Airbnb Host Profile Guidelines and Best Practices

The host profile is a great place to communicate your expertise as a professional manager. Remember that historically Airbnb featured mostly hosts sharing their own home and the typical host only had a single property. Guests often still have this expectation and an overly commercial description may leave some guests feeling confused. Remember that even though you’re a professional management company, you’re still a company of people! Use the space to describe any services guests wouldn’t get from a typical host as well as share your brand’s personality and differentiators.

Logo or Photo? - Professional managers are often conflicted as to whether to use their company logo or a photo for the profile photo. Using your logo can help support your goals of using Airbnb as a “billboard” for your business and quality logo design will may stand out against more common headshots. Just remember that Airbnb guests are often choosing Airbnb as an alternative to traditional hospitality and hoping to get a more authentic local experience than they’d expect from a professional. Using a logo to subtly encourage users to find you outside of Airbnb is possible, but can frequently backfire as the you’ve taken a guest out of the highly tested Airbnb booking funnel and let them loose on Google. We suggest using a high quality photo of the team or a key team member. Humanizing your profile will assure guests that they’re still going to get the authentic connection to your area they want and encourages more bookings. You can always convert the guest to a direct booking for their next trip!

Take advantage of all the fields available to describe yourself. Airbnb provides a great profile page that includes a search specific to your inventory with a high quality banner photo across the top. Plan to share this link for guests inquiring about a property that is no longer available or not ideal for their visit.