The three levers that decide whether your listing gets booked

The short version

If you’re hosting on Airbnb and you feel like you’re doing everything right — you answer fast, the place is clean, your reviews are good — but the calendar still has gaps you can’t explain, I want to save you a couple of years of guessing.

Because the problem almost certainly isn’t your effort. I’ve never met a struggling host who was lazy. The problem is that nobody ever taught you which levers actually move this business, so you’ve been pulling all of them equally hard.

Who this is for

This is for hosts who already have a listing up and running. You’ve had real guests, maybe you’ve even hit Superhost, and you know you’re leaving money on the table.

If you haven’t hosted a single guest yet — this isn’t for you yet, and that’s completely fine. You’ve got a different problem to solve first, and I’ve got free videos for that.

Why you should listen to me

Quick background. I spent over ten years in corporate marketing and I did not enjoy it. In 2015 I walked away to host on Airbnb full time, and I went all in on figuring out how this platform actually works.

Since then I’ve hosted over 3,500 guests, held Superhost for 51 consecutive quarters, and earned millions on Airbnb. I’ve coached over 900 hosts around the world, and I run a co-hosting business, so I’m still in this every single day — not describing something I did once, years ago.

I say that for one reason. There are a lot of Airbnb gurus out there, myself included, and the ones worth listening to are the ones who can show real results rather than theories. Judge me on that.

My own most expensive mistake

When I started, I priced my listing by looking at what hotels nearby were charging. I looked around my place, decided it was much nicer than a hotel, set a price… and then just left it there. Same price, never changing, benchmarked against the wrong thing entirely. Wrong on basically every count.

A few weeks of vacancy later I went a bit crazy trying to work out how you’re actually supposed to price on Airbnb. And when I cracked that, things went gangbusters. I’d never made so much money. That one fix changed the business.

That’s the thing about this stuff — it isn’t a hundred small optimisations. It’s a few big things you’re probably getting wrong right now.

Lever one — visibility

The biggest mistake I see is hosts not understanding what actually gets a listing seen. Meaning: showing up on the first page.

Airbnb will tell you that becoming a Superhost or earning Guest Favourite increases your visibility, and it does, to an extent. But those badges are not the strongest factors, and chasing them while ignoring the real ones is how people spend a year working hard and going nowhere.

And then there’s the one almost every host swears they aren’t making: bad photos. Not “you didn’t hire a professional” — I mean photos that don’t show a guest what it actually feels like to be in your space. Your listing doesn’t compete on price. It competes on clicks. If nobody clicks, nothing else you do matters.

Lever two — pricing

Two ways hosts get this wrong, and they look like opposites.

The first is the strong belief that your place is worth at least a certain amount a night — a minimum price based on no data whatsoever and driven entirely by ego. The second is a minimum price built from your break-even and running costs, so far out of line with the market that it never gets booked.

Both fail for the same reason. Your guests do not care what your mortgage is. The market decides the price. Our job is to read it properly — balancing market demand, your occupancy, and what the listings around you are actually charging — and then position you inside it.

Lever three — automation

When I was running 11 listings, I was spending about 30 minutes a day on them. Some days a couple of hours, plenty of days nothing at all.

That’s not because I’m special. It’s because the messaging was built, the cleaner had a written standard to work against, and the turnovers ran on a system instead of on me remembering. Most hosts have never built any of that, so they hit the ceiling of doing it manually — and then mistake that for the ceiling of their business. It isn’t.

What I’m offering

It’s a coaching program where we do this with you. We go through your listing, your market data, your pricing and your systems, and we build the same engine I use — adapted to your property and your goals.

It is not a course you buy and never open. It’s guided, it’s specific to your listing, and it’s built to get you to the result rather than just the information.

How to take the next step

It’s not for everyone, and I keep it that way on purpose — I only take on hosts I’m confident I can actually get results for. If your market has no demand, I’ll tell you, and I won’t take your money.

So: click below, answer a few questions about your listing and where you want to take it. If it’s a fit, we’ll get on a call, look at your real situation, and I’ll tell you honestly whether this is right for you. No pressure either way.

And if watching this has you thinking your Airbnb is doomed — please don’t fret. I’ve worked with tons of hosts who’ve made every one of these mistakes, and honestly, the ones who struggle hardest at the start often end up the most successful. Being able to recognise the problem is one of the best traits you can have. It just means now’s the time to get to work.