Sooner or later it’s likely you’ll need an extra set of hands to help you manage your Airbnb’s communications and check-in. Instead of just handing out the username of your account and passwords to your account, Airbnb has created Co-Hosts to help make your life easier.
What Are Co-Hosts?
A Co-Host is a trusted person/company that the listing owner has enlisted to help manage the property rental. They have their own Airbnb account and the listing owner gives them permission to see the master account. Co-Hosts can be anyone that you trust to look after the property, from cleaners, friends and even neighbours.
What Can Co-Hosts Do?
Co-Hosts functions on the Airbnb system are limited to messaging guests, creating listings, manage the reservations, writing reviews, along with updating the pricing and calendar. They can also do any physical activities themselves at the apartments. For example, cleaning and maintenance, quality controls and welcoming guests in person.
What Can’t Co-Hosts Do?
Co-Hosts, can’t access any payment details or view any communications before they were added as a co-host. They can’t payout anyone or requests monies.
How to Add A Co-Host
Adding a co-host is straightforward, simply find your listing that you wish to add them to, edit the listing and select co-hosts. You then just need to enter their email address. The co-host will then be notified of this change and will have the opportunity to accept or decline the request.
You can add a maximum of three co-hosts per listing to help with your management.
After you added a Co-Host
Once you have added a co-host you should agree with them who will respond to messages. As you may find that message are duplicated or you may contradict each other.
You should also arrange how you will reimburse each co-host for their time and expenses.
Co-hosts can be removed at any time by visiting the listing of your account.
Pro Tip for New Hosts
If you have a friend that has a well established Airbnb account, you can change your the status of your co-host from Secondary to Primary. This means that when someone finds the listing, they will actually see the co-hosts profile picture and past reviews. All contact information from the co-host will be given instead of your own details. This is great for new hosts beginning their home sharing journey. Guests will have the confidence to book as you already have reviews thus allowing you to achieve maximum income from the start. As you get new reviews this will belong to your account and not the co-hosts. Once you have enough reviews you can switch back to being the primary host.
Conclusion
If you have a day job or are often busy you should 100% add a co-host to your account. This will help to maintain your response rate and, ultimately, help you achieve superhost status. It cost nothing to add so it’s definitely a worthwhile feature to add.
