How to boost your Airbnb occupancy rate - Little Hotelier (2024)

What is Airbnb occupancy rate?

Airbnb defines its occupancy rate as “the number of nights booked divided by total nights available to be booked across all relevant listings.”

Generally, occupancy rate describes the percentage of hotel rooms that are occupied. It is considered one of the three most important metrics for a hotelier, alongside ‘average daily rate’ and ‘revenue per available room’.

There are a few ways to measure you property’s occupancy rate:

• The nights that an individual room is occupied over a given period of time.
• The average percentage of rooms occupied over a given period of time.
• The percentage of rooms that are occupied at any moment in time.

Airbnb occupancy rates aren’t available through the standard dashboard for hosts. They must click the ‘Use professional tools’ button to gain access to a more in-depth set of analytics, including occupancy rate. Here, they can set their own date range to find their occupancy rate over that period of time.

Why is occupancy rate important for Airbnb hosts?

Your Airbnb occupancy rate is perhaps the most tangible and direct way for an accommodation provider to measure success.

Empty rooms are lost revenue. By keeping a close eye on your occupancy rate, you can understand how well you’re filling your rooms, and measure the impact of different room-filling strategies.

Occupancy rate is most important for those who treat Airbnb as a business rather than a hobby. If you’re a hotelier who offers rooms through Airbnb, your aim is to maximise revenue. Ensuring your rooms are as full as possible is perhaps the most important thing you can do to make the most money possible.

Airbnb occupancy rate FAQs

The reason you’re on this page, presumably, is for hard numbers. So let’s look at three of the most common questions around Airbnb occupancy rate figures.

1. What is the average Airbnb occupancy rate?

As a platform that stretches across the globe, and offers up all manner of accommodation options, including many that are part-time, the typical occupancy rate offers limited insight to a professional hotelier.

Nevertheless, according to Airbnb analytics provider AirDNA, the Airbnb average occupancy rate has hovered between 55%-60% for the last three years.

2. What is a good occupancy rate for Airbnb?

Given the average figures above, any Airbnb host that achieves an occupancy rate 60% or above might be considered above average. But what is a good occupancy rate for Airbnb if you are a full-time accommodation provider?

As industry professionals, hoteliers should have higher expectations for their occupancy rates than part-time operators, so a figure of 65% or more can be considered high performing.

3. What is the highest Airbnb occupancy rate?

Realistically no Airbnb host will ever achieve an occupancy rate of 100% over the course of a year. Any host achieving an annual Airbnb occupancy rate of 80% sits comfortably amongst the best performers on the platform.

Top strategies to increase your Airbnb occupancy rate

You have some numbers to aim for, but how do you achieve them? The following five strategies are a great place to start, and can be used by hoteliers to increase overall occupancy rates, not just those on Airbnb.

1. Set competitive pricing

The only way to boost occupancy rate is to price your rooms competitively on Airbnb. The platform’s smart pricing feature gives you a sense of what your rooms might be worth and what other hosts are charging, but the Little Hotelier’s Insights feature may be more appropriate for hoteliers, as it is capable of serving up real-time rates of competitors outside of Airbnb.

2. Improve your listing quality with compelling descriptions and high-quality photos

One way you can justify a more premium rate for your rooms while maintaining a high occupancy rate is by doing a better job of selling them. Standing out on Airbnb is about putting your rooms in the best possible light. Add compelling descriptions that highlight the reasons why a guest should book. Invest in professional photography and upload the highest quality, most alluring images.

3. Enhance guest communication

Communication is key in attracting guests and increasing occupancy rate, as it can create loyal return customers who want to experience your service again. Returning guests can be more profitable than new guests, as they are more likely to book direct (provided you offer a direct booking option). While you can message a guest direct via Airbnb, hoteliers will benefit from a purpose-built and more capable guest engagement tool like GuestJoy.

4. Utilise social media and promotional tactics

Social media and other marketing channels can be powerful tools for boosting occupancy rates. If you’re experiencing a lull during low season, post a promo deal on your social media channels or send out an email blast to targeted segments of your customer database.

5. Leverage guest reviews

Guest reviews are the lifeblood of Airbnb (and most other booking channels). Your rating impacts how well you rank in the search results and how likely a potential guest is to book with you. There are three steps to fully leveraging guest reviews and increase your occupancy rate:

1. Offer the finest guest experience possible.
2. Encourage guests to review your property.
3. Reply to reviews (particularly any that raise issues.)

Improve your Airbnb occupancy rates and attract more guests with the help of Little Hotelier

By leveraging the right technology, you can increase your hotel’s occupancy rates by ensuring you capitalise on the opportunities presented by Airbnb, as well as the opportunities presented by other channels, particularly direct bookings.

Little Hotelier is an all-in-one hotel property management system (PMS) designed to do just that. It gives you the tools you need to increase your overall occupancy rate, and can deliver up to 46% more bookings and 43% more revenue in the process!

• Channel manager: Our channel manager seamlessly connects Airbnb (and all your other booking channels) to Little Hotelier, enabling instant, automatic updates to price, availability and listing info.
• Insights: Gain a far deeper understanding of market rates with the Little Hotelier Insights feature, which offers up-to-date rates from all your competitors.
• Direct booking engine: Why use Airbnb at all? Cut out those steep commission fees and take your bookings directly from guests with Little Hotelier’s direct booking engine.