Getting longer stays

[Justin Melton]

My wife and I have owned an Airbnb since early March and are doing pretty well so far. We are in a small Midwest college town (MAC school) of about 60k people.  

We pay about $1700 for mortgage, insurance, utilities ect.   April was our first month and we did $2498 (our cut after airbnb fee).  May was $4200 because we had one 7 night and a 15 night stay!!  The month of June my parents stayed in the property from out of state (the whole reason we bought it)  July was $2200 (only 3 weeks mom and were here first week of July).  

So far in August we have $1800 booked (first 2 weekends) then a week stay from Wed-Wed The 21st-31st are current not booked. What is the best strategy to book these 10 days and longer stays like 7-14 days?  I have been offering weekly discount but thought of doing a special with a minimum stay for those dates.  Thoughts?  Our other long stays have been people in town for work (one was a staffing company manager and one worked on windmills) thanks in advance!

[Matthew Metros]

Quote from @Justin Melton:

My wife and I have owned an Airbnb since early March and are doing pretty well so far. We are in a small Midwest college town (MAC school) of about 60k people.  

We pay about $1700 for mortgage, insurance, utilities ect.   April was our first month and we did $2498 (our cut after airbnb fee).  May was $4200 because we had one 7 night and a 15 night stay!!  The month of June my parents stayed in the property from out of state (the whole reason we bought it)  July was $2200 (only 3 weeks mom and were here first week of July).  

So far in August we have $1800 booked (first 2 weekends) then a week stay from Wed-Wed The 21st-31st are current not booked. What is the best strategy to book these 10 days and longer stays like 7-14 days?  I have been offering weekly discount but thought of doing a special with a minimum stay for those dates.  Thoughts?  Our other long stays have been people in town for work (one was a staffing company manager and one worked on windmills) thanks in advance!

 1. Comp-sets & Pricing: Update your weekly and monthly discounts to match be competitive with the markets. Here is a great video on how to use Pricelabs, to build a comp-set to understand how to price longer term stays in your market: 

2. Relocation Housing: Place your website with the popular nationwide relocation companies: Sirva, Sedgewick, ALE, CRS

3. Direct outreach: Sounds like you already had a corporate stay and would like more of those. Corporate rentals are a niche. Most people are looking for short-term or long-term. These are the largest markets. So if you are thinking of diversifying into corporate, do not think this will happen overnight. You need to build relationships with corporations. This takes time. Lots of time and lots of continuous outreach. It is a lot of traditional sales. Go on LinkedIn and connect with the people who are likely to need housing for their employees.