Why your Airbnb is not getting bookings

In short. If a listing gets no bookings, the problem is one of two kinds: guests do not see it (calendar, how new it is, price, location) or they see it but do not choose it (photos, reviews, description). The views in your listing stats tell you which: lots of views and no bookings means the listing is not convincing.

First: are guests seeing it?

According to the Airbnb Help Center, a new listing usually shows up in search within 24 hours, and sometimes takes up to 72 hours. If the dates a guest searches for are blocked in your calendar, your listing will not appear for those dates.

The simplest check is your views, under Insights in your host menu. Two situations point to two different problems:

Try searching for it as a guest would, with free dates and the right number of people. Bear in mind that every guest sees different results, based on their filters and past bookings.

The four factors Airbnb describes

Airbnb explains that the order of search results depends mainly on four things:

• Quality: photos and videos, ratings and reviews, communication with guests, cancellations and the home's amenities.
• Popularity: how often guests save the listing to a wishlist, book it or message the host.
• Price: the total price compared with similar listings in the same area for the same dates.
• Location: places guests like to stay tend to rank higher.

Calendar availability, flexibility on length of stay, response times and Instant Book also count. Airbnb says listings that can be booked instantly may rank higher, because the booking is confirmed without waiting for the host.

Quality and popularity feed each other: a listing that gets opened and saved moves up, one that gets skipped moves down. This is where photos matter most, because they are the first thing a guest judges.

If guests see it but do not book

This is the most frustrating case: the listing appears and gets opened, but nobody books. The most common causes we see in the listings we review:

• A weak cover photo: dark, portrait, or a detail instead of a room. In search results it is the only photo guests see.
• Photos that do not show the home: missing rooms, tight framing, dull colours, crooked lines.
• Few reviews, or old ones, especially on new listings.
• A price out of line with similar listings, when the photos do not justify the difference.
• A vague description of what guests look for: parking, air conditioning, the entrance, distance to the sights.

The technical photo format is rarely the issue, since the minimum sizes are low (see Photo size and format for Airbnb and Booking.com). The issue is how the photos look next to competing listings. Before-and-after examples are in The photos that get a listing chosen.

What not to do

• Cutting the price as your first move. Price matters, but if the listing does not persuade, a lower price just means earning less per booking.
• Changing everything at once. If you change photos, title, price and rules on the same day, you will never know what worked.
• Adding photos that promise too much. A view or furniture guests do not find leads to poor reviews, and reviews count towards quality.

Photos can be improved without reshooting them: that is what our Photo Enhancement service does.