BETTER AIRBNB PHOTOS

A Carnegie-Mellon study identified 12 parameters for Airbnb photos that can be optimized and improved.

After analyzing 510,000 photos, they characterized 72% of images as “low-quality.” More dramatically, if those listing photos were improved, they calculated that a rental could earn an extra 60+ bookings per year.

If you’re charging only $100 per night, that would be over $6,000 per year in extra revenue!

Do we have your attention?

Good.

Because the conclusion of that study was,

“This contributes to, and bridges, the photography and marketing (e.g., staging) literature, which has traditionally ignored the demand side (photography) or did not implement systematic characterization of images (marketing). Lastly, these results provide immediate insights for housing and lodging e-commerce managers (of Airbnb, hotels, realtors, etc.) to optimize product images for increased demand.“

(Emphasis ours.)

Translation: Improving your photos can drastically increase demand for your rental, and ain’t no one doing it!

Your listing photos directly affect your revenue in the following ways:

Then there’s leveraging Airbnb’s (and most other short term rental platforms) algorithm that favors listings with higher click-through rates.

If you’ve ever seen a listing that had a notification stating something like “Better hurry! This place is popular and has been viewed 500 times in the last week,” then you know how important click-through rates are to get your listing seen on a search result page.

In other words, more clicks onto your listing will boost you up in the search results.

This has a snowball effect, where higher visibility leads to even more clicks and bookings.

And the best part?

Now you might be thinking – “But I’m not a professional photographer, how can I improve my photos?”

Well we ARE professional photographers…

And that’s exactly what we want to help you realize today: that you can be the photographer of your own listing.

Want proof?

Here are some photos taken with a professional camera and some smartphone shots mixed in. See if you can spot the difference.

Could you tell which one(s) were the smartphone photos?

No?

That’s because photography is less about your equipment and more about how you use it.

Plus, the latest smartphone cameras are actually pretty dang good…when used correctly.

So if you’re ready to take control of your listing’s photography and learn about how we use visual storytelling to attract more guests, we would like to invite you to our 3-part email series on Airbnb photography where you’ll learn the ins and outs of taking amazing photos with just your smartphone.

(However, if you’re still part of the 72% of hosts who think their photos don’t need any improvement then this isn’t for you.)