How to Start an Airbnb: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before My First Listing

When I put my first property on Airbnb in 2018, I honestly thought I knew Airbnb. I’d stayed in them in more than 40 countries. I’d woken up to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, fallen asleep to the Mediterranean in Montenegro and drunk a glass of wine staring at a glacier in New Zealand, all because strangers opened their homes to me. So when I had a chance to open mine, my thinking was: why not? Let someone else watch a cyclone roll in over the marina, or spot a croc jumping in the distance, from my living room.

I had moved to Australia permanently at the end of 2017, after more than ten years of fly-in, fly-out work. I was so tired of not having a home. I bought a two-bedroom apartment in Darwin, spent about $40,000 on a renovation, and finally had a place that felt like mine. A year later I moved in with my partner and didn’t want to hand a fully furnished home to a long-term tenant, in case the relationship didn’t work out. Short-term hosting gave me flexibility, and it felt like a good way to pay back everyone who had hosted me.

Here’s what I didn’t know: anything. I knew Airbnb as a guest, and hosting turned out to be a completely different job. I didn’t know a management industry for short-term rentals even existed until 2021, which is when I started my own. Until then I did everything myself, including the cleaning, the laundry, the linen and the guest messages, and I did it around a full-time engineering job.

It worked. Airbnb made me a Superhost, and what I learned on the way gave me the confidence to build a management business and look after more than 100 properties for owners who trusted me with their investments. But if I knew in 2018 what I know now, I would have done a lot of things differently. This is the guide I wish I’d had before I clicked Publish. Whether you’re turning an apartment, a house or a granny flat into an Airbnb or short-term rental, the steps are the same.

My first launch was a roller coaster

Going live in Darwin was a roller coaster, mostly because I couldn’t decide on the order. Do I take the photos and publish so bookings can start coming in and I can stop worrying about the mortgage, or do I get everything perfect first? My father is a perfectionist, so I grew up with very high standards, and my brain wanted every box ticked before anyone saw the listing.

In the end I made the beds, took the photos myself with my professional camera, and created the listing. Darwin is a seasonal market, with a six-month dry season that makes it paradise and a six-month wet season that turns it into hell. I went live two to three months before the dry season, and within a week my dry-season calendar was completely booked. I had no idea that half of Melbourne and Sydney run to Darwin to escape their cold winters. I was new to Australia, new to Darwin and new to short-term rental, so I took it as pure luck.

The workload was less lucky. I was working nine to five as a project manager for an engineering firm, and after five o’clock I turned into a cleaner. I answered guest messages whenever I had a spare second and washed linen and towels on the weekends. Kmart was my best friend, because I could buy cheap linen and towels there. I hadn’t thought about linen, supplies or how the cleaning would work until I was already live.

Starting an Airbnb is easy. Running one well is the real job.

Creating the listing takes an afternoon. Airbnb walks you through it: property details, bedrooms, amenities, photos, description, price. The hard part starts the moment somebody books, because now you have a guest, and a guest needs a whole list of things to go right. Somebody has to answer messages, clean the place, wash and replace linen, restock supplies, hand over keys, keep the power and water and internet on, fix what breaks, and deal with whatever happens at 10 pm on a Saturday.

That’s why I tell everyone to treat their Airbnb as a business, even if it’s one little apartment. A lot of online advice sells Airbnb as easy money that anyone can make, and I don’t agree. It can pay better than a long-term rental, but you pay for it somewhere. Sometimes with money, sometimes with your time, often with your energy. If you’re exhausted and do a rushed clean, your reviews show it. If you’ve just had a baby and can’t reply to guests quickly, your reviews show that too. Everything you do, or don’t do, ends up in your reputation.

But business doesn’t have to mean cold. The thing I still love about Airbnb is that people get to stay in a home, not another beige hotel room. I want your place to have personality. Run the operation like a professional and keep the home a home.

Who should not start an Airbnb

I’ve walked through a lot of properties and talked to something like 200 owners and investors, so I’ll say the uncomfortable part first.

If you need Airbnb income to pay your mortgage and bills from the very first month, and you don’t have savings to cover the gap, please don’t do it. A new listing is a brand-new business that nobody has heard of. It has no reviews and no reputation, so it starts at maybe 20 to 30 percent occupancy. Guests stay, they review you, you review them, other people see those reviews and start booking, and over about six months the listing climbs towards its real potential. If your plan depends on hitting a number in month one, you’ll be disappointed.

The second group is people who take everything personally. It’s your home, and I know it’s your sweat and tears in it. But your guests are also customers, and customers have expectations, and expectations are subjective. What’s good enough for one guest is perfect for the next and terrible for the third. Set a standard, apply it every time, and when somebody finds it lacking, treat it as feedback rather than an attack. If you can’t do that, go long-term and sleep at night. Honestly, no shame in it.

Perfectionists get a gentle warning too. I was raised by a perfectionist father, so I know exactly how that feels from the inside. It’s fine to hold high standards if you know you have them and keep them in check. I’m 43 now and my edges have softened, but that voice still bites sometimes.

What nobody warned me about guests

The best surprise of hosting was how much I loved it. Hospitality is a big part of Turkish culture, where I’m from. Welcoming people and making them feel at home is how I was raised, and it makes me happy.

The worst surprise was how some people live. I’ve had guests trash my home, damage my furniture and leave blood marks around. I’ve found pee and poo where it definitely shouldn’t be. Never mind respecting my home, I wondered if they respected themselves.

My biggest mistake was assuming everyone would behave like me. When I stay in an Airbnb, I know it’s someone else’s home. I follow the house rules, do the dishes, take out the rubbish and leave the place as I found it. I was young and naive, so I thought my guests would do the same. They didn’t always. Guests come from different backgrounds, education levels and cultures, and it affects how they communicate with you, how they treat the place and how they leave it. Don’t take it personally. Plan for it.

Check whether this property should be an Airbnb at all

When I first started managing for other owners, I said yes to almost every property that came my way. I needed clients, and saying no is hard when you’re building something. It was a mistake. I eventually learned that not every property suits short-term rental and not every owner suits it either.

Now, before I even visit, I look at where it is and what’s around it. Is it an apartment, a house or a six-bedroom farmhouse? How many bedrooms, bathrooms and sleeping surfaces does it have, and does it come with a garden or pool that somebody has to maintain? Why would a guest choose it? Are there beaches, hospitals, universities, business districts or event venues nearby? Is demand seasonal? Do the photos online match reality? Does the building or body corporate allow short-term stays? Is the owner willing to spend some money on styling if the place needs it? The property inspection is the last step for me, even though it’s often the first time we meet in person. We need to see the property, and we also need to see if we click, because owner and manager is a relationship like any other.

You don’t need a perfect property. You do need to know who is going to book it and why they’d choose it over the one down the road.

Check the rules before you take a single booking

I know, this is the boring bit. Do it anyway. Short-term rental rules vary between countries, states, councils and even individual buildings. Depending on where you live, you might need to look at council or planning rules, registrations or permits, body corporate or HOA by-laws, lease terms if you rent the place yourself, tax, insurance, and fire and safety requirements.

I’ve seen what happens when it goes wrong. On the Gold Coast, I took over part of a portfolio that included properties in low-density residential zones where short-term rental was risky. A few months later a neighbour complained about a party, the council sent a letter, and we had to take the property off Airbnb. Nobody will stop you from listing. But when someone complains, the council or body corporate will do its job, and then you decide whether to keep taking the risk. Check the current rules with the relevant authority, and get proper legal, tax or insurance advice where you need it. A Facebook post from three years ago doesn’t count.

Put the numbers on paper, including your own time

Please don’t do the “$250 a night times 30 nights” sum. You won’t be booked every night. In eight years I have never had 100 percent occupancy across my portfolio, not once. And a nightly rate isn’t profit. Take off cleaning, linen and laundry, power, water, internet, consumables, insurance, platform fees, maintenance, replacing things that wear out, and any management fee. Then take off your time, which people forget.

In Darwin, I finished my day job at 5 pm and went to clean the apartment myself. Guests checked in after 3 pm and I couldn’t be there, so I blocked the day before and the day after every booking to give myself breathing space. Say the apartment earned $200 a night and a professional clean cost $150. By cleaning it myself I “saved” $150, but I also lost a night I could have sold, plus a few hours of cleaning and laundry. On those numbers, I made about $50 for all that work. Your time is not free.

Before you decide how to run it, get real quotes and compare three versions side by side. In the first you manage and clean everything yourself. In the second you manage guests but pay for cleaning and linen. In the third you hand over both. Then you’re comparing apples with apples. You may still choose to do it all yourself, and that’s fine, as long as you chose it with the numbers in front of you.

Self-manage or use a property manager?

I’ve done both, and I’m not going to tell you to hire a manager just because I used to run a management company. It depends on your income, cash flow, available time and personality. If you have the time, I do think hosting it yourself first is valuable. The owners I enjoyed working with most were the ones who had hosted themselves, because they understood how many moving parts there are and they respected what they were paying for.

But you don’t have to scrub bathrooms at midnight to prove you’re a real host. You can manage the bookings and hand off cleaning and linen from day one. If you work a demanding job, live interstate or just don’t want another job, a manager may make a lot of sense. The one thing I’d say is to be honest about whether you can let go. If you need to know about every light bulb and every message, a manager will drive you mad, and you’ll drive them mad too. I’ve handed back owners who tried to run my business for me. When you hire a manager you give them the keys and you leave them to it, the same way you don’t chase your long-term rental agent every week.

Get the home ready before you build the listing

Here’s my honest list of what must be in place before the first guest arrives. If anything on it is missing, I won’t go live.

• Working power, water and internet
• Two pillows per guest, plus mattress and pillow protectors
• A coffee machine
• At least three sets of keys
• All appliances working, plus ceiling fans and air conditioning in good order
• A property that’s properly cleaned and guest-ready

Why so strict? Because we’re human, and we ignore things. If you go live telling yourself you’ll fix it later, you won’t. A guest books, something else breaks, and your temporary workaround quietly becomes permanent. And first impressions are very hard to repair. Aim for five stars from guest number one, not from guest number ten.

Linen is where I’d change my Darwin setup the most. I used my everyday sheets and towels, and when I look at those listing photos now I smile and wince. Birds, flowers, shapes, all of it very homely, and a lot to look at. I’d now choose one colour, or a simple palette. It doesn’t have to be hotel white. One consistent colour just photographs better and makes laundry and replacements so much easier. And you’ll want three sets of everything, so back-to-back guests don’t wreck your day. Sometimes buying new sheets at Kmart is quicker and cheaper than paying a laundromat. That was my best friend for a while.

Then leave the personality in. In my Darwin apartment I had photos from my travels on display and a fridge covered in magnets from all over the world. Guests told me they’d never been to some of those places, but they felt like they had after looking at my pictures. Airbnb is a home exchange at heart, and people who use it a lot know they’re staying in someone else’s home. When they see a real home, they tend to treat it like one.

How to set up an Airbnb: the order I’d follow with an empty property

If someone handed me an empty property tomorrow and said, “I want this on Airbnb,” this is the order I’d work in.

1. Walk through the property and list what’s there and what’s missing: the gaps, what to add, what to remove, what to buy and whether the layout needs to change. It’s the first thing I do on every property inspection.
2. Complete the missing furniture, equipment and styling. A few hundred or a few thousand dollars of missing pieces can change a listing.
3. Once the property is furnished, equipped and styled, get your cleaners in to clean it and set the beds.
4. Book a professional photographer to shoot it the way guests want to see it, within Airbnb’s rules.
5. While you wait for the photos, create the draft listing: write the description, set your house rules, minimum stay and cleaning fee, and block any dates you need.
6. Upload the photos and go live.
7. Set up your automated message templates. Whether you automate or reply to each guest yourself depends on how much time you have.
8. Sit back and wait for bookings, then watch the first ones closely.

Sort out the boring stuff before you publish

Here’s a story that still makes me wince. One property I managed had been a long-term rental, and the tenant paid the electricity. The owner switched to short-term rental with me and never moved the power account into their own name, and I never thought to check. About 15 months later the power went out while a guest was staying. I went downstairs, talked to the building manager, and found out the switch had been locked by the electricity provider. The owner had around $8,000 in unpaid bills. I had a guest sitting in the dark, and an owner with a very bad day ahead.

Nobody did anything on purpose. We’d all assumed someone else had sorted something basic. Now, whenever I sign a client, I tell them: power, water and internet go in your name, with automatic payments, so service never gets interrupted. A few owners have thought that was rude. They didn’t see what I’ve been through.

Then walk through the rest of the operation and ask who is responsible. Who cleans after checkout, and who does the laundry? Where does replacement linen come from? Who restocks coffee and toilet paper? What happens if a guest can’t get in? What happens when one guest leaves at 10 am and the next arrives that afternoon? That’s what separates a listing from an operating Airbnb.

Photos, listing and pricing

In Darwin I took my own photos. I do have a decent eye, and I own a professional camera, and it was still a mistake. If I launched that apartment today I’d spend the extra few hundred dollars on a professional property photographer. A good one understands lighting, angles and how to show a room clearly. What I would never do is edit photos to make a place look better than it is. No bigger rooms, no views that don’t exist, no removing a permanent feature guests will find at the door. That leads to a poor review and trouble with Airbnb and your guests later on. Good photos get the booking, and honest photos get the good review afterwards. You need both.

When you create the listing, you’ll be asked for the property type and location, bedrooms and bathrooms, guest numbers, amenities, photos, title, description and pricing, and you’ll need to complete Airbnb’s identity verification. Take your time and describe what a guest is really getting. You’re trying to attract the right guest, not every guest.

On pricing, I started by letting Airbnb’s smart pricing suggest a rate, because I knew nothing about revenue management. These days I look at comparable listings, demand, capacity, seasonality and my costs. You can do a simple version yourself by searching your suburb on Airbnb and looking at the nightly rates of similar places.

Airbnb has also been offering new listings a 20 percent discount on their first three bookings, to help hosts collect those first reviews and a star rating. Check what applies to you when you publish. People are nervous about a place with zero reviews, and a discount is a fair trade for taking a chance on a new host. I’d rather get my first three reviews than squeeze every dollar out of night one.

Your first 90 days

Once bookings start arriving, you’re not finished. Read every single review closely. Some guests won’t tell you anything is wrong during their stay and will quietly mention it in a review instead. Don’t get defensive. Keep a record, look for patterns, and fix what’s real straight away. If one guest mentions a problem, look into it. If two guests mention the same thing, treat it as urgent. When you’ve fixed something, go back and reply to the review so the next guest can see you listened and acted.

I’d also expect a slow start. Remember the 20 to 30 percent occupancy I mentioned? Plan around it, and don’t panic when your calendar looks quiet in the first month.

If I launched my Darwin apartment again today

I’d keep the personality, because that was the best thing about it. What I’d change is everything behind the hospitality. I’d run the numbers properly. I’d choose one colour of linen. I’d pay a photographer. I’d get a professional cleaning quote and put a value on my own time. I’d plan turnovers, check every utility account, and make sure every essential was in place before opening the calendar.

One more thing, because it’s the best advice I can give any new host. Make “good enough” your motto. If you’re a perfectionist, stop. If you’re a procrastinator, stop that too. You can change your rules, your pricing and your listing later. Start properly, then keep adjusting as you go.

Your Airbnb set-up checklist: before you click Publish

Can you say yes to all of these?

• I’ve checked that short-term hosting is allowed for this property.
• I know who will book it and why.
• I’ve compared realistic income with realistic costs, including my own time.
• Cleaning, linen and guest messages each have a person responsible.
• Power, water and internet are in the right name and working.
• The beds, supplies and essentials are ready.
• My photos and description show the property honestly.
• I know what I’ll do if something goes wrong during a stay.

If you said no to a few, that’s fine. That’s exactly why you’re checking now and not after guest number one.

Why I started Kefi Escapes

I didn’t have a perfect launch plan. I wasn’t a revenue expert or a professional manager. I was someone with a home I loved, a belief in what Airbnb gives travellers, and a willingness to work it out. Then I learned, made plenty of mistakes, got better, and eventually looked after more than 100 properties for people who trusted me.

I’m here to share what I’ve learned, the mistakes as well as the wins, so you can avoid the ones I made and give your guests a better stay. Start prepared, keep learning, and don’t lose the thing that made home-sharing special in the first place, which is hospitality.