What will happen to (my) Airbnb?
I’ve been a host on Airbnb for a few years now, and the ongoing side income from our two apartments was part of my FIRE number (what’s FIRE? Read more here).
When we first planned to build our house with Airbnb-able apartments attached in 2014, the competition in Guanajuato was almost zero. Fast-forward to 2017 when it was finally built, and it seemed like everyone and their brother had a listing. Nevertheless, we were able to build up a lot of 5-star reviews and soon had very high occupancy, especially in our studio apartment.
Our studio is cozy and filled with Otomi embroidery, my fav.
Airbnb in the time of Corona
Along came corona and in March we had a slew of cancelations. Airbnb gave full refunds to those guests, which meant we lost out on thousands of dollars of already-booked reservations spanning from March until August. Good thing we weren’t counting on that money!
The silver lining for us of course was these cancelations made it possible for us to come home from Tanzania and stay in our own house, which had been booked for most of the summer. Plus, we do not owe anything on our house so the only on-going expense was for our house manager, whom we were able to continue to pay from Man Who Works’ salary. Many other hosts and managers are not so lucky.
Our cacti-fulled rooftop for Airbnb guests
Due to the government restrictions, Airbnb blocked reservations for April and May. As soon as June opened up, I was surprised by the number of requests we were getting- including from people outside of Mexico. One thing I thought we all learned from this pandemic was you shouldn’t plan very far ahead, but we are already getting inquiries for long-term bookings for next year.
The updated cleaning protocols from Airbnb recommend a day between bookings so you can wait 24 hours to enter the space after guests leave, which means fewer reservations are possible. There are also more steps to the cleaning, like washing every dish/fork/pot/utensil in the kitchen, even if you don’t know if it was used - so I have minimized the amount of kitchen stuff/decorative pillows/etc to save some time...but it still takes longer than before.
The Future of Airbnb (for me)
We’ve had a few bookings since our state started allowing short-term rentals again, mostly weekends and mostly coming from nearby. They have been increasing slowly but steadily. Since we have self-check-in, we don’t see most of them and just communicate via text.
I heard the Airbnb CEO on NPR’s How I Built This podcast say that now overall global bookings are back to or above normal, although Latin America and Asia are still behind and there is a shift away from cities towards more rural locations. The company is still planning on going public in the near future - if I were the type of person who tried to pick stocks, I might consider buying some (but I’m not!). However, if you are thinking of starting to host now, it could be a really good or really bad idea, depending on your location.
Guanajuato is a small city, and a major tourist destination for Mexicans (and a smaller but was growing number of international travelers). Based on the past few months, I’m cautiously optimistic that bookings will return to normal (minus those cleaning gap days), especially since our listings are private, social-distance friendly spaces.
We also stayed in two different Airbnbs outside of San Miguel de Allende last month, just for a slight change of scenery (and a pool!). I felt fine in those places, much better than in a hotel where we would have had to interact with a lot more people. My hunch (and Airbnb’s) is that other travelers will feel the same.
The Airbnb we stayed in outside of San Miguel de Allende
Overall, this year has taught me not to count on anything. There could (actually, will) be another pandemic, or Airbnb could get mad at me or change their algorithm and bury my listing. It’s nerve wracking (for me at least) to have all your eggs in a basket that you don’t have much control over.
That’s why it’s important to me to have multiple revenue streams - I still have my index funds, Man who Works still has a job and shares of his company, and we are looking at other non-Airbnb real estate investments. That combined with zero debt and the ability to live super-cheap is keeping me from a full-fledged freakout.