice and dice the data available to get a better understanding of your market.

2. Helps you understand your target audience better

You might feel that your offerings are already at a competitive level, but might still be struggling to draw in those extra guests. 

Regularly checking out your competition ensures you have your finger on the pulse. Reading your competitors’ review section will allow you to find out qualitative information on what customers enjoy or don’t enjoy in certain accommodations, what their needs are, and what gaps are there that you can fill in with your own offerings.

3. Improves your marketing

How did others promote their listings? Did they mainly rely on just the Airbnb listing or have they posted on other sites too? Do they also have a dedicated website or social media accounts for their vacation rentals?

How can people book your place if they don’t know about it? Once you’ve got a good grasp of the people you can target, you would be able to ramp up your efforts to make sure your marketing is personalised to your prospective customers. With COVID-19 changing the way we travel, it’s important to showcase that you’ve taken such considerations, such as an increased emphasis on cleanliness or staycations becoming more commonplace. Here are some of our suggestions on increasing your Airbnb bookings during the pandemic.

4. Determines whether it’s worth the investment

As mentioned earlier, great Airbnb hosting, while can be fun and extremely rewarding, is no walk in the park. If you’re just starting out, seeing what’s already out there and understanding how they’re performing means that you can determine whether it’s worth putting in the time and resources for you.

Airbtics analytics platform’s upcoming update will make price benchmarking and finding out your potential revenue a lot easier. The new Benchmark dashboard means you’d be able to see the top ten listings of your area by revenue, along with property type, ADR and reviews at a glance. If you’d like to get a firsthand look, make sure to join the community and receive news about our latest feature updates and releases.