6 Top Tips for Making your Airbnb Experience Business a Success
Level up your Airbnb business by embracing Airbnb Experiences. Here are the best ways to keep guests happy and maximise your profits.
What are Airbnb Experiences?
An Airbnb Experience goes beyond offering guests bed and breakfast. It's something that guests can sign up for to enjoy a unique, memorable experience as part of their stay. Some of the most popular types of Airbnb Experience include things like cooking classes, guided tours and craft workshops.
The Airbnb Experiences programme was closed to new applicants for about a year and a half. However, it's up and running again as of September 2024. If you've been looking for the chance to expand your hospitality business, here it is - but in a crowded marketplace, how can you make your Experience stand out?
1) Make sure you meet the Airbnb criteria
Want to know how to run an Airbnb experience properly? Well, the best way to start is by checking what the Airbnb team has to say.
Crucially, Airbnb identifies three quality pillars of a successful experience:
Expertise: passion is not enough. As an Airbnb Experience host, you should be able to demonstrate that you're an expert. An Italian grandma who's been making pasta daily for 50 years makes a much better cooking class leader than a home cook armed with a couple of Jamie Oliver books.
Insider access: a good Airbnb Experience should take guests off the beaten path, somewhere the average tourist never sees. That means that a walking tour through a little-known part of London, focusing on unusual elements of history, is more interesting than a stroll from Buckingham Palace to Big Ben.
Connection: as a host, you should be focused on creating special human moments with your guests. An Airbnb Experience should feel more intimate and personal than your average tourist event.
When planning your Experience, consider how it will fit these three categories. For instance, your Experience's blurb should mention what makes you an expert - not just I love hiking, but rather For the last 10 years, I've been hiking almost every weekend around the area. I've volunteered as a group leader for a local trekking club, leading groups of up to 20 people on different trails. I've completed wilderness survival and first aid training and studied wildlife identification.
What's more, Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, said during the September 2024 relaunch that he wants Experiences to be more affordable and unique. That means you'll have to consider your Airbnb pricing strategy carefully to ensure success.
2) Find something unique
Remember, you'll compete against many other Experiences in the area. To run a profitable Airbnb Experience, you must carve out your niche.
Find something that will set your Experience apart. That could be the location - for example, there may be many yoga classes available, but yours is the only one that takes place on a beautiful local beach at sunrise. Alternatively, it could be the unique perspective brought by the host: a cooking class led by an enthusiastic grandma, a walking tour led by a war veteran, or a crafting session with a local artist would all fall into this category.
You might want to target a particular audience. Take walking tours, for example. A general walking tour will be competing against hundreds of others. However, if you can narrow your offering, you may be able to attract a specific niche. You could think about a kid-focused walking tour, a tour that focuses on LGBTQ+ history, or a dog-friendly tour that takes travellers with pets to locations that welcome pooches.
3) Work on your marketing
Airbnb marketing can make or break an Experience. There are several elements of an Experience listing. Take time to polish them all - the better your listing, the more guests you'll attract. You'll need to think about the following:
An eye-catching heading. This is the first thing potential customers will see, so it should include your USP.
A blurb about your Experience. Write it clearly, and don't rely too much on AI. People are getting better and better at detecting AI-written content, and many see it as a red flag.
Photos. You can include up to seven pictures of your Experience - realistically, you should have the full seven. Photos should be high-quality, clear and varied. Try to capture your Experience from various angles, and show different kinds of guests enjoying it. If all your photos show young people in their 20s, you may put off older customers.
An "about you" section. You should sell yourself here just like you do on a CV, highlighting your skills, experience and expertise - in other words, why guests should join you and not another host.
Practical information. Make this as complete as possible. You should include start and end times, maximum group size, minimum age, and a list of things guests should bring. Be sure to give clothing advice if needed. For example, you might want to advise guests to wear comfortable footwear or to bring a swimsuit.
4) Choose the right payment methods
A successful Airbnb Experience will attract visitors from around the world. Not everyone carries cash when travelling, and guests will be comfortable with various payment methods. Of course, you can accept cash - but you should provide other options, too. Payment links and QR codes for Airbnb hosts are modern, practical options. Use a secure, trustworthy provider like SumUp to ensure guests are comfortable.
Remember that Airbnb takes a 20% commission on the price of Experiences, so set your prices accordingly. This means you may also want to look for cost-effective payment solutions for Airbnb Experiences. For instance, SumUp Tap to Pay allows guests to pay with their mobiles, with a fee of just 1.69% per transaction. This is one of the best Airbnb host tools to keep costs down and ensure your business stays profitable.
The best payment tools also include the option for guests to add a tip. Of course, Airbnb doesn't charge any commission for tips, so encouraging gratuities is one of the best ways to keep your business profitable. Don't be demanding - that can result in bad reviews. Remember that some cultures have no concept of tipping, and guests from particular backgrounds could get offended by the idea. For example, an American tourist is far more likely to tip than a Japanese guest.
5) Think about every eventuality
Here's one of the most important Airbnb tips for successful Experiences: be prepared. Unexpected situations often arise in the world of hospitality, and it's all down to you to be ready to meet them head-on.
Think about different possibilities. For instance, what happens to your outdoor yoga class if it rains? Do you have an alternative venue you can take guests to quickly and easily? How will you respond if a vegan signs up for your cooking class? What about someone with allergies?
Remember, guest numbers can vary too. There's no minimum group number for an Airbnb Experience; you're expected to continue your activity even if you only have one booking. Can you run a fun, successful Experience for a single guest?
These are all questions to ask yourself before getting started to ensure your business is ready for just about anything. Flexibility when dealing with guests means positive reviews - which will lead to more people signing up for your Experience in the future.
6) Contact local hosts
Word of mouth is always the best advertising. When it comes to Airbnb Experiences, remember the golden rule: to sign up, guests must stay in an Airbnb, but not necessarily with you. That means if you can make connections with local hosts, they'll be able to send guests your way.
Cross-selling and upselling for Airbnb hosts have become quite common in hospitality. You may find that local hosts would like some money in exchange for advertising your Experience. The best way to handle this is on a commission basis; make an arrangement whereby you'll send them a small percentage of any bookings you get from their guests. Over time, you may find that these business deals work well for both of you. They could lead to bigger partnerships in the future.
