Strategies for Airbnb Slow Season in Colombia

Here are seven strategies for Airbnb slow season in Colombia based on my experience as an Airbnb host.

1. Lower Your Night Rate

Lower the price more than you think. Hotels generally lower prices up to 40 percent during the slow season and they are professionals with numerous marketing channels and teams devoted to getting the pricing right.

You need to understand your fixed costs (expenses paid regardless of a guest occupying your space like rent or mortgage) and variable costs (expenses paid only when a guest is in your space like electricity) to know what your true minimum price should be.

To clarify your minimum, it represents the amount you would accept for a reservation that allows you to profit instead of keeping the place vacant.

As mentioned above, there is math involved to get to this number. It should equal your fixed costs plus variable costs for that reservation plus how much you value your time.

A minimum is not what you would like to get. A lot of hosts make this mistake and price their minimum way too high during the Airbnb slow season.

In rare situations, like during the coronavirus pandemic, your minimum actually decreases to cover only your variable costs in order to lose less money.

For example, if your variable costs (water, electricity, gas, etc.) are $25 per night and your fixed cost (mortgage, internet, taxes, etc.) are $75, your minimum during desperate times like coronavirus should be anything above $25 per night. That’s because you will lose less money having it rented. Even at $30 per night, that extra $5 ($30 minus $25) will go towards decreasing your fixed costs or net loss.

Inside an apartment in Medellín with a view

2. Adjust Calendar Availability

In general, I recommend Airbnb hosts in Colombia should keep their calendar open three to six months into the future.

This is because you can charge a premium to guests booking 3+ months out, but a guest booking 6+ months in advance probably knows something that you do not (upcoming conference, concert, etc.).

With this strategy, I recommend you open your calendar availability to 12 months at the start of busy season. Three months later, adjust your availability to 9 months. Three months later, adjust to 6 months.

This strategy, though not perfect due to Airbnb limitations, essentially allows guests to book through next year’s slow season where price maximization is much less a concern than occupancy rate.

Here’s an example…

Let’s assume Airbnb slow season starts in February and ends in October. In this case, you would open your calendar to 12 months of availability in August so that a guest can book throughout next year’s slow season (starting February of the following year).

Around January, you would change your calendar availability to 9 months. And around March, you would change to 6 months. Around June, you would change to 3 months until next August when you open your calendar to 12 months and repeat.

The concept behind this strategy is to secure some bonus reservations from the guests who are planning ahead six or more months in advance of Airbnb slow season in Colombia. If you have 5 days booked on a few of your slow season months, this relieves a lot of pressure.

3. Add the Word “Discount” to Your Airbnb Title

Specifically, for the slow season, you can add verbiage into your title like ‘Extra 10% Discount’. I see this so rarely on Airbnb in Colombia, that it will get future potential guests clicking on your listing, at the very least.

The idea is that a guest has already narrowed down your listing to their ideal budget and then seeing you offer an extra 10% discount, they would be crazy not to have a look, at the very least.

Be sure to specify the details of this discount in your listing description. If thi9s works well, you might consider increasing your pricing to offset the discount a bit … or, using it as one of your busy season strategies.

The downside to using this strategy is that it will require you to manually send the future potential guest a special offer.

4. Offer a ‘Friends + Family’ Airbnb Discount

This strategy is 100 percent automated.

If you use a service like Smartbnb , you can send out an automatic message to the guest a few days or a week after check-out letting them know that you offer an extra percentage discount to the guest and any of their friends or family (as long as they mention the guest by name) during the slow season.

You can get creative and offer the discount for only midweek stays, for stays of four nights or longer, for stays on any day in particular months, etc.

5. Increase Percentage Discounts

To attract longer-term guests in Colombia, increase those monthly and weekly booking discounts.

In general, a week-long reservation in Colombia typically gets a 10 percent discount and a month gets a 20 percent discount.

Filter the search for your city in Colombia, price range, and the number of beds to see how much competitors are offering for a discount and beat the competition out by 5 percent or more.