How to Prepare for the 2021 Summer Season

Spring has just arrived, which means people’s thoughts are drifting to summer and Airbnb recently released an article showing some of the most-searched summer destinations.  Just because your city didn’t make the top ten doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be planning for the traditional summer surge.  People are looking to get away, and with international travel still fairly restricted, short term rental hosts have a larger potential audience than ever.  With that in mind, we wanted to give you a few tips to make sure you make the most of the coming summer crowds.

Update Your Calendar

Sometimes hosts forget to update their availability, and as such miss out on guests that might have booked if only the calendar had shown availability.  If they are looking for specific dates and your calendar isn’t available, they might not be shown your property.

You don’t have to have the whole summer planned out, but as hosts, the further out you can make dates available, the more potential guests will be shown your listing and the more opportunity you’ll have to get booked sooner.

Price Competitively

There has been a lot of change in the market from various angles.

• Some listings have gone away permanently
• Due to a drop in the regular number of visitors, prices have been in flux
• Restrictions vary based on states and municipalities, which lead directly to bookings (more restrictions often means fewer bookings)

Airbnb has an internal “smart pricing” tool which you can use to make sure your listing is appropriately priced.  That tool is based on internal company metrics and search data and ultimately is aimed at increasing bookings for the platform, so it may sometimes offer suboptimal suggestions.  One way to cross check what the internal Airbnb tool is telling you is with services like AirDNA or Mashvisor which use sophisticated data mining to give pricing data not just for cities, but even for specific neighborhoods.

Seasonalize

There are different things to do and see, depending on the season.  Places that are great to visit in winter can sometimes be a challenge (or even closed) in the summer.  Make sure that your guest book has specific summer suggestions for your area.  Your guests will love having this additional information apart from the traditional year-round “See these spots” list.  

This goes for restaurants as well.  While many menus may stay the same year round, if there are places that have special items during the summer, you should mention that.  You might even offer your top ice cream spots with a list of your favorite flavors.

Summer is traditionally a time when a lot of people want to get out and see a new place.  That’s only more so the case in 2021 with pent-up demand from travel restrictions and lockdowns still fresh in many minds.  Following these tips will not only help you attract these coming Summer 2021 guests, but will lead to the sort of awesome reviews that will keep them coming into Fall.