How to Choose an Airbnb

If you spend any amount of time on digital nomad forums (and I recommend that you don't) you'll see complaint, after complaint, after complaint about Airbnb. People sitting at their keyboards aren't known for their positivity so you have to take this with a grain of salt, and how many digital nomads on digital nomad forums are actually digital nomads? Given the quality of content that gets posted, I would suspect very few. That being said, I'm sure that some of these complaints are legitimate.

As my experience using Airbnb to find accommodation has been overwhelmingly positive, I want to detail the process that I go through to choose the place that I stay.

Things to consider

Before getting down to choosing a specific room, there are a couple of things worth considering.

Get in early

If I'm staying in an Airbnb, it'll typically be for a month or longer. When you're staying somewhere for that long, all it takes is one person booking one night during those dates, and that room is no longer available. Leaving it until the last minute to find a place to stay, you're going to be left with the places that no one else wants.

In my backpacking days, pre-smartphone, I'd often show up in some town and wander around the hostels until I found somewhere I wanted to stay. That's great as a backpacker, but being a digital nomad is different. It's your responsibility to surround yourself with the infrastructure that you need in order to do your job. If you're in any way limited compared to how you'd be in a steady location, then you're not doing it right, and getting-in early can ensure that you find a place that offers you everything that you need.

How early in advance you need to book depends on where you're going, what the season is, and how much is available, but typically I'll aim to book a couple of months before I check-in.

Cancellation policies vary by room, but usually if you cancel a month before check-in you'll get a full refund, so it's worth locking-in a place early so that you know that you have somewhere good to stay, and cancelling later on if you need to.

Don't discount the monthly discount

When I first started living as a digital nomad, I stayed in each place I went for roughly two weeks. It was only on wandering around Chiang Mai one day that I saw an illuminated sign outside an apartment block saying "One night, 600 baht. One month, 6,000 baht." I stood there looking at that sign for a minute, and was like... damn. If you're staying for eleven nights, it's cheaper to just pay for the entire month than pay night-by-night.

I was planning a trip to Phnom Penh at this time, and when I went back to my room, I went onto Airbnb and looked up one of the rooms I'd been considering. I put my intended dates in as 16th December to 12th January (27 nights), and it came up as a total cost of £857.61. I then changed these dates to 16th December to 13th January (28 nights). The total cost was £497.89.

To qualify for a monthly discount on Airbnb, you have to book somewhere for at least 28 nights, and the discount offered varies by property and is dependent on the host. Some offer no monthly discount. I will typically disregard properties that don't offer at least a 25% discount, because you'll be able to get better value elsewhere.

You're making the host's life very easy by committing to pay for that room every night for an entire month, compared to their usual reality of a couple of nights booked, a couple of nights empty, a couple of nights booked etc., having to arrange cleaning and check-in and check-out for each guest that stays. You deserve a hefty discount for guaranteeing them an income and giving them less work to do.

Although do also be mindful. I've seen properties offering monthly discounts in excess of 75%. In such cases, they're only really looking for monthly tenants and want to discourage anyone looking to book for less by charging way more than the room is worth. If the discount sounds too good to be true, then it probably is, so use your discretion in understanding whether you're getting a good deal or not by looking at comparable properties. While a discount can represent good value, the goal is to get the best property you can for your money, not to get the biggest discount.

Another thing to be mindful of is that booking a property for a month will often change the cancellation policy. If you reserve night-by-night you can sometimes cancel right up until the day before check-in with a full refund. A monthly reservation at that same property can offer no free cancellation even several weeks before check-in.

What's in a rating?

The best way to determine the quality of a property is by the ratings left by previous guests. They've parted with their money and stayed in a property, so their aggregated opinions are very worthwhile. Perhaps because there's a more personal nature to Airbnb, where you as the guest are often dealing directly with the owner of the property, Airbnb guests score their hosts very highly compared to other accommodation apps.

For example, with my experience using booking.com, any property with a score of 8.5 out of 10 is going to be decent. A property with an equivalent score on Airbnb is one to actively avoid.

Airbnb ratings give a score out of 5. A good way of looking at these scores is to look at the number after the 4, and consider that the rating out of 10. For example if a property has a score of 4.9, then it's 9/10. If a property has a score of 4.8, then it's 8/10. If it has a score of 4.7 then it's 7/10 etc.

Unless I'm desparate I'll avoid any property with a rating lower than 4.8.

How to choose a room

You should obviously tailor this process for your own wants and needs, and how many rooms are available in the town/city that you're going to. On the assumption I'm going somewhere with plenty of options on Airbnb, I select a room by doing the following.

Select the area

The first thing you need to decide is which area of the city that you want to stay in. How do you do that if you've never been there before?

My strategy for doing this may seem a little unconventional, but it's consistently worked for me. The first thing that I do is search for vegan food in the town or city that I'm going to, and I'll zero my Airbnb search onto any areas that have clusters of vegan restaurants. Why?

The first and most obvious reason is I'm vegan, and I want to easily be able to get food when I go somewhere. Particularly on working days, when I want to be able to get some quick food on my lunchbreak, having a nearby vegan restaurant makes life much easier, especially if I don't have the means to cook for myself.

The second, less obvious reason, is that veganism is still a somewhat progressive concept. You don't get many vegans, and hence many vegan restaurants, in very working class areas, or very conservative areas. You get them in more chilled-out hipster, studenty areas, and in my experience, those areas are safer and more pleasant to stay.

I also really value green, open space. This is partly because I think it's important to surround yourself with nature as much as you can, and partly because I like to run and parks are the best place to do that. So within the vegan-friendly areas that I've identified, I'll go onto Google Maps and look for any decent-sized parks. Looking at the parks in street view can really give you a good idea of what it's like.

Search on Airbnb

It's only once I've identified the area that I want to stay in that I'll actually go onto Airbnb. I'll start by searching for the city, dates and number of guests that I want, but beyond that I add the following filters to my search:

I search just for homes - I have no interest in shared accommodation.
I'll set the maximum price to what I'm willing to pay - I typically try to spend less than £1,200/month on accommodation, although I'll raise/lower this depending on the price of the city I'm looking at.
I only search for Superhosts - You can read about what it takes to become a Superhost here, but essentially Superhosts are hosts who regularly have happy guests staying with them, so you can have less concern that you're going to be renting from someone problematic.
If I'm booking a long way in advance, I might also filter for places that offer free cancellation.

I'll then go onto the map view of the results and zoom-into the area that I previously identified as being the area that I want to stay in.

Favourite the best places

There may only be a small number of rooms available in this area, but there may still be dozens, in which case I'll skim-over all the results and 'favourite' any that I want to come back to. To 'favourite' a room on Airbnb you click or tap the little heart that appears on a listing. You'll be asked which 'wishlist' you want to save it to. I create a new wishlist for each location I'm looking at, so if I'm looking for a room in Athens, I'll name the wishlist 'Athens'.

How I quickly decide which rooms I want to 'favourite', is firstly I look at the current rating. This is the aggregated score that previous guests have given this room. How fussy you can be here depends on how many rooms are available, but I'll typically only save rooms with a rating of 4.8 (out of 5) or higher. I also favour rooms that have a higher number of guest reviews. I generally won't consider a room that doesn't have at least five, and ideally like to see it have fifteen or more reviews. If a room has fifteen ratings and they average out at 4.95 or higher, you can be pretty confident that you're staying at a good place.

Beyond the ratings, I'll skim-over the property description, the photos and the reviews and eliminate any others that aren't what I'm looking for.

The number of saved rooms you end up with obviously depends on how stringent you're being and how many are available to begin with, but I'd say that having about 10 to 12 rooms in your 'favourite' list is a good number. You want to give youself a bit of a choice, but too many is also a pain to have to sift through, so if you find yourself with twenty saved rooms, go back over and remove the ones with the lowest ratings. Once you're down to 10 to 12 places move onto the next section.

Look up the rooms in detail

By only saving Superhost rooms that have lots of positive reviews, you can be pretty confident that the rooms on the list that you have in front of you are all good places to stay, so at this point you need to determine which room is right for you. Do this by reading the description of the room and the amenities offered, the reviews left by previous guests, and by looking over all the photos a lot more scrupulously than you did before. Things that you might want to consider here:

Does the room have a washing machine? - If it doesn't, are you willing to shoulder the time and expense of either handwashing your clothes, or going to a launderette?
Does the room have a kitchen? - What facilities are included? Can you see them in either the description or in the photos?
Is there a dedicated workspace? - Any digital nomad should be comfortable working from their bed, but I still like to have a desk for Zoom calls.
What is the size of the room? - I like to do yoga in my room, so one thing I always look for is enough floor space to stretch-out around my yoga mat.
Does it have a living area? - Some studios don't, so if that's important to you have a look in the photos for a sofa.
What is the location of the room? - Previous guests will often mention the location and nearby amenities when they leave a review, and Google Maps is really your friend. If you can find the room on street view, then you can have a wander around and see how the area feels, and are there nearby amenities on Google Maps that are important to you? Is there a nearby supermarket? Are there plenty of restaurants? Or a gym, or public transport?
Does the host look trustworthy? - This borders on discrimination, but I'm a believer that you can tell a lot about a person by the kindness of their face. Airbnb unforunately only gives you a small picture of the host if you look at their profile, but I still always take a look and zoom-in on it to make sure they're not a serial killer.
Does the room have fast, reliable wifi? - Pretty much every Airbnb will offer wifi, and sometimes the host will include the speed within the room description. The reliability of the connection is more important than the speed if you don't want to be dropping-out during Zoom calls. Previous guests will usually mention the wifi in their reviews, particularly if it was problematic.
What is the total price of the room? - With all other things being equal, can one room justify being more expensive than another? If not, go with the cheaper one.

You might want to message a host if there is anything you're curious about that isn't included. For example, if staying somewhere for a longer stay, you're either going to want to have the room cleaned during your stay, or you're going to want to be provided with the products to do it yourself. For this or any other concerns you have it can be worth getting clarity before booking. In my experience hosts are very responsive (having a 90% response rate is a requirement to becoming a Superhost), so you'll typically get a fast answer that can help you decide.

Book the best one

Through looking-up your saved rooms in more detail, you've hopefully narrowed it down to one favourite place by now. You have all the information that's available, so if you're still unsure, then go with your gut. Look over the photos and just decide on the one that 'feels' better. Every room I've ever booked has had at least a 48 hour cancellation period, and many longer than that, so you've got a bit of time to change your mind.

The one thing that you don't want is for someone to book a one-night stay in your desired room, right in the middle of your time there. So while it can be prudent to take a bit of time and maybe even sleep on it for the night, at some point you're going to have to bite the bullet and book somewhere.

Final thoughts

While the process I've detailed here is suitable for booking in a major city with plentiful listings, if you're going somewhere smaller or where Airbnb isn't as popular, then you might have to make some concessions, such as being willing to stay in a room with a lower rating, or with a host who's not a Superhost, or in an area you're not so sure about.

Go as far as you're comfortable, but remember that Airbnb isn't the only option. Longer-term stays in hotels can be viable, particularly in cheaper parts of the world, so look on Agoda or booking.com or somewhere similar to compare them with what Airbnb is offering. Agoda, for example, gives the option to filter by 'Serviced apartments', which might suit you just as well as Airbnb does.