- Full-time Airbnb hosts Kent He and Nathan Turner are efficient with their time.
- He spends 2-3 hours a week managing his properties, while Turner spends no more than 15 hours.
- They use software tools like PriceLabs and Rankbreeze to work efficiently.
Airbnb host Kent He has mastered work efficiency.
The San Diego-based investor, who used to work in tech doing data cleanup, has been a full-time Airbnb host since June 2022 when he quit his day job. But he doesn't put in the hours you'd expect to put in for a full-time gig.
"Nowadays, most everything is automated," He told Insider of his short-term rental business. "I spend about two to three hours a week working on my Airbnbs."
He owns two bachelorette-themed Airbnbs in Scottsdale, Arizona. As of May 2023, the 34-year-old investor already had $243,000 worth of booked earnings for the year between his two properties, which Insider verified by looking at his screenshots of his Airbnb dashboard.
Houston-based Airbnb hosts Nathan and Taniera Turner have also figured out how to maximize their time. Their investing strategy is different — they do rental arbitrage, which involves renting a property and subletting it on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO — but they make more than enough from their 25 units to cover their living expenses, they said. Insider verified Nathan's Airbnb ownership by reviewing lease agreements and screenshots from his Airbnb dashboard.
"We probably only work 10 to 15 hours a week," said Nathan, who used to deliver for FedEx. Taniera used to work as a banquet server at a Marriott hotel and they both got laid off when the pandemic hit in March 2020.
The Turners and He shared five tools they use that help them work efficiently on their Airbnb businesses and free up more time.
1. PriceLabs
Both He and the Turners use PriceLabs, a tool that helps you accurately price your rental units based on demand and seasonality in your area.
It was a game changer for Turner, who said that one of his biggest early challenges was figuring out how to properly price his Airbnb units. He didn't know how to set competitive rates, he admitted, and it cost him money early on.
"We would just charge the same price throughout the entire week and the weekends, but we weren't really getting any bookings during the week because our prices weren't competitive," he explained. "It was a missed opportunity for us. That's when we realized we had to adjust our prices and drop them during the week."
He looked at comparable listings in his area and charged either the same amount or slightly lower than their competition. This strategy worked but was very hands-on. Once he started using the pricing software, he freed up hours of time.
The tool does more than recommend prices. It has a market dashboard that helps you analyze markets for investment potential. It's how He chose to invest in Scottsdale. It even helped him select the specific neighborhood he ended up investing in.
"PriceLabs' market dashboard functionality allows you to export a dataset of the top performers in any market," he explained.
As you can see in this sample report from PriceLabs, you can look at all of the available listings in your market and filter by number of bedrooms, star rating, and reviews.
He looked at the top 200 listings in Scottsdale and did a keyword search in the reviews section of each listing. Specifically, he was looking for how many times the word "location" popped up in the reviews.
"It's generally a positive connotation associated with that word," he explained, so he was looking for properties with a lot of mentions of "location" in the reviews. "Now, you know which neighborhoods people are raving about."
2. Hospitable
Turner uses Hospitable, a vacation rental property management software, for his guests.
The feature he uses the most is the "channel manager," which allows you to link your calendars from various platforms like Airbnb and VRBO together.
"The main purpose is making sure that all your calendars are synced because you may have units listed on Airbnb and VRBO and your own personal booking site," he explained. "So it just keeps everything all together and helps you avoid double bookings."
With Hospitable, you can also set up automated messages for guest check-in instructions and other details you want to provide your guest, Turner added: "That saves us a lot of time and is a big factor that contributes to us working only 10 to 15 hours a week."
3. A digital guidebook
For his bachelorette-themed Airbnbs, He has a digital guidebook complete with detailed information about the property, amenities, and the local recommendations.
"It has all the check-in instructions and everything from how you operate the Peloton to restaurant recommendations," he explained.
Guidebooks take upfront time to make, but they're easy to roll out and can enhance your guests' experiences significantly. Sites like Hostfully make it easy to build one.
He credits much of his success on Airbnb to understanding his guests and their needs.
"If you can help them plan their trip out a little bit better, it takes a lot of stress off the coordinator — and usually that coordinator is the person that's going to be leaving your review," said He. "So any way that you can understand the stresses in their life and reduce that stress, I think it comes out as a win."
4. Monday.com
Turner, who has started hiring people to help run his business, uses Monday.com to manage his employees, delegate tasks, and keep the internal team organized.
"We can update daily tasks here and it holds all of our SOPS, schedule of operations, that our team members can refer back to if they have questions about how to handle a certain situation or how to do something if I'm not readily available to help assist," he explained.
It's also a helpful place to keep important information organized, he said. He'll create boards to keep track of his current units — the access codes and landlord information for each one — and any prospective units he has approval for in different markets.
5. Rankbreeze
Another tool He likes to use is a listing optimization software called Rankbreeze that helps you do things like fine-tune the description of your property and discover amenities that guests in your area are looking for.
One of his favorite features is the A/B testing, which lets you do things like change your cover photo to see how it'll impact your Airbnb ranking.
"On Google, no one really goes to page five or 10 after searching. It's the same for Airbnb. You want to be ranked as high as possible," he explained. "I use Rankbreeze to play around with my cover photos to see which one allows me to rank highest. I also play around with the listing title. For example, during colder months, I might highlight that we have a heated pool."
You have to find a way to stand out from the rest of the competition. You may have the most unique Airbnb property, but if you don't properly market it, guests might never see.
"Don't waste that space," said He, referring to the cover photo. "Be intentional with your listing title and call out to your target customer so that they're more likely to click. Because if they never click into your listing, they'll never book with you."
