Most of the tips below are quite obvious. But we tend to forget the obvious so it is always worth mentioning it.
Some of them though could be quite useful if you are looking to work remotely with a small monthly budget.
I think you will like my tips on How to get a cheap Airbnb!
1 – Monthly Bookings
The number one tip for finding a cheaper Airbnb room or apartment I would give is to go for monthly bookings.
The longer you stay in your Airbnb, the higher the discount for long-stay will be. The discount can be up to 70% off the initial price (during the low season).
2 – Book in advance
The second tip would be to book in advance. Booking several months in advance at least, one year if you can, will allow you to have more choices. The places with the best price-for-value ratio will be booked very quickly.
3 – Do not book in advance (during the low season)
The third tip is the perfect opposite of the previous one. Try booking your place for the next day, you will have access to great discounts. Booking your place a few days in advance only works only during the low season though.
4 – Book Rooms not an entire place
The first filter that most of us would apply to Airbnb listings is the entire place tick-box.
We have all worked from a hotel room, or from the garden of a hotel. Private rooms on Airbnb can sometimes be pretty much the same.
You can even end up in a hotel by booking your private room on Airbnb.
While you should probably keep filtering private rooms, you may want to search for great private rooms when you feel that the prices are a bit too high for an entire place.
Here is an example of a very nice private room in Playa Del Carmen.
5 – Pick the right season
Places that are crowded with tourists at the pike of the season are not that great, are they? They may be great if you are in your 20s, but once you have reached a certain age, you probably, as I do, don’t want to be bothered by tourists.
Rooms and Apartments prices can be twice lower out of the touristic season.
6 – Contact the landlord directly
There are good chances that the place you are looking at on Airbnb is also available elsewhere. It could be that it is also listed on Google Maps. Even better, it could be that the landlord has his own website (or Facebook page).
If you search for the name of the place on Google you could find a phone number or an email address that will allow you to negotiate the price with the landlord.
Obviously, this would mean losing the protection that Airbnb is giving you when booking with them.
I am not a fan of this solution. I enjoy the security provided by Airbnb. I have used this technique though several times, in places that I already visited.
A typical example I experienced was in Las Galeras, Dominican Republic. We booked two great houses on Airbnb, one week each. When we arrived at the first house, the landlord told us that the other house we had booked was also managed by them.
They actually had more than two houses in the town, and a website listing all of them with indeed much better prices.
7 – Just ask for a better price
If you are visiting a city off-season, and if you are looking to book for the coming days or weeks, your chances to get a discount from the landlord directly on Airbnb are quite high. Just give it a try, you never know.
8 – Search for cheap places
Instead of searching for a cheap room in the place you have decided to visit or work from, let Airbnb show you the best deals they have anywhere in the world, or anywhere in a particular country.
A few years ago, my girlfriend and I booked a very beautiful house in the south of Italy. We paid about $1200 a month for it, just because it was in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny village.
There was not much to do but since we had a car to go to wherever we wanted to go, it worked really well for us.
To summarise, try to put yourself in a position where you are not just another tourist. The more value you will bring to a landlord, the better it will be for your budget.
