All Forum Posts by: Kathy Hansen

You'll definitely find cabins and campsites on Airbnb, but I found I did not get much traction on Airbnb, and my campsite listing dragged down my other listing. I am listed on Hipcamp, which is fairly new but promising. I had a few bookings through them last year. There is also Glamping Hub; I was listed on there but had no bookings and delisted.

I think I was really influenced in my suggestion by an Austrailian TV show about STRs that just came to Netflix (it's called Instant Hotel). It's a competition in which STR hosts stay in each others' listings and rate them. Overall, the learning and takeaways about the STR business were pretty meager, but a cojuple of things struck me.

The couple that won was the only one that had a bathroom for every bedroom in their place. And each time the hosts would go to a new STR, they would grumble about the bedroom setup and even have dramatic fights over who would get the best bedroom. They were so thrilled with the bathroom-for-every-bedroom in the winners' house.

Anyway, it may depend a lot on whether you expect to mostly host larger groups or smaller groups.

As many en suite bathrooms as you can manage.

Will you be doing your own cleaning? Every time I go to clean, I say a little prayer: "Please don't let the bunk beds have been slept in."

Some hosts require guests to have travel insurance.

Yes, I do know about Airdna. Was also looking for some anecdotal info. Thanks.

Thanks, Jonathan. That's helpful.

I'm not fond of location-specific posts because of their limited interest to the full readership, but here I am making one. 

My mom just went into assisted living, and my sisters and I are considering STR-ing her house, which is located in a suburb of Augusta, GA.

Anyone have any knowledge of the market there? Obviously the big event there is the Masters golf tournament in April, but I'm not sure if golf attracts STR guests the rest of the year or if the area would otherwise attract guests.

I welcome any insight. Thanks.

There are a couple of Facebook groups where hosts offer places to nurses and nurses search for places.

Mostly related to the app. The app always defaulted to the traveler account. I've gone on ony 2 ABB trips, so the traveler account isn't very useful, and I was not able to transact host business on the app. Airbnb did finally make an adjustment that enables me to use the app for hosting, but I still have both accounts. And I have a third account that I started for a new listing because I discovered that while you are waiting for your new listing to perform, Airbnb is frowning at its performance and threatening your Superhost status. But I made myself co-host for this third account (using my other host profile as the co-host), so I can access all my listings in one place.