How Airbnb Response Rate affects your Airbnb Business

So, you’re ready to leverage the power of Airbnb to catapult yourself into the short-term rental market, huh? Excellent! Not only will you make some great supplemental income, you’ll also meet plenty of awesome people, create tons of memories and gain a significant amount of knowledge.

But, even though Airbnb is an establish platform worldwide, you still need to put the hard work in to achieve success. There are various aspects to Airbnb hosting that you need to be aware of, otherwise you’ll struggle to pull in the visitors that you’re hoping for. Alongside creating an eye-catching listing with a detailed description and attractive images, you’ll need to run your business in a professional manner day in, day out.

One of the most crucial areas is response rate, and we’re going to tell you all about it in this article…

What Does Response Rate Mean?

The travel industry – especially the short-term rental niche – is incredibly fast-paced. People are excited by the prospect of travelling, which is why they want to find the perfect accommodation in no time at all. What they don’t want is waiting around for hosts to respond as it reduces the quality of their experience, hence why Airbnb measure hosts on their response rate.

So, as a host, if you want to make it to the top of your trade, you’ll need to speed up your communication process. That means attending to concerns, answering questions and dealing with inquiries as fast as possible. In the Airbnb world, this is known as your response rate.

Why is Airbnb Response Rate So Important?

Well, when you embark on your Airbnb journey, your goal is to secure bookings on your property, right? Unfortunately, though, you’ve got to compete with thousands of other hosts for those bookings. That’s why Airbnb has a ranking system, whereby the best hosts that offer the best service appear at the top of the search results.

According to Airbnb, the response rate is one of those elements that can boost your ranking. If you receive more exposure and higher visibility, that’ll only increase the number of clicks your listing receives. Then, if your listing is amazing and your property is wonderful, you could be faced with an influx of bookings.

In a nutshell, if you respond to that first message you receive, and keep up with the speedy replies throughout the conversation, Airbnb will reward you with that with more visibility on their platform. As a word of warning – Airbnb takes response rate so seriously, that they can even deactivate your listing if you fail to respond after 48 hours.

How is Airbnb Response Rate Calculated?

Okay, let’s get into the finer details of how the algorithm actually works. First, let’s distinguish response rate from response time. Your response time is calculated based on the average time it took you to reply to new messages over a 30 day period. On the contrary, your response rate is the percentage of new inquiries and reservation requests within 24 hours over a 30 day period.

In this instance, it’s the response rate we want to focus on. If you respond to all new inquiries and requests within 24 hours, then you have nothing to worry about; your response rate should be 100%. Of course, if your response rate begins to falter for whatever reason, your percentage will start to dip.

Now, if you’re new to Airbnb, you will receive some leeway, as you probably won’t get many messages right away. So, if you’ve received less than 10 inquiries or requests, your response rate will be calculated based on the past 90 days, rather than 30 days. Again, it’s also different if you’re a Superhost, as your response rate is judged over a 365 day period.

Improving Response Rate

You’ll be glad to hear that your response rate isn’t rigid; it can certainly be improved. It may sound pretty obvious, but the way to improve your response rate is to do exactly that – respond to messages much faster (within 24 hours). When you consistently accept or decline reservation requests and reply to new messages within 24 hours, your response rate will rise. However, if you fail to respond within 24 hours, it’s classed as late and your rate could go the other way.

You know you need to have a near perfect response rate in order to maximize your potential revenue. So how do you make this happen? Don’t worry – we have you covered. Luckily, Hosty’s Airbnb property management software can help you save time, increase your response rate and keep customers happy with our unique features that are designed to make your job simple.

Airbnb AutoReply

Hosty’s AutoReply feature makes the task of replying to common guest messages simple. Choose to send auto messages to guests when they have an inquiry or ask a question of a rental. By using the Airbnb AutoReply feature you can increase your Airbnb response rate time and provide additional details before check-in or thank them for staying after their check out. Messages can be triggered by day or by action (e.g. a message sent immediately after someone books a property). Also, it can be overwritten or changed at any time. This feature is essential to improve your Airbnb response rate and help guests feel appreciated. And the best part? This feature only gets better with time. As your business grows and your number of listings and bookings increases; you get more messages that need to be responded to quickly.

Airbnb SavedReply

If AutoReply is the ice-cream sundae, SavedReply is the cherry on top. Airbnb SavedReply feature allows you to save frequently used replies so you can quickly send them to your guest with one click. Each guest is unique. Some guests may want to know everything there is about your city. And some just need a place to sleep between meetings. Ensure that you’re providing the most relevant information to all of your guests by saving specific information to use when you need it.

Catalog directions from the airport or a list of your favorite restaurants nearby. Quickly share them with guests when they have specific questions. Or pair them with the AutoReply feature to send timely instructions. Such as wifi passwords and key codes to guests right before they check in. Messages can be sent via Airbnb messenger, email or text (we’re also working on providing communication through Viber and Whatsapp!)

Setting up these features on Hosty will provide you with the comfort of knowing that all of your communications are streamlined. All of your responses are prepared in a way that can offer your guests excellent value. Hosty exists to help you manage your Airbnb multiple account business in the most efficient way possible, and helps you easily keep your Airbnb response rate high. We pride ourselves providing you with the tools to save money, time and effort. After all, you’re in the business of vacation rentals; you should be able to take a vacation yourself once in awhile.