The Global Slowmad

As promised in our post about our AirBNB selection process, here are a few tips for saving money on short-term rentals. (Sorry, but we couldn’t resist the clickbaity title.) We’ll cover our strategies for hotel stays in another post.

1. Broaden your search parameters (if you are willing to sacrifice some comfort or convenience to save a little cash).

Hosts (and the AirBNB pricing algorithms that many hosts rely on) compete on price based on the inventory of available properties with similar characteristics, so it is to your advantage to increase that inventory.

To this end, getting further away from the city center and foregoing a clothes washer can open up a lot of inventory you might not see in an “ideal property” search. Likewise, think carefully about whether you really need a fully equipped kitchen with regular-sized appliances, dishwasher and so on, or if a hot plate and mini-fridge will meet your needs. (We can tolerate a stripped-down kitchen for short stays.) HVAC often isn’t necessary depending on the time of year — but you may still want functioning windows.

2. Book weekly (7+ days) or monthly (28+) stays to trigger long-term rental discounts.

This is perhaps the biggest opportunity for savings, as we’ve occasionally seen discounts as high as 50% off the regular nightly rate when staying for a month or more. Hosts typically are willing to offer a discounted nightly rate in exchange for the certainty of occupancy. Both the host and the guest benefit from the reduced need for professional cleaning and associated costs.

3. Use AirBNB gift cards to pay for your AirBNB stays.

Why? Because you often can purchase AirBNB gift cards at a discount from online gift card websites and occasionally can find them on sale at major retailers like Best Buy or Target. AirBNB gift cards do not expire, so we will stock up opportunistically when we find a good deal. (Stuart dragged Darla all over Tulsa looking for in-store deals last fall but ultimately found the best deals online during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.) A word of caution: gift cards are involved in a lot of criminal activity and are trafficked by a lot of nefarious types, so be sure to purchase them from a reputable seller and make sure that any physical cards you purchase have not been tampered with.

In addition, when purchasing AirBNB (or other) gift cards, try to leverage credit card bonus spend categories (like 5x at office supply stores via the no annual fee Chase Ink Cash card). We discovered that Staples will only let you purchase $1,500 in gift cards per day and required us to call them at one point to explain why we were purchasing so many gift cards and verify that the charges were not fraudulent. Similarly, we use credit cards with travel as a bonus spend category for any remaining rental expense.

4. Check for shopping portal rewards and discounts.

AirBNB does not show up often on shopping portals like Rakuten, TopCashBack and Capital One Shopping, but competing websites like VRBO, Expedia, etc. frequently offer healthy discounts for booking through a referral portal. It’s always worth checking a website like Cashbackmonitor or Savewise for any special promotions that might be available. Likewise, it is worth looking for any special credit card spending offers via Savewise or Cardpointers. Alternatively, you can collect a few bonus Delta miles (earning at 1x spend) by going through the Delta Airlines website and using their affiliate link to AirBNB when booking your reservation.

The holy grail is to stack your purchase of gift cards using a credit card with bonus category spend (or toward earning a signup bonus) and a special offer via a shopping portal. This won’t happen often. However, using all of the techniques described to this point, we have been able to save anywhere from 10-55% on each of our upcoming AirBNB stays, with an average savings of around 25% off the regular nightly rate.

5. Message the host directly and negotiate a lower rate on an individual basis.

We haven’t actually tried this technique ourselves but have read about it and believe it should work so long as you are still using the AirBNB platform to complete your purchase. Hosts are always free to set their own listing price on AirBNB.

We would be less comfortable negotiating a lower rate and paying the host outside AirBNB. For one thing, we would be a little concerned about losing the guest protections that AirBNB offers (although we’ve also heard that AirBNB is not always great about supporting guests who have a bad experience). More importantly, we have not reviewed the AirBNB terms of service but suspect this would be problematic from their perspective, as the company likely does not want people using its website to find properties to book privately outside the platform. We doubt this sort of thing is carefully monitored and enforced but do not want to risk getting banned from the platform.

A somewhat less controversial approach would be to perform a reverse image search to identify other websites where the same property is listed – potentially for a lower overall price. AirBNB’s listing fees tend to be a little higher than some of its competitors, so some incremental savings seemingly could be achieved this way. The host gets paid regardless, and it incentivizes price competition among listing platforms. In any event, this segues nicely to our next suggestion.

6. Run a quick search on other short-term rental platforms.

If you’re like us, there is some comfort in knowing that you have thoroughly explored every possible option before making a big purchase. In this context, this might include browsing listings on VRBO, Expedia, Booking.com, Vacasa, Cottages.com, Fairbnb, Atraveo, Agoda, Flipkey, Plum Guide and local property management companies. (I suspect we’re missing out on some referral commission income from these entities by not taking the time to sign up for their various affiliate networks and link to their websites, but that’s a task for another day.)

We’ve used VRBO with some success and have considered several others during the initial property search phase. At this point, we don’t consider any of them to be a serious threat to AirBNB, but it would be great to see a little more competition in the marketplace and I hope that we’re able to write about an amazing upstart short-term rental website someday. Maybe one of them will read this and offer us a free stay someplace fun. 🙂 In the meantime, caveat emptor.

7. Keep looking for a better deal.

Our final tip is something we learned from booking award flights and stays with airline and hotel points. (We’ll do a deep dive on our hotel and airline booking tactics in another post.) Specifically, an underappreciated benefit of booking properties with a free cancellation policy is that you can cancel your booking if you find a better deal.

AirBNB rental prices fluctuate based on available supply and anticipated demand. We have housing booked through next January and are happy with our current slate of properties and hosts, but we will continue to monitor reviews on the specific properties we have rented and prices in each local rental market up until the last applicable date we can cancel without penalty. Given recent stories about tourism trends in Europe, it would not be too surprising if some last-minute bargains become available in the coming months. We don’t anticipate changing any of the destinations on our itinerary, but we have the nomadic advantage of flexibility.

The Bottom Line

Rent is easily the biggest marginal cost we deal with as slow travelers, so we are willing to put in some effort up front to save money on our lengthy apartment stays. The value of your time may not justify putting in this much effort for a shorter rental. Also keep in mind that your potential savings is not the only valid consideration. Some might prefer to use a credit card with good travel protections for the peace of mind it brings rather than trying to maximize their savings. We won’t judge you.

We will be living in short-term rentals for at least eight more months. We have learned a lot of tricks so far but are always interested in learning more. Feel free to share your own creative housing tips in the comments for the benefit of the greater globalslowmad community!

AirBNB vs the other guys . . . we really should be getting paid for this kind of promotion!