How I Found An AirBNB Unit For Our Trip To Portland Maine

After a year of being focused on the ‘hosting’ side of AirBNB, this week I was able to focus a little bit on the ‘travelling’ side of AirBNB!

Visiting Maine for the Maine Marathon

I do a lot of running, and am working towards my life goal of completing a marathon in each of the 50 states – so far I’ve completed 13 of them!

The next race up for me is the Maine Marathon in Portland, coming up at the end of September. I delayed signing up for the race, and in fact I still have not officially signed up, because I’ve been burned in the past by paying for races I didn’t run due to injury, and this summer has been so humid that my running has not been great and I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to do the race.

But it is looking like my training will come together just in time, and even if it doesn’t, Caroline and I would love to take a trip to Maine during leaf peeping season! We’ve only been to Maine once before, and barely because we spent one day in Portsmouth, which is just over the state border. So in reality, we’ve never *really* been to Maine!

Why choose AirBNB over a hotel

Simply stated, hotels can be expensive. In a place like Portland which is not that big, there are a limited number of nice options to pick from, and with lots of travelers visiting for the race, the already expensive prices are even higher that usual, not to mention it is leaf peeping season which generally brings more tourists.

The nicest hotels are over $300 per night, and the more normal places (your Hilton and Marriott products) are running around $140 – $160 per night. Even the cheapest motels like Motel 6 and Super 8 are $100 per night.

We have points on Marriott / SPG, but the local hotels cost a lot of points per night, and we’d rather save the points for trips where AirBNB is less of a viable option.

I personally don’t mind having to travel a bit on race day, so AirBNB seemed like a good option because there are lots of towns within a 30 minute drive, and so the hope was that we’d find a great space for a reasonable price.

How I narrow down AirBNB listings

AirBNB has a great filtering system to narrow the search. Since the initial search will return many places and many price points, I recommend starting with a fairly narrow filter, and then widen your search if needed.

Starting with the basics

• Pick your dates and the number of guests you will have. The last thing you want is to see a bunch of places that only accommodate 2 people when your party is 4 people.
• Choose whether you are looking for the ‘entire place’, or just a ‘private room’. We always choose ‘entire place’ because we don’t like the idea of sharing someone’s house while they are there, and we don’t mind paying extra for that privacy. If you are looking to really save money, and not travelling with a family, ‘private room’ might be a great fit for you.

My initial search in Portland ME for the dates I wanted, for entire place, brought back 218 homes, way too many to sort through.

The next thing I do is filter for the general price range I’m looking for – the pricing filter will provide 4 choices, but you can also enter your own range. I generally select a range of $60 – $120, so it filters out the really low end and the high end. I can always go higher on the pricing later if I need to.

Adding a price range reduced the number of results in my search to 25 within a 30 minute drive. Also helpful is that you can further restrict or widen by zooming in and out on the Google map or by moving the map around. The results refresh automatically when making adjustments in the map.

Using the advanced filters

The ‘more filters’ area will let you drill in and restrict further.

Start with the number of beds, bedrooms and bathrooms you need. Since this trip is just for myself and Caroline, I selected 1 of each, which reduced the number of results down to 19, because I guess 6 of the original results were studios or some other weird arrangement without a full bedroom.

Next, scroll through the list of amenities and check the box next to what is important to you. For instance choose parking if you will have a car, wifi if you will need internet access, or a washer/dryer if you expect to be able to do laundry in your unit. In my search, choosing wifi and parking dropped the options down to 13.

I then like to choose Superhosts within More Filters as well as Instant Book, which is a separate filter at the top:

• Superhosts – this option will only show you the most highly rated properties. You can be sure it will have been in operation for several months, have consistently strong reviews, and is likely to provide a great experience.
• Instant Book – This will lock in the reservation immediately, without back and forth with the host, and without having to wait for the host to respond. Note that some hosts will only allow instant book for guests who themselves have positive reviews, so if you are new to the platform and have not stayed with a host before or been reviewed by a host, instant book may not give you good options.

Once I add Superhost and Instant Book to my filters, I’m down to 8 options, which is a very reasonable list to sort through.

Time to evaluate the host

Once you have your shortlist, it is a simple process to open each one, read the details about the place, read the reviews and look at the photos.

But even more importantly, this is your chance to evaluate the host. If you are looking at a superhost unit, most likey the host is going to be great. However, if you are not looking at a superhost unit, here are a few things to look for:

• Host response time – scroll to the bottom of the listing and you’ll see stats for the host, including their response time. The best hosts have a response time of within 1 hour.
• Reviews for other properties – you might be looking at a listing that has no or few reviews. Don’t fret, if you look at the details for the host, you might find that they manage other units and have reviews for those units. Look at the reviews of those units to get a sense of how they are managed. Since an AirBNB host lives and dies by their reviews, you can rest assured if they have a good history on one unit, they will be looking to maintain that on any new units.

Pro Tip – NEW Listings

While you might be tempted to skip over new listings because they don’t have any reviews, you should know that new listings are sometimes the best deals. Many new hosts will offer a 20% discount to the first 3 people who book their place.

While the discounted rate is already reflected in the price you see on the summary page, you can be comforted in knowing that the actual rate for that unit can be 20% higher. So you might see the listing at $80 per night, but that would mean the actual nightly price for the unit is $100.

I definitely love 20% discounts, and in fact the unit we picked for Maine is a new unit that comes with a 20% discount, but when you are booking a new unit, make sure to use the tips above to evaluate the host before you finalize that booking.

======

I got a long run in a couple days ago and next weekend plan another long run. Better get myself signed up for the race!

Have you used AirBNB? What tips do you have for finding the best unit?