Are most people losing money on Airbnb?

Everyone is quite busy undercutting each other.
Especially in the big cities with large quantities of apartments.

 

I was going to make the same point. If we have a couple of spare nights, we might put the price down to maybe $120 just to fill that space but generally we charge $180 and in school holidays/ weekends go up much higher.

The vast majority of our bookings (for our 2 bedroom apartment) are families who appreciate having bedrooms and a kitchen, somewhere to sit. Me personally, if I am staying somewhere for more than a couple of nights, i'd much rather having a kitchen and separate bedroom so I can have somewhere to sit rather than just sitting on my bed each night.

In Melbourne, generally long term rental returns are garbage- so even if you only break even with airbnb, you are still up on the loss you'd generally make.

We have worked really hard on our airbnb, and have been selected to be on Airbnb Select- i'd say we have at least 85% occupancy and are definitely making a profit. It isn't for everyone though - it's not a passive investment and guests are definitely getting more fussy, it's absolutely worth it when every few days you get an email from airbnb saying "we just paid you X hundreds of dollars".

 

I like having to do very little work and seeing money hit my bank account without getting any emails.

I also enjoy the security/knowledge that I have someone in my property for the next 12 months (just renewed lease) so I can plan how to spend my $xx,000 - these are the emails I like to receive.

 

I see. I feel it's hard to implement and keep a check for the authorities though. Even though AirBnB is totally illegal in a strict country like Singapore, there are still many people openly listing their places on AirBnB.

 

Not sure where you got those stats but they are way off:

In the 5 years up to 2016/17, there were an average of 747,035 international visitors to Cairns. Average length stay for international visitors was 6.5 days, lower than the average for Queensland.

https://economy.id.com.au/cairns/tourism-visitors-nights

https://economy.id.com.au/cairns/tourism-visitor-summary

 

You would also have to look at vacancy rates .In areas with high levels of occupancy especially during peak season there no need to discount ,as you are just undercutting youself.
Obviuosly in areas or times with low vacancy rates it can work the other way.

 

Yes, my bad sorry. In my haste I failed to see visitor nights and only saw visitors.

This was the page I went off:

https://economy.id.com.au/cairns/tourism-visitor-summary?WebID=10

Feels like there's 9 million people visiting sometimes