Airbnb encourage guests to contact multiple hosts. You are likely not the only host being contacted about a potential guest’s booking. Being the first to respond will give you a definitive head-start on winning the booking with all other things being equal.

Your Airbnb listing’s ranking is affected by your responsiveness to reservation requests. Your listing will state your average response time – aim for within an hour.

The easiest way to ensure you’re notified of reservation requests immediately as they come though is to download the Airbnb app for your phone (click here to download on the Apple App Store, or click here to download on the Google Play Store).

You can also enable push notifications via SMS to your phone. You’ll receive an SMS alert every time a new booking request is received for your place.

To enable push notifications and text messages:

1. Login to Airbnb
2. Click on your account profile photo in the top right corner
3. Click Account Settings
4. Select Notifications
5. Tick Push notifications and Text messages in the Messages box