How To Get A Discount On Airbnb: 7 Ways You Never Thought About

Are you planning a vacation and wondering how to get a discount on Airbnb properties for your trip? I can help you with a couple different strategies from a hosts perspective to save you a few bucks (or a lot of bucks!) on your next vacation.

Now some Airbnb hosts are going to hate that I’m giving away these secrets and others will be glad! In the host community, it’s no secret that competition in large destination markets is getting intense so as a guest you can use this to your advantage.

Whether your trip is for a vacation or a long term stay, these tactic are tried and true in the travel world on getting a good deal on your next stay without using an Airbnb discount code.

This post is all about how to get a discount on Airbnb.

How To Get A Discount On Airbnb

1. Plan a week or month long stay

Many Airbnb listings will have a discount built in for a week or month long stay. Airbnb has a search filter that allows you to search for these kinds of stays and will automatically show you the discounted pricing for your stay so you can easily compare what you are getting by listing for the area you wish to travel too.

Looking to stay for a month? I have listings that are perfectly catered towards that, check them out here!

2. Book an extra night

If you’re looking to go somewhere for 5 or 6 nights, look at the week long stay price to see if that’s actually cheaper than the 5/6 night pricing. A lot of times with the week long discount, the pricing of the listing will be equivalent to a week long stay. You get more for your money and a longer vacation, win-win!

You could also look at the host’s calendar and see if there are any 3-4 night gaps between listings and ask the host directly if they will give you a discount on booking that final night. The best way to approach this would be: “Hi! I was looking at booking a 2 night stay but saw you have a 3 night opening for the dates I was looking at. If I was to extend my trip one more night, would you be willing to give me that last night for 50% off?” This WILL work because (1) most hosts will not accept 1 night bookings and (2) it’s revenue the host would not be getting anyway.

3. Find new listing discounts

New listings can be scary because as a guest you will be trying out the property for the first time but you have a lot of leverage here. Airbnb first time discount of 20% is automatically added on any new listings. Hosts can decline this but it’s strongly encouraged by the platform so many first time hosts will move forward with extending the discount.

If you find a new listing and the host isn’t offering a discount, you could ask the host and in exchange offer to leave a raving review and provide detailed feedback on what you felt the listing needed for other guests to stay more comfortably. Airbnb frowns upon negotiating a discount for a 5 star review so don’t say you will leave a 5 star review but rather a “raving” review.

P.S. If you’re a new host, I can get you paid an additional $40 from Airbnb, just for hosting your first guest!

4. Find last minute booking discounts

A lot of hosts use Airbnb’s pricing tool that will heavily discount a property that is not booked for last minute dates. More experienced hosts who know how to get their calendar filled are going to have higher prices as they bet people booking their place last minute will pay what they need to pay because they need somewhere to sleep. This is the same philosophy hotels use. A smaller, less experienced host is just going to try and book up their calendar as much as they can and cheap pricing is the number one way to do that.

5. Ask the host directly

As a host, I have had so many guests ask for a discount for any number of reasons and depending on the season, my situation and goals for the listing, I will sometimes say yes. Now as a guest, the best thing you can do to get that host, or any host, to be your Airbnb coupon code machine is to have a lot of 5 star reviews on your guest profile. This is your Airbnb resume and will make these hosts more likely to extend that discount.

6. Have flexible travel dates

If you have flexible travel dates, you could get great deals on booking Airbnb properties in areas that are normally super expensive for a way better deal. This may mean going to a location in off peak time but, hey, less tourists, right? Build that flexibility muscle and get better deals in the process.

Are you a host but looking for some help? I can be your Co-Host! Check it out here!

7. Use the listings direct booking website

Ok, ok, ok, I know this is a blog about Airbnb Tips but sometimes it’s better to book through another platform. Airbnb is my personal favorite, hence why I have blog dedicated to teaching the platform, but they are an OTA (online travel agency) at the end of the day. Which means, they charge both the guest and the host a fee for booking on their platform. That fee you pay as a guest does not go to the host, it goes to Airbnb and on the reverse end the host is charged a fee (anywhere from 3-15% per booking!) based on total revenue for that booking. How do you get around that fee? By going to the listings direct booking website.

How to get a discount on Airbnb properties using a simple Google Search

Now you are probably wondering, how do I find out if the property I want to book on Airbnb has a direct booking website? Or how do I know if I can trust the host of a direct booking website? I like reviews and making sure other guests had a good experience.

Yes, these are all questions that I can help answer! Google is going to be our best friend here and this method of cross examination for checking reviews and looking for discounts is going to be the best way for you to get a discount on Airbnb properties every single time.

Now first, why would a host have direct booking? More than ever, it’s important for business owners (hosts) to own their customer list. Algorithms and platform rules prove to be a huge prohibitive factor for hosts to grow their short term rental businesses. With that in mind, let’s get to it.

The reverse Google image search feature, AKA, the discount machine!

First, the easiest way to do this is to open Chrome and search for properties on Airbnb at the destination you have in mind. Click on a listing and click over to the listing photos. Find the listing cover photo and right click on it. If you’re in the Chrome browser, one of the options will be to “Search Image with Google” See the screenshot below:

If you don’t have Google Chrome, go to Google.com and in the search bar there is the Lens option on the right hand side, click that and a new search box will populate. You can drag and drop the image into the search box or place the image URL in the search box, see below:

Drag the cover photo into the reverse image search feature and see what populates! If a direct booking site is up for that property, it should come up in the Google search. You can cross reference the Airbnb listing with the direct booking site on everything from price, reviews, location, photos and discounts available. It will almost always be cheaper to book directly with a host than booking through Airbnb.

This post was all about how to get a discount on Airbnb.