The Airbnb game as we know it is OVER. THESE are the new rules for 2025.

the Airbnb game as we know it is over as in whatever worked three five 7 years ago will leave you broke in 2025 if you continue to play by the old set of rules by the way if you don't know who I am I'm Rob abis solo I am the largest short-term rental educator in the world and I am the founder and CEO of host camp. com the number one short-term rental resource in the world and let me tell you I've made lots of money on Airbnb and I've also lost lots of money on Airbnb but the thing is that every mistake that I've ever made on Airbnb has taught me something very valuable and those lessons have helped me turn my losses into millions of dollars and booked revenue on the Airbnb platform today I want to share what I've learned about the new Airbnb game or what I like to call Airbnb 2. 0 if you stick around I'm going to show you how to win in this new era of Airbnb I'm actually going to break down a recent renovation that I did on one of my failing properties that more than doubled my profits and I'm going to reveal the rules that I'm living by going into 2025 to be a successful host on today's episode of Rob bill [Music] before we get started I just wanted to say that I am so excited that was weird but I'm so excited because it's Black Friday and when Black Friday is here it means that I usually put together an insanely epic deal for people that are looking to break into the Airbnb game maybe you're already an Airbnb host and you want to figure out how to make more money with your property this deal is for all of you and let me just say it's the best one I've ever put together and I've also heard that you maybe get a one month membership access do host camp.

com I've said too much if you want to learn more about the greatest Black Friday deal that I've ever put together then you're going to want to click the link down below I promise you it'll be worth your time okay back to the video so I want to set the stage and say that over the last 7 years I've accumulated over 40 doors the thing is I've bought a lot of stuff over the years that happened to work but if I could go back and change things there are probably a few properties that I would rethink buying like this property right here it's located here in Texas and it cost us about $250,000 and when we it we thought it was going to print cash and it did not print cash yeah it didn't go according to plan now it wasn't a total dog it was making a profit I would say it was probably making between 500 to 1,000 bucks a month which is not nothing but think about the Management and Resources that go into a short-term rental 500 to 1,000 bucks isn't really all that much especially when you have other partners in the deal that you're splitting that pie with which I did and so this is the very interesting conundrum that a lot of short-term rental hosts find themselves in as well as just a lot of Real Estate investors in general most people would have seen this property and said hey it's not a winner let's cut bait and let's get out of here or let's just say that this property was breaking even or even losing a little bit of money which some months we did you'd probably think let's throw in the towel maybe we take a small loss here because maybe we don't have that much Equity or maybe we're going to have to take pennies on the dollar for the furniture you get out of that deal and maybe you have a small black eye but life goes on and for a bit there I did feel on the ropes with this property and I had a lot of those same thoughts but I decided to take a different approach I asked myself this can I reinvest into the property turn it around and receive a better Roi than going out and buying a new property my hypothesis was yes and I'll show you why but first I got to switch sets here cuz my wife just pulled in with the kids and as soon as they see this it's going to be crazy it's going to be pandemonium they're going to be yelling they won't let me film so I got to go give me one second hello Daddy found my oh my goodness say hi hi Rooker say hi hi babe say hi say like And subscribe or else I'll zoom in on your face so here's the before of this property as you can see not the most amazing house and I would even say that the interior design was kind of like what worked at the time that we set it up which is nice Target stuff some World Market stuff in there but really I think that the my for this property was the backyard you can see there's a deck there's a cowboy pool there's this other random Cowboy pool in the back and it's probably a nice enough place to hang out with your friends and family but there really isn't much to it and I honestly think that this backyard is the jam of like 80% of Airbnb hosts I think a lot of hosts would say oh my gosh yeah look at that backyard nice lighting you got some chairs this is great what else can you do to improve it and that attitude really exemplifies my entire Journey which is hey let's launch stuff and figure it out and we launched it and we never really figured it out but then we turned this backyard that you see right here into this backyard which is a game day Oasis and as you can see this backyard is now a pretty curated experience we got a pickle ball court we've got a fire pit setup We've Got Game Day murals we got a game day shed with the pool table on it we got a cornhole area and a little mini golf station all of this that you see right here cost us about $36,000 and this $36,000 investment didn't just save the property but it actually made it one of the most profitable properties in my entire portfolio but we'll get to that a little later what is that line oh it's the Sun so weird I've Never filmed in here before but kind of a Vibe right this is my master bedroom by the way what do you think you like what do you think about the wallpaper what do you think about this weird lady behind me let me know in the comments down below okay okay back to the story so this whole video isn't just about one property it's about understanding the bigger picture this new game that we're playing as Airbnb hosts you see this transformation wasn't just luck it actually followed a framework a set of new rules that every host needs to play by if they want to succeed in 2025 and by the way these aren't just theories these are hard learned lessons for my wins and my losses so let's talk about the rules of Airbnb 2. 0 starting with the one that changed the game for me and that's create an experience that your guest will never forget experience matters this is rule number one and I know it's like oh du experience matters but I want to dive into this a little bit for a long time the gold standard was have nice furniture take nice photography well guess what everyone went on to watch the raw built YouTube channel and everyone does that now that's now the bare minimum and when people are comparing you against your competition guess what everyone's got nice bedrooms a nice kitchen a dining room everyone's got a nice living room but your backyard is how you play to win I don't know why I did that and so for this property the backyard was fine it was kind of boring but guess what didn't take very much for my competitors to beat me which they did for a long time so we built a pickle ball court we added a fire pit we added string lights and wouldn't you know it bookings skyrocketed but I'll show you those numbers a little later rule number two themes Drve bookings we went all in on the game day theme because this is a college town what is important to the Avatar of people coming to my town school spirit football a lot of parents coming in to visit their kids that are in college so we went all in on the game day theme yes why do you have that I need that come here can man record do you like pickle ball hey don't touch my microphone high five all right high five run along now and we're back we went all in on the game day theme get out of here if you mark it to everyone you mark it to No One this onec helped us attract the exact types of guests that we wanted sports fans looking for the ultimate tailgate weekend that will pay a premium for weekend home games and on top of that our spring and summer bookings are now on fire because of graduation ceremonies rule number three copy the comps and then one up them look at what your competitors are doing match their amenities and then add something unique to your property that makes it stand out amongst your competitors but the matching part is super important remember earlier when I said everyone's got a living room everyone's got a bedroom everyone's got a kitchen because everyone's got those you're now judged on all the extra stuff outside of that I'll give you a really good example of this the Smoky Mountains this is the largest short-term rental market in the entire country and the number one amenity is a hot tub if you don't have a hot tub you cannot compete with the competition you can have a much nicer house than your neighbor but if your neighbor has a hot tub and you don't your neighbor will eat your lunch lunch has been cancelled today due to lack of hustle deal with it so if you want to Baseline stay competitive you need a hot tub and so that is the perfect example of copying your comps but now you got to one up them now you got to think about all of the extra amenities that play out there movie theaters arcade rooms pool tables Etc Airbnb rule number four and this could arguably be the most important rule stop relying on Airbnb huh what Rob I thought you're the Airbnb guy yeah I said it crazy right I know a couple years ago in October at the same property I had the last week unbooked and I had this nice family reach out and it was going to be like a $2,000 reservation Airbnb blocked it they sensed that it would be a party well the guest was of course frustrated which I understand and we let them know hey it's because Airbnb thinks it's a party sorry you know we can't help you and they're like no we're old ladies we're not here to party we're here to visit our kids is there anything you can do we called Airbnb we emailed support and Airbnb kept shutting it down over and over and over again and let me tell you that booking was critical to my bottom line that booking was the difference between me posting a massive profit or a massive loss and it sucked well funny story they ended up finding me offline and booked directly so of course I took that booking and I ended up posting a $15 $1,700 profit as a result and that helped me realize this really interesting conundrum Airbnb is kind of like a job you can get fired at any time of course not literally but figuratively because there was also a time where I got locked out of my account for a few days and that red havoc on the business for those few days because I could not communicate with my guests at all and I also know a lot of season hosts who have been hosting for years on Airbnb who have gotten locked out for a month and so I've realized over the years that of course I'm grateful for everything that Airbnb has given me but I can't put all my eggs in one basket so you have to have to have to no negotiation set up a direct booking website and start building that business up because right now it might be 5% it might be 10% of your total bookings but eventually it could be 30 to 50% of your bookings that's my goal and the big Pie in the Sky goal for me is to eventually have the majority of my bookings come Direct Airbnb is an amazing platform but guess what they're your boss and they can fire you at any time so diversify by having a direct booking website list on verbo list on Furnish finder list on booking.