How to Increase the Price of Your Airbnb
And make more of these sweet $$$
My friend Sofie doesn’t have any business sense. She has a perfectly located apartment in Vienna city center. It’s small but cozy with a view of the Kunsthistorisches Klimt Museum. And it has wifi.
Many would kill to get this view.
But Sofie is shy and internally conflicted. She wants to make money with her apartment, but she also wants to vote socialist. She’s what some people call a hypocritical Democrat, also known as a repressed capitalist.
So she underprices it.
Instead of listing her apartment for $300 a night plus taxes plus cleaning services plus extras, she charges $150.
“That way, more people can get access to it. I’m helping the less affluent.”
If she really wanted to help the less affluent, this is what she should do:
- Charge $400 per night
- Give the $250 difference to the less affluent
That would help them.
Right now, what she’s achieving is helping affluent people underpay. A complete nonsense if you want my opinion.
Here are three things she could do to increase the price of her Airbnb. And so could you.
#1 — Price Manipulation — The best way to charge $300 is to charge $200.
How do you do that?
You take advantage of cognitive biases. We, the humans, are pretty stupid, lazy, and prone to many cognitive biases. One of them is that we don’t like to read and process more than one number.
So, to charge $300, you list your property for $299.
It’s the same, but the second price feels like $200. Read them aloud.
- Three hundred.
- Two hundred ninety-nine. Who cares about the ninety-nine? Nobody except for your wallet. And certainly not the neurons of your potential guest, which stopped processing info at two hundred.
By the way, would you like to buy me a $2.99 coffee? It’s only $2!
#2 — Instagram — Glamor the shit of your apartment
There are four easy steps to do that. Easy in practice, but hard to do for the people low on business sense and high on misplaced ethical guilt.
- Step 1: Create an Instagram account for your apartment
- Step 2: Find (or create) an Instagram-worthy moment in your apartment
- Step 3: Mention it to the guests in your welcome message and tell them to tag you
- Step 4: Profit
For my friend Sofie, the view is totally Instagram-worthy. If she were to create an Instagram account, it would generate some additional hype and recognition for her Airbnb listing. She could add a link to Insta on her Airbnb profile and, conversely, a link to Airbnb on her Insta.
It doesn’t matter if it would drive up the traffic to her page. Having an Instagram account for your apartment is a seal of approval, something like “glamorous inside.”
Which allows you to bump the price UP.
In real life, the value of this Instagram gimmick is zero. It doesn’t make sense, but people aren’t buying real-life value; they’re buying dreams. And the Instagram influencer dream is highly valued.
So, give them what they want. Give them some Instagram-worthy setting or gimmick. And make it simple for your guests, because we’re all lazy and don’t like to think much. Remember?
#3 — Bundle with overpriced options people won’t use anyway
Think of all the useless services your credit card comes with.
- The concierge service you never called
- The travel insurance you never used because you forgot you had it
- Discounts on products you would never buy
Your Airbnb offer should come with similar advantages. The idea is to find the sweet spot between never used (good for your money, but not attractive to your guests) and overused (meaning you lose money).
The optimal offer looks interesting on paper, but only a handful of your guests use it. It provides dream value without costing you anything.
While the best add-ons depend on your location and property, some classics include:
- Free condom delivery: trust me, very few people have the balls to call a random number to get a free condom delivery. Especially if you made it clear it will appear in their guest review afterward.
- Free restaurant concierge service: have your Grandma answer the phone and send them to the highest-rated restaurant in the neighborhood. Combo points if you negotiated a kickback with the said restaurant.
- Free welcome candies: buy some disgusting ones so that nobody eats them, but make it clear they’re traditional candies from your childhood to look like a caring person and avoid complaints.
In any case, you can always test your ideas and remove them from the offer if too many people start using them.
Recap in one word: manipulation
To increase the price of your Airbnb, use cognitive biases to make people pay more than they should.
Let me rephrase that.
Use cognitive biases to make people pay for something they don’t need and don’t want.
It’s called marketing.
And if you think it’s not fair or ethical, ask yourself what would be the most efficient way to change the world:
- Have people pay the fair price, whatever that means for you.
- Or, list your property for as much money as possible, ripping off rich people ready to pay this absurdly high price and redistributing the extra money to people in need?
