Publishing a listing to Airbnb

This article explains how to publish a listing the requirements needed to ensure your listing is published successfully.

Publishing a listing is the action to take when you have a listing in Guesty and you want to recreate it automatically in Airbnb. Once you publish a listing, it can take up to 24 hours for Airbnb to approve. 

Before you begin

• Connect your Airbnb account to Guesty.
• Create a listing in Guesty.
• In several regions, you must register your listing and/or obtain a license in order to lease it. During the publishing process, Airbnb will check the listing’s address. If a license is required, publishing will fail. In this case, access the listing page in Airbnb, and enter your license and attempt to publish your listing again.
• Ensure your pricing, availability settings, and content comply with Airbnb’s requirements. Failure to do so could result in the listing failing to publish.

Publishing checklist

• Airbnb Circumvention Policy

  Avoid publishing a listing that was previously flagged, suspended, or permanently deleted by Airbnb. This may lead to your Airbnb account being removed.

• Property location
  • Check Airbnb's responsible hosting article, and learn if any hosting prerequisites or limitations apply to your region. For example, you must register your property before leasing it in some areas.
  • All address fields in Guesty must be filled in (street name, street number, country, state, and zip code.
  • If you set a listing type to "Entire home/apt", you must add an apartment number in the listing address.

• Listing status

  The listing in Guesty must be in listed status. Also, it must not be connected to an Airbnb listing (in any account). If it is, disconnect it first.

• Minimum and maximum number of nights

  Ensure your minimum and maximum number of nights per stay is aligned with your region’s requirements.

• Property type
  • If you set a property type to Apartment, you must add an apartment number.
  • For a multi-unit, ensure you use one of the following property types:
    • Apartment
    • Condominium
    • Dorm

• Listing type: Multi-units and sub-units

  When publishing a multi-unit in Guesty to Airbnb, we connect only the multi-unit’s main unit between the two platforms (and not its sub-units). To avoid syncing issues, connect only the main unit in Guesty during the publishing process.

  The multi-unit's main unit must follow all other requirements in this section.

  Check that the sub-units are not connected to Airbnb listings. When connecting a sub-unit in Guesty to a sub-unit in Airbnb, the listing will act as a standalone single unit.

• Title, house rules, and description fields
  • If your listing uses full sync, the Airbnb settings configured in Guesty, in all languages, will sync to Airbnb. These settings override your existing descriptions in the same languages. Descriptions in languages not supported in Guesty aren't overridden.
  • If your listing uses limited sync, manage your descriptions fields in Airbnb. They won't sync to Guesty. Change the listing's sync settings from full sync to limited sync to manage all content attributes, including the listing title and description fields, in Airbnb.
  • Changing a listing title or any description field in Airbnb disables your ability to update this field in Guesty, regardless of the sync type. In this case, the description field will be managed in Airbnb and “locked” from being changed from Guesty
  • Content limitations

    • All content should follow Airbnb's content policy.
    • Avoid using the following types of content in the listing's title or description fields, as it may cause an error in Guesty, or prevent you from publishing the listing to the channel. If you're not sure what causes the error, try adding one sentence at a time, and check for instructions appearing below the field.

    • Email addresses
    • Website links
    • Phone numbers
    • Emojis and symbols
    • Abbreviations (Mr, Ms)
    • Repetitive special characters
    • All-capitalized words (such as "CC").
    • Two words (or more) connected with a dot will be considered a website address and will cause an error to appear. I.e., [word].[word]. To solve it, ensure adding a space after the dot: [word]. [word].
    • Titles must be 1-50 characters long. Exceeding the maximum number of characters can cause the syncing to fail.
    • The summary field must be no longer than 500 characters. Exceeding the maximum number of characters can cause the syncing to fail

• Photos

  The listing must have at least one photo. Also, ensure your photos meet these requirements:

  • A photo resolution must not exceed 1920x1080px.
  • The file size must not exceed 4 MB.
  • The accepted file types are:
    • JPEG
    • JPG
    • PNG
    • GIF
• Rooms arrangement
  • Your bed arrangement must include at least one bed. Otherwise, the listing will be displayed as "Studio" in Airbnb.
  • Adding a name to a “shared space” or “bedroom” type won’t sync to Airbnb. A “shared space” type will display as  “living room” in Airbnb, while a “bedroom” type will show as “Bedroom X”.
  • If a "shared space" doesn't have a bed, it won’t be included in the "Where you will sleep" section in the Airbnb listing page
  • The order of your space arrangements won’t sync between Airbnb and Guesty. However, the number of bedrooms and shared spaces will sync.
  • Updating a bathroom room type to “shared bathroom” in Airbnb won’t sync to Guesty.
• Fees
  • Cleaning fee: Set the cleaning fee according to the following logic:
    • If the base price is less than $600, then the cleaning fee must be between $5 to $600.
    • If the base price is more than $600, then the cleaning fee must be less than $600+25% of the price per night.
  • Extra person fee: The charge for each additional guest can be set between USD 5 and USD 300.
  • Additional fees: All additional fees (including a pet fee), must be lower than the listing's base price.
  • Pet fees: If you want to allow pets in the property follow these steps to update the property house rules and add a pet fee before publishing the listing.
• External calendar (iCal)
  • A Guesty listing connected to Airbnb cannot be connected to an external calendar (iCal). Avoid connecting your iCal to Airbnb, as it will cause data discrepancies in your events.  

Publish a listing to Airbnb

You can publish a listing from the main integration page or a specific account integration.

Follow the steps below or watch our video.

Step by step:

1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
2. In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and select Growth mode.
3. Click Distribution.
4. Select Airbnb.
5. Under the Airbnb thumbnail, click Connected accounts. Next to the relevant Airbnb account, click . 

   Tip:

   You can also click Connected listings under the Airbnb thumbnail, and click Publish to channels. Then, select the relevant Airbnb account.

6. Select the relevant listing from the dropdown menu. You can search for it by typing its title, nickname, or part of the address.
7. Click Next.

8. Under “Booking settings”, Select Instant Booking or Request to Book

   Instant booking

   Reservations will automatically be approved when the listing is available for booking. The reservation status will be set to “Confirmed” and the relevant dates will be blocked in the calendar. You can add verification requirements that guests must meet for their reservation to be instantly approved. Read in which cases reservations will be received as requests to book regardless of your settings.

   Request to book

   Reservations will be received in a Reserved status, and the relevant dates will be blocked in the calendar when the listing is available for booking. You will need to set their statuses to Confirmed or Closed within 23:50 hours, otherwise the status will change to Expired, and the guest will receive a message that you’re unable to accept their reservation

9. Select a cancellation policy from the list.

   A New Listing Promotion will apply by default, granting a 20% discount for each of the first three bookings. If you don’t want to use this discount, uncheck the checkbox

   

10. Click Publish.

The listing status will change to “Pending”. Once approved by Airbnb, the status will change to "Connected" in Guesty and the listing will appear in Airbnb. The listing sync type is set to full sync by default, and you can manage your listing's rates, availability, and content directly in Guesty. Learn which data types are synced and where to manage it.

If you prefer to manage all the listing content attributes in Airbnb change the sync settings to limited sync after the listing is published to Airbnb.  

Syncing calendars

If you're using an external calendar (iCal): Airbnb disables the iCal connection once the listing is published, to avoid conflicting updates. All iCal calendar blocks and notes will be removed from the listing's calendar, and the iCal link will be removed from Airbnb. 

Encountering errors

Follow our troubleshooting guide if the listing’s status remains pending for more than 24 hours, or if your listing status changes to "Failed". If you can't resolve these issues, don’t disconnect your listing. Contact us for further assistance.