So first things first, what is Airbnb experiences? That’s exactly what I will explain article, including a step by step guide showing you hot to sign up.

In short, Airbnb Experiences is a new way to experience a city, unlike your typical city tour. Airbnb has added their own twist, allowing locals to host their own tours and activities. The result is an experience that will truly immerse you in the culture of a city, all from a locals perspective.

This service has been a game changer for Airbnb since launching in November 2016. It has opened up a whole new way of making money for hosts who don’t own property. Meanwhile guests can truly experience any city around the world and live like a local.

I have written this article with the host in mind. However, there are some gems for guests as well. I’ll show you how safe Airbnb Experiences are and how to find the best listings.

How does Airbnb Experiences work?

Okay, you may be wondering how does Airbnb Experiences work? Well think of it this way… You know how Airbnb works for booking properties, right? Well experiences work the same way.

Let’s take a closer look from the perspective of a host and a guest.

Hosts

If you love your city and want to showcase it to people around the world, then this is perfect for you. The good news is you don’t need to have a home to host an experience. All you need is an Airbnb account!

Next, register for Airbnb Experiences and follow the registration process. There are then 6 steps (which I will guide you through below) which wont take long to complete.

So what is an Airbnb Experience and what are some good ideas? Think of it as an opportunity to share your hobbies, skills or expertise with the world. You can be your very own tour guide and earn money doing something you love!

There isn’t a single particular market for experiences. It appeals to both guests and solo travelers. Meanwhile some use the platform to meet new people, while others like adventures. Below I’ll give you some great ideas of the type of experiences you could be hosting.

Guests

The unique selling point of staying in an Airbnb house is that it allows you to live like a local. But with Experiences, you can now truly experience a city like a real local.

One of the best things about this service is you don’t need to stay in an Airbnb home to book an experience. They usually last a few hours and are much cheaper than what tour companies can provide.

Popular experiences include things like city tours and walking treks. But the unique thing is locals are experts of their city, so it isn’t your typical guided tour. There are even experiences such as learning how to cook local dishes, workshops, Yoga, you name it!

How do I become an Airbnb Experience experience?

So now the big question, how do I become an Airbnb Experience experience?

Step 1 – Your Idea

First things first, you need to come up with an idea. Airbnb makes this process easy for you with a list of pre-determined themes to choose from.

You will need to select a primary theme from this list that best suits the type of experience you wish to provide. At the time of writing, there were 398 themes to choose from 26 different categories.

Category examples:

• Nightlife
• Food
• Animals
• Adrenaline sports
• Culture & history
• Art & design
• Outdoor activities

Airbnb gives you the opportunity to choose a second experience theme as well. Sometimes experiences can span more than one theme, so you can capture more areas.

The final step is to choose your location from the list of cities. Once you have have done this, it’s time to move on to Step 2!

Step 2 – Quality Standards

This step is pretty much just some reading material to make you familiar with Airbnb Experiences. You will need to meet three quality standards to host an experience.

First, Airbnb requires you to have expertise in an area. For example, you may be an artist, activist, chef, or local expert. In other words, hosts represent a wide range of backgrounds and abilities. Don’t be afraid to show your skills.

Second is access and the ability to give your unique perspective to guests. For example, you could provide access to places that only locals know about. Things such as family recipes, stories and communities. In other words, things guests can’t find easily on their own.

Last is connection. Airbnb expects you to inspire conversation and create belonging to guests. Your goal is to have guests come as strangers and leave as friends. You can do this by sharing personal stories, etc.

You’ll need to confirm to Airbnb that you understand their three quality standards. Then you can continue creating your Airbnb Experience.

Step 3 – Basic Information

As the title suggests, in this step you’ll enter in basic information about your service. There are three areas of focus; Language, Audience and Background.

First you must select the language of your Airbnb Experience. Simply select the languages that you speak fluently (you may select more than one).

Second is information about your audience. Here you can select if you have a specific audience, or if it’s for anyone. You may also select if you are hosting in connection with a partner group. There is also an option to state if you are a charity organisation.

Third is details on your background. Things like if you are hosting solo, or as part of a team. Plus how often you plan to host this experience. I have posted a screenshot of this section below to show you.

Step 4 – Your Experience

This step is where things start getting a bit more detailed. You will need to describe in detail your experience in this area. Airbnb will also expect you to provide some photos as well.

All in all, there are seven areas you will need to focus on which I have listed below. It’s quite detailed, but Airbnb is good at guiding you through this section. They’ll even provide you with some examples to help you out (as per the image below).

7 areas to detail your experience:

• About you
• Title
• Photos
• What you’ll do
• Where you’ll be
• What you’ll provide
• What guests should bring

Step 5 – Airbnb Experience Settings

Here is where you add the finishing touches to your brand new Airbnb Experience. There are a list of seven items to finish describing your listing.

Things you’ll need to describe are your guest settings, duration and price. You’ll also need to set a meeting location and further notes for guests to read.

Examples of settings:

• Meeting location
• Guest notes
• Guest requirements
• Group size
• Duration
• Guest pricing
• Booking settings

A lot of this section relates to guests. You can set minimum or maximum group sizes, or age requirements. There is also an option to request their ID, which helps keep Airbnb Experiences safe. Another option is to have a minimum time cut off for when guests can make a booking.

The duration of your experience will also need to be set, as well the start time. You will need to pin the starting location on a map, so guests are able to find you.

Finally, you will need to set your guest pricing. This is very important to get right and can make or break your Airbnb Experience. Keep in mind that Airbnb will take 20% of every booking in fees, which I’ll explain lower.

Step 6 – Submit your Airbnb Experience!

Congratulations! If you have made it this far, it means your listing is now complete!

This is your final chance to review your listing before publishing it. You’ll need to click three boxes to abide by Airbnb’s terms and conditions and then your work is now complete.

Once you have published and gone live, you will be able to start accepting bookings. This is an exciting time and I wish you well!

Airbnb Experience ideas

Ahhhhh, where to start? Coming up with Airbnb Experience ideas sounds like a hard thing, but actually, it’s quite easy.

All you need to do is ask yourself what am I good at? What are my hobbies? Where are my favourite parts of town? There are so may options available that coming up with experience ideas are more or less endless.

I showed you above there are 398 experience ideas across 26 categories that Airbnb offer. If you are unable to find some good ideas from that, then this may not be a good idea for you.

But to help you along, I will show you some popular ideas that other hosts have been making money with.

What percentage does Airbnb take for experiences?

You may be wondering what percentage does Airbnb take for experiences? It’s a very good question indeed.

“Airbnb charge a flat 20% fee for each experience.”Bnb Duck

Airbnb will take a flat 20% cut from each experience. By comparison, they charge hosts 3% for rental homes and guests up to 15% in service fees. Given the average Airbnb Experiences host between $50-$150, this is reasonable.

Thankfully Airbnb is quite transparent in how much they charge. In fact, they have a calculator you can play around with in the registration process. You may even remember seeing a screen shot of that in Step 5, by scrolling above.

So if you do decide to become a host, be sure to budget for a 20% fee charged for each guest.

Are Airbnb Experiences safe?

Airbnb has gone to great lengths to ensure their platform is safe. Hosts must go through a long signup process in order for Airbnb to approve them. So, are Airbnb Experiences safe?

Like anything, there is always going to be some degree of risk in these experiences. But luckily, there are some steps you can take to help ensure you remain safe. I touch on this in detail in my article is Airbnb safe?

Below are some red flags to look out for, as well ways to investigate an Airbnb Experience. You should always do research, first and foremost.

Read Reviews & Ratings

The very first thing you should do before booking an Airbnb Experience is to read the reviews. This will immediately give you an idea of what you can expect.

For starters, if you see an Experience with a rating of around 4 or below, this is a red flag. You need to ask yourself why is this experience rated so lowly?

The clues will be in the reviews. Guests are usually keen to write an honest review of their experience when they have a bad time. Scroll through the reviews and see if you can spot a common theme occurring. This will give you a good idea if this Airbnb experience is safe.

One tip is to look at how many total reviews an experience has. If a host has had 100+ total reviews and averages 4.8 stars, odds are this is a safe experience!

Quality & Eligibility Standards

Airbnb has very stringent quality standards for their Experiences. Hosts must meet very strict criteria in order for Airbnb to accept them on the platform. You can read more about those standards at Airbnb.com.

In fact, you may remember me speaking about them in Step 3 earlier in this article. Do you remember Expertise, Insider Access and Connection?

Airbnb will review every experience submitted in minute detail, from top to bottom. A host must meet this criteria or else Airbnb will deny the application. And they do a damn fine job too, I must admit.

So rest easy, Airbnb are doing their best to ensure their platform is as safe as possible. Unsafe hosts wont last long as they will expose themselves quickly, which will lead to removal.

Look for red flags

When researching if an Airbnb Experience is safe, it pays to look for red flags. It can be tricky to do, but there some common things to look for.

First, last minute changes from your hosts are a warning sign! There should be no reason why something should change at the last minute. Sometimes things can go wrong, I get that, but just be careful.

Second, pay attention to photos. Airbnb requires hosts to post high definition and detailed photos on their experience platform. So if you notice low quality photos, or hiccups of some sort, it’s a warning sign.

Third, a good host will communicate well. If your hosts isn’t replying to you, or takes days to respond, this is another red flag.

And finally, if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is. This is why it pays to look at the guest reviews and ratings, just to be sure. Check out this article on how to find the best Airbnb deals.

How can I promote my Airbnb Experience?

Okay, you’ve created a great listing, now you’re asking how can I promote my Airbnb experience?

This is a whole topic within itself and one I will write about in the future! But for now, I’ll run you through some quick ideas that will work for you.

First things first, the very best thing you can do is write a great listing page. By that, I mean a catchy title and awesome photos that make you stand out on the search results.

Most of your traffic will come from the Airbnb Experiences search results, so you must stand out. Eventually you’ll get more and more bookings and good reviews will start coming in. Getting good reviews and good ratings is the best thing you can do to promote your listing, as it builds trust.

Next you can look at some external ways to promote your Airbnb experience. One great way is using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

You could even create a website to promote your experience and submit it to tourism websites. Offline, it’s a good idea to print brochures and flyers and leave them around town. These are both killer ways to promote your Airbnb experience.

I’ve seen hosts promote their experience on online blogs and tourism forums to get traffic also. The list is endless. Check out this website for some more good ideas.

Ideas to promote your Airbnb Experience

• An awesome listing title & photos
• Create a website and promote on tourism websites
• Hand out brochures and flyers around town
• Social media platforms, eg. Facebook, Instagram, etc
• Word of mouth & getting 5 star reviews
• Create special offers and bonus codes

In summary, as you can see there are many ways to promote your Airbnb Experience. But it all comes back to getting good reviews and star ratings.

Conclusion

Hopefully by now you have a good idea of what Airbnb Experiences are. And also, how to create your very own listing.

To summarise the article, it will take you between 30-60 minutes to create a listing. There are six steps involved and it’s quite detailed. You’ll have 398 themes to choose from 26 different categories. That’s a lot of options!

Yes, Airbnb Experiences is safe! I showed you some ways to determine if an experience is safe or not. The best way is to look at reviews and check their rating. Also, remember that the unsafe hosts will not last long on this platform at all. Airbnb vets all hosts in great detail.

There are also many great ways to promote your experience. But without doubt, writing a catchy title and having awesome photos is the best way. Next is to get good reviews. Do these three things well and you will make good money.

I wish you all the best! And as usual, I would love to hear some of your ideas in the comments sections below.

You May like…