In the world of Airbnb management, there are two main goals that exist: maintain superhost status and make a profit. When it comes to your decision of using instant book as a key tool in reaching these goals, there are many factors you may be taking into consideration. Luckily for you, we’ve laid out all the pros and cons of using instant book below, all you have to do is sit back, relax, and read on!
The Pros
If you’re unfamiliar with the term instant book on Airbnb, this special feature allows potential guests to book your property without an approval beforehand. Although you are not approving guests before they stay, Airbnb still ensures they meet your guest requirements & agree to your house rules in order to book. If you’d like to set additional requirements to determine who can book such as confirmed phone number, profile photo, or verified payment info, Airbnb has given you this option. This feature is great as it allows you to show up in more searches since majority of guests prefer to book this way. It can be extremely helpful to those who are newly listed on Airbnb and don’t necessarily have the backing of multiple reviews to attract guests to your property. The easier booking process you have, the more likely you are to attain higher booking percentages each month. Of course, with higher bookings, comes the opportunity to start building a reputation with more reviews being left.
In addition to better SEO, more bookings, and more reviews, instant book will also save you time in limiting the amount of communication you have with each and every guest that submits an inquiry. As you can imagine, this time spent communicating with guests who may not even stay at your property adds up very quickly and can be used in a multitude of other ways to help your Airbnb business grow.
The Cons
I know, the pros are amazing right!? Although there are many more pros in proportion to cons, there are a couple issues that seem to arise when it comes to deciding whether to use this feature or not. First, the barrier between you and the guest has been removed with instant book, meaning you have less control on who comes in and out of your home. You don’t get to learn who they are or what their references say, what their purpose for the trip is, or why they’re choosing to stay at your property. However as mentioned before, there is an array of features that go along with instant book to get you as much info as needed.
Secondly, you may tend to see more cancellations with instant book turned on. This may be due to having no relationship with the guest who has booked so they have no obligation to commit to your property after booking, or they didn’t actually read your house rules before booking and have now decided it isn’t what they were looking for. Obviously, this can be a pain, but overall these two hurdles can easily be overcome with the pros listed above.
At the end of the day, you started an Airbnb business to make money, and that’s exactly what instant book helps you achieve. According to data collected by AirDNA, hosts earn up to 52% more when using instant book. Now that is some serious dough to be made! Although you may have a few more cancellations to deal with, instant book is the true definition of “high” risk, high reward. Take advantage of this tool and boost your ROI.