How to find Airbnb co-hosting clients within Airbnb's rules

To find Airbnb co-hosting clients, join Airbnb's Co-Host Network if you meet its requirements, then go after hosts in your area who already run more than one listing, and reach owners and property managers off Airbnb on LinkedIn. Whichever route you use, show a host what you would do with their own listing before you ask for the work.

The order matters. The Co-Host Network sends hosts to you, but only once you have a track record. Until then, you have to find hosts yourself without tripping Airbnb's messaging rules.

Check whether you qualify for the Co-Host Network

Airbnb's Co-Host Network page sets out who can join. You need all of these:

• An active listing as a host, or as a co-host with full access or calendar and messaging access.
• 10 or more stays hosted or co-hosted in the past 12 months, or three or more stays adding up to at least 100 nights.
• An average guest rating of 4.8 stars or more over the past 12 months, across the listings you host or co-host with those access levels.
• A cancellation rate below 3%, with exceptions for valid reasons outside your control.
• An account in good standing, a verified identity and a profile photo that meets Airbnb's photo rules.

The network is available in 12 countries, including the UK and the US. Hosts search it for co-hosts in their area, message the ones they like, and invite a co-host onto the listing once both sides agree. On your profile you choose the services you offer from Airbnb's list, which runs from listing setup and pricing to guest messaging, cleaning, listing photography and licensing.

Two details catch people out. Airbnb's Co-Host Network introduction says that if you decide not to work with a host, you should decline their request within 24 hours or your response rate could be affected. And pay is yours to agree: Airbnb says many co-hosts charge a percentage or a fixed amount per booking, and in many countries a host can share part of each payout with you through Airbnb.

If you do not qualify yet

Read the access wording again. The active-listing and rating requirements only look at listings where you have full access or calendar and messaging access. A co-host who only has calendar access on a listing is building history that those two checks will not count.

So the first job is one or two listings where you hold the right permission. Airbnb's guide to adding co-hosts mentions family, friends and neighbours as ordinary choices, and a friend's spare room run well for a year is a better start than a dozen cold pitches. Ask to be added with calendar and messaging access at least, and keep the cancellation rate clean.

Go after hosts who already run several listings

A host with four listings in your town juggles four sets of turnovers, guest messages and pricing calls, and one yes from them can mean four listings. Their listings are also quick to hand over: Airbnb lets a listing owner invite one co-host to several listings in one step, with the same permissions across all of them, and allows up to 10 co-hosts per listing.

Finding them by hand means searching your town on Airbnb and noting which host names come up more than once. ReelSieve, Braivex's walkthrough video app, has outreach tools for this: it finds co-hosts in a city, plus hosts who run several listings there, and keeps track of who you have contacted, with a CSV export.

Contact hosts without breaking Airbnb's rules

Airbnb's contact form is built for guests asking about a stay, so a co-hosting pitch sent through it needs care, and fifty copies of the same pitch is a risk. Airbnb's Content Policy bans "spam, unwanted contact, or content that is shared repeatedly in a disruptive manner", and its message review may block messages, or ask you to remove text, when it detects contact details, references to other sites or external links.

That rules out the usual sales message with a website and a phone number. A first message that works within the rules is short, specific to the listing and free of links:

• Say who you are and where you co-host, in one line.
• Name something real about their listing: the area, the number of bedrooms, a thing guests mention in reviews.
• Offer something they can look at, such as a short walkthrough video you made from their photos, and say you will send it if they reply.
• Leave out any link, phone number, email address or website name.

For example: "Hi Sarah, I co-host two flats near Brighton station and came across your place on Queen's Road. I put together a short walkthrough video from your listing photos to show how I would present it. Happy to send it over if you reply here. Tom."

Send each one yourself and change the details every time. If the host answers, ask how they would like to receive the video, and move to a call when they are ready.

Reach owners and managers off Airbnb

Some of your best clients will never see an Airbnb message from you. Property managers with more stock than staff, and investors buying their first short let, are easier to reach on LinkedIn. ReelSieve's outreach tools prepare LinkedIn messages for property managers that you copy and send one at a time, so nothing goes out in bulk under your name.

Expect them to look at your profile before they reply. If it has not had a post in a year, that is the first impression. Reachwyn, also from Braivex, turns your own stories and writing samples into a 7-day LinkedIn calendar of full drafts in your voice, four posts a week, and nothing publishes until you approve it.

Lead with a sample of their own listing

Every route above ends at the same moment: a host deciding whether you understand their place. A paragraph about your experience is easy to ignore. A one-minute reel of their own listing, rooms in the order a guest walks them, captions taken from their description and a real five-star review at the end, gives them something to react to. It also shows you looked closely enough to spot what the photo tour gets wrong.

The method for building one from listing photos is in our guide to making an Airbnb video from your listing photos.

Making pitch reels with ReelSieve

Paste an Airbnb listing link into ReelSieve and it builds a walkthrough from that listing's photos and guest reviews, scored photo by photo and ordered room by room, then saves the reel and a 720p copy to your Google Drive. When the listing belongs to someone else, it drafts a host message with no links in it, which offers to send the reel privately once the host replies. You send that message yourself, from your own Airbnb account, by pasting it into the host's contact form. ReelSieve never sends messages for you, and it is not endorsed by or associated with Airbnb.

The first two videos are free with no card. After that, Starter is a one-off $100 for 3 videos and Commercial is $500 for 20, in US dollars, with credits that never expire, and the outreach tools come with every plan. Pick the host you would most like to work with and make their reel free on ReelSieve before you write a word of the pitch.