3 Ways to get your Property Booked During COVID

Knowing the ways property booked during COVID can still generate revenue is one of the most valuable lessons any short-term rental host can learn — because the same principles apply any time demand shifts unexpectedly. When the pandemic hit and tourism collapsed, most Airbnb hosts went quiet.

A small number stayed active, adapted quickly, and kept their calendars filling. The difference came down to three specific moves.

Watch the full video above or keep reading for the complete breakdown.

Who Is Actually Booking During a Crisis

Before doing anything tactical, hosts need to understand who is still traveling — or more accurately, who is still booking. During COVID, that answer shifted completely from the typical Airbnb guest profile.

Two categories of guests dominated bookings during the crisis:

• Remote workers needing a home office space. Millions of people suddenly found themselves working from home without a proper setup. Distractions from kids, cramped apartments, and poor internet connections pushed a significant number of people to rent a separate space just to get work done. They weren't tourists. They were professionals who needed a quiet, well-equipped space for weeks or months at a time.
• Families needing more room. With everyone home 24/7, space became a premium. Families in smaller homes started looking for rentals with extra bedrooms, backyards, or simply a bigger living area to make the lockdown more bearable. A two-month rental in a four-bedroom house suddenly made a lot of sense compared to staying cramped in a two-bedroom apartment.

These two groups share one important characteristic: they book locally and they book long-term. They're not flying in from another country for a weekend trip. They're five miles away looking for a two-month furnished rental.

This insight changes everything about how to approach listing optimization, pricing, and platform strategy. For a deeper look at how guest behavior affects bookings in general, this guide on how to get more Airbnb bookings covers the fundamentals that apply across market conditions.

Strategy 1: Optimize Your Listing for the New Guest Type

Most STR listings are built around tourists — great photos of local attractions, descriptions about nightlife and restaurants, amenity callouts aimed at leisure travelers. In a crisis, that pitch lands on deaf ears.

The first and most important step is rewriting the listing to speak directly to the guests who are actually booking: remote workers and space-seeking families.

For the Remote Worker Audience

If the property has a dedicated workspace — even a corner desk — lead with it. Run an internet speed test and screenshot the results. Include that screenshot in the listing photos. Fast, reliable WiFi is the number one amenity for remote workers, more important than a hot tub or great view.

The listing title and description should explicitly call out: quiet environment, strong internet, dedicated workspace, and minimal distractions. A one-bedroom condo that would normally be marketed as a romantic getaway can be repositioned as the perfect remote office escape.

For the Family Audience

Highlight square footage, number of bedrooms, outdoor space, and kitchen quality. Families doing long-term stays care about livability, not Instagram aesthetics. If the property has a backyard, a washer/dryer, or a large dining table where kids can do homework, those details belong front and center.

Address Cleaning Concerns Directly

During COVID, guests were understandably anxious about sanitation. Adding a section to the listing that outlines the cleaning protocol — following CDC guidelines and Airbnb's official enhanced cleaning checklist — builds trust and removes a major booking hesitation. Don't assume guests will take cleanliness for granted. Spell it out.

Consider Hosting First Responders

Airbnb launched a program to house healthcare workers and first responders during the pandemic. If the property is a standalone house or guest suite with a private entrance, it's well-suited for this.

Airbnb hosts housing COVID responders found that highlighting complete privacy and a separate entrance were the most compelling selling points for that guest segment. These guests needed somewhere they could isolate from their own families after long hospital shifts.

The core principle here applies well beyond COVID: whenever the market shifts, the fastest way to increase Airbnb bookings is to look at who's actually searching and rewrite the listing to match that person's specific needs.

Strategy 2: Update Your Pricing for Longer Stays

Stale pricing is one of the most common reasons STR properties sit empty during slow periods. During COVID, this problem was everywhere. Properties priced at peak-season tourist rates — $300/night for a four-bedroom in Toronto, for example — had near-zero chance of booking when the tourist market had evaporated.

The math is straightforward. A four-bedroom property at $300/night implies roughly $9,000/month. In a normal market with healthy occupancy, that can work. But someone booking a two-month stay isn't going to pay $18,000 for a furnished rental when alternatives exist at a fraction of that cost.

Price for the Monthly Stay Mindset

Long-term renters think in monthly terms, not nightly terms. They compare the Airbnb rental to what a furnished apartment would cost locally. Pricing needs to be competitive with the furnished rental market in the property's area, not based on what nightly rates used to be.

A practical approach:

1. Research what furnished monthly rentals cost in the local market
2. Price the Airbnb monthly rate at or slightly below that number to offer clear value
3. Set the nightly rate higher for short stays to discourage them (since long stays are more operationally efficient anyway)
4. Create a weekly discount and monthly discount in Airbnb's pricing settings

This isn't about giving the property away — it's about optimizing for the guests who are actually in the market. A month at a lower monthly rate beats zero bookings at an inflated nightly rate every time.

For a tactical breakdown of pricing adjustments that work year-round, these Airbnb pricing hacks cover the specific levers hosts can pull to improve occupancy rate performance.

Strategy 3: Diversify Beyond Airbnb

Airbnb is predominantly a short-term rental platform. Its search filters, its marketing, its guest base — all of it skews toward short stays. During a crisis when longer-term demand is the only demand, that's a significant limitation.

Hosts who kept their properties booked during COVID expanded to platforms where long-term furnished rental seekers actually search:

• Craigslist — Still widely used in the US for furnished monthly rentals
• Kijiji — Canada's equivalent, heavily trafficked for local rentals
• Gumtree — The go-to classifieds platform across the UK and Australia
• Facebook Marketplace — Increasingly popular for furnished short-to-medium-term listings
• Furnished Finder — Specifically designed for traveling nurses and remote workers looking for furnished monthly rentals
• VRBO — Worth listing on simultaneously, as its audience skews toward longer family stays

The principle of platform diversification matters far beyond crisis periods. Over-relying on a single platform is a structural vulnerability. Comparing Airbnb vs VRBO vs Booking.com vs direct booking is a useful exercise for any host looking to reduce dependency on any one channel.

For airbnb occupancy rate tips that apply specifically to slow seasons, diversifying where the listing appears is consistently one of the highest-leverage moves available. More distribution means more eyeballs, and more eyeballs means a higher probability of finding that one guest who needs exactly what the property offers.

Hosts building a co-hosting or property management business should note that clients are often looking for exactly this kind of proactive, multi-platform approach. BNB Mastery's Co-Hosting Program walks through how to position these capabilities when pitching property owners as a competitive differentiator.

Why Downturns Are the Best Time to Sharpen Your Hosting

There's a counterintuitive truth about market downturns: the hosts who use slow periods to improve their operations come out of the downturn far ahead of everyone else.

When bookings slow down, most people disengage. They stop updating their listings, stop experimenting with pricing, stop learning. The result is that when demand returns — and it always returns — those hosts are operating with the same stale listings and the same habits they had before. Meanwhile, the hosts who stayed active have:

• A fully optimized listing with updated photos and descriptions
• A refined pricing strategy tested across multiple scenarios
• A presence on multiple platforms
• A sharper understanding of what different guest types actually want
• Systems in place to handle long-term stays efficiently

After COVID, there was a compelling case that travelers would prefer Airbnbs over hotels for some time — avoiding crowded lobbies, shared elevators, and common areas. Budget-consciousness following economic disruption also pushed travelers toward STRs as a more cost-effective option than hotels.

The hosts who had kept their properties optimized and their skills sharp were perfectly positioned to capture that surge.

The lesson generalizes. Any time the market gets difficult — algorithm changes, new regulations, seasonal slumps — the hosts who treat it as a training period rather than a reason to quit are the ones who win when conditions improve.

Staying connected with a community of active hosts accelerates this process significantly. The BNB Tribe community is a resource where hosts share real-time strategies, discuss what's working on current listings, and support each other through exactly these kinds of market shifts.

For more on staying bookable when conditions get tough, this breakdown of what to do when Airbnb bookings are slowing down covers both mindset and tactical responses to booking droughts.

The Bottom Line

The ways property booked during COVID came down to one underlying discipline: paying attention to who's actually in the market and adapting quickly. Hosts who optimized listings for remote workers and families, repriced for monthly stays, and expanded to platforms where long-term renters search kept generating income while competitors went dark.

The specific context changes — COVID was a unique event — but the adaptive approach is timeless. Whether it's a pandemic, a slow season, or a sudden algorithm shift, the three-part framework holds: understand your current guest, optimize your listing for that guest, and be present on the platforms where that guest is searching.

In 2026, with the STR market more competitive than ever, the hosts with the highest occupancy rates are still the ones who treat listing optimization and pricing as ongoing work rather than a one-time setup. Competition may be higher now than it was during COVID, but the skill set required to win remains the same.