Airbnb listing management in Batumi: getting listed on Airbnb and Booking

Airbnb listing management in Batumi begins with setting up the listings on Airbnb and Booking, and we do this as a separate service or as the first step of full management. At the end your apartment has listings with photos, a description in several languages, house rules, seasonal prices and one shared calendar. From then on you can run them yourself or hand them over to us together with the guests and the cleaning.

Whose account: two ways to list the apartment

First we decide whose account the listings will be on. That determines where the payouts go and what happens to the reviews if you ever change manager. We looked at this choice in detail when we compared renting out through Airbnb on your own and through an agency, so here we cover only what changes when the listing is launched.

On Airbnb we join as a co-host, and you decide in the listing settings what access to give us. To look after guests we need the calendar and the messages: without the messages we cannot arrange check-ins. How a manager is given access to a property on Booking.com depends on the platform's rules at the time of listing, and we walk you through the steps on a call. If in doubt, start with your own account: the reviews the apartment collects will then stay with you.

Photos: the apartment as it really is

A guest scrolls through the first few photos, makes a choice, and on arrival compares them with what they see. So we shoot in daylight, and in clear weather if the sea is visible from the window. We show the view from the spot where you actually see it in the apartment. A sea shot taken from the roof of the next block may win a booking, but the complaint about it then stays in the reviews for years.

Before the shoot we get the apartment ready as if for a check-in: we clean, make the beds with the linen guests will get, replace blown bulbs, and put away personal belongings and cables. We plan the order of the photos in advance. First comes the reason people book this particular apartment: the view from the balcony or a bright living room. Then the bedroom and the bathroom, then the kitchen with its crockery, the workspace and the washing machine. The pool, the lobby and the entrance from the street go at the end, so that the guest recognises the building when arriving in the evening.

We don't put the developer's renderings or photos of another apartment with the same layout in the listing. A guest who checks in to something other than the picture writes about it in a review, and that review outweighs any number of good photos.

Description, house rules and check-in

We write the description in Russian and English, and add Georgian on request. We start with what a guest checks before booking: how many minutes' walk it is to the beach, the floor and which way the windows face, the bed sizes, whether there is air conditioning in every room, whether the pool is open in winter. We measure the time to the sea along the walking route, because from many buildings the way to the beach goes via a pedestrian crossing or around the block.

We put the house rules together from two sources: your own conditions and the rules of the residential complex, and where they differ, the stricter one goes into the listing. If renovations are still going on in the building, we say so plainly. A guest who has been warned makes their own choice, while an unexpected hammer drill behind the wall will come up in the review.

We make the check-in guide with photos: the right block, the entrance, the apartment door and a close-up of the lock. For a guest arriving at night from the airport, pictures help more than an address.

Seasonal prices and a shared calendar

We set the starting prices by looking at similar apartments in your building and the ones next to it, not at the city as a whole: a studio with a sea view and a studio facing the courtyard in the same block are priced differently. Most tourists come between July and September, so the price grid goes month by month. While there are no reviews yet, we keep the price near the lower end of what similar apartments charge.

We don't promise occupancy at any price. It depends on the view, the renovation, the reviews and how many similar apartments are being rented out in your building. After launch the manager handles the prices within the limits you set in the contract, and every booking appears in the report with its price.

If the apartment is listed on two or more platforms, a booking on one has to close the dates on the others straight away. For the season we connect booking management software (a channel manager) rather than relying on calendar sync by link. You mark your own stays in the same calendar, and those dates are then no longer sold to guests.

Local sites and a winter tenant

Airbnb and Booking bring tourists, but a tenant for a month, or for the winter until the season starts, is found on the Georgian property portals ss.ge and myhome.ge. They are used by local residents and by people who come to Batumi for a few months. We use these portals only for monthly rentals.

A listing for these portals is built differently. It gives the monthly rent, the deposit, who pays the utilities and the date until which the tenant can stay. The photos are the same, and the text is shorter, in Russian, Georgian and English. Our manager handles the calls and messages about the listing, and before the tenant moves in we check them the same way as when we find and screen tenants for a long-term let.

How much Airbnb and Booking listing setup costs in Batumi

Creating listings on Airbnb, Booking and local sites costs from 360 to 540 ₾ as a one-off fee. This covers the texts, the house rules, the price grid, setting up the calendar and publishing. Professional apartment photography is paid for separately, at 330–480 ₾ per apartment. The platform itself takes a commission on each booking under its rules at the time of listing. That is not our fee, and it is not included in the price of the listing setup.

It costs more if the apartment is not ready to be photographed and first needs cleaning, minor repairs or textiles, if there are more platforms and languages, or if it is a large apartment or a house with a terrace. It costs less when good recent photos already exist, or when the listing has already been created and only needs rewriting and setting up. We name the final cost after viewing the apartment and agreeing the list of work.

If we run the apartment after the launch, that becomes short-term rental under our management: the listing setup is paid once at launch, and after that a commission applies. For short-term rental it is 30–36% of income. The exact percentage depends on which tasks you hand over to us and is written into the contract after we have seen the apartment. We calculate it on the amount received for the stay, after the Booking or Airbnb commission has been deducted. We can also work for a flat fee.

The first weeks after publishing

Early guests are cautious about booking a listing with no reviews. In these weeks we pay particular attention to response time, look at what people ask before booking, and add the answers to the description. If three people in a row have asked about parking, the answer belongs in the first paragraph.

After the first stays we check the apartment against the listing: does everything shown in the photos work, and is it in its place. We adjust the prices to the actual bookings. If the first guests write that something is missing in the apartment, we sort it out before the season, and bigger improvements are priced as getting the apartment ready to rent out. Cleanliness between guests is kept up by cleaning after every check-out to our checklist.