What does AirBnB mean? It’s a crowd-sourcing website that arose when the sharing economy took off. It was based on the exchange of a spare room with shared facilities such as a bathroom and kitchen, or an entire apartment, for a low cost and (usually) short-term rental. Now, AirBnB is used by holiday-makers and travellers of all kinds. Everyone from those who want to rent out a spare room to those who have a collection of serviced apartments on offer can use the platform and app to advertises. There are places to stay for anyone needing a night for a work conference right up to those who need a home from home to live and work for a few months.
In our experience, AirBnB can provide superior space and comfort to a similarly priced hotel particularly for longer stays. It can also offer great value for families, groups of 3 or more sharing the cost, and for work trips. But, we’ve a few tricks we’ve learned to help you select the best AirBnB available in your destination on your budget.
How to Get the Best AirBnB
- Start researching, and book as far ahead, as possible. Start making a Wishlist for your destination. This is when you have most choice. Depending on your criteria, you can book beautiful, luxurious (including budget-friendly) properties.
- Alternatively – if you have lots of flexibility on when you can travel and what facilities you’ll need, and if budget is your number one concern – you could take the chance of leaving it very late to book. In many cases, AirBnB owners will reduce the price if their accommodation has not yet been booked up a few days in advance. Before doing this, though, conduct searches for that property a few days from today, to see if the owner tends to reduce the price for last-minute bookings.
- Where are you going to be visiting when there? If you plan to do some sightseeing, or if you’re planning a work trip with a small number of work locations, try selecting a property that is closest to the majority of the places you want to visit, to minimise your daily travelling time and costs. Again, this is one for those on a budget.
- Make sure you select the most basic filters, to avoid searching through unsuitable properties:
- First, type in a Location, Dates and Number of Guests. Once you click Search, you can then begin to apply further filters.
- Filter for Price Range, Type of Place and Property Type are usually the most important features
- After that, you’ll usually want to refine your shortlist using the Amenities, Accessibility Features (e.g. such as ‘Roll-in shower with chair’) and/or Host Language. For work trips, you may want to filter for Wifi and Dedicated workspace, for example. If you’re staying more than a week, filter for Free parking or Washing machine.
- Filter your search by one or more of the Top-tier stays for a customised, quality experience:
- Superhost allows you to stay with hosts and properties that have been reviewed at 4.8 stars or above
- AirBnB Plus will select designer properties
- AirBnB Luxe will select those with additional services
- Finally, once you have a short Wishlist, you can add a further safeguard by preferring properties that have at least dozens of great reviews.
Pro Tips
- You may find gorgeous properties that are both well located and within your budget, but have no reviews. If so, click on the host’s name, to see if they offer additional properties. If they do, and those properties have great reviews, we think it’s a good sign. We do not recommend staying at place with no reviews or a small number of reviews.
- If you’re unsure about a property or its location, click ‘Contact host’ and ask a question. You’ll often get lots more than you asked for, including directions and (very often) an offer to arrange transport to and from your arrival airport or station. In our experience, hosts are super helpful. They want you to enjoy your travels, take away great memories of their country and most of all, write great reviews of their AirBnB property.
- AirBnB hosts may ask for your passport number once you arrive. In our experience, this is fairly standard, at least across Europe, as many hosts are required by local laws to register you as a guest in their country with local authorities. We do not recommend handing your passport over to anyone, however.
AirBnB Offers More Than Just Accommodation
AirBnB provides automatic protection against cancellations, Find out about AirCover, AirBnB’s built-in protection for guests. And once you’ve booked your accommodation, you can search for Experiences in the area in which you’re staying.
Information
Find out more at the AirBnB website.