If there’s one thing that I love, it’s talking to people about herbs. All day, every day (... Just ask my husband!)
But what if I could find people who would PAY ME to talk about herbs? Sounds too good to be true, right?!
Well, it turns out that it’s not impossible. In fact, I’ve done it.
And here’s how it went down.
Posting an herbal experience on Airbnb
Most people these days are familiar with Airbnb to book accommodation while they are traveling, or even as a host to get some extra cash from their spare room or while they are away on holiday.
Airbnb Experiences is another branch of the same company, but instead of offering accommodation, the hosts offer all sorts of other experiences. A city tour, a home-cooked meal, wine tasting, art class, or anything else... the options are endless!
According to Airbnb, an experience is:
“An activity that goes beyond the typical tour or class, designed and led by locals all over the world. Show off your city, craft, cause, or culture by hosting an experience.”
As an herbalist, it sounded perfect to me. I could take my own spin on the activity and transmit my love of plants and passion for herbalism into an activity to take people on a journey.
What’s more, I’d be getting paid to do what I love.
And while I have the tools to set something like this up on my own website, I like the idea of doing it on the Airbnb platform because:
It made it easy! It prompted me every step of the way to create my experience. Where will we meet? What will we do? What should participants expect?
It schedules everything for you. Just open up your calendar and allow people to book, on your terms, when you are available.
Payments are all taken care of. All you need to do is choose the price and enter your bank details and they do the rest. (That said, they do take a hefty cut of your profits for the service!)
You get exposure to their wider audience. When someone books accommodation in the area of your experience, they’ll get a confirmation email with more information about activities in the area, including your experience.
Your experience is covered under their insurance plan. This is a HUGE one. Part of my idea was a walk through the forest, which will probably be fine but there is a risk that someone could fall and break a leg, something that I don’t have any insurance for as of yet.
Overall, it made sense for me to test out my herbal experience idea. So now it was time for me to post it!!
The actual process was incredibly easy. I just made an account with Airbnb and added the details for what I wanted the experience to be.
Here’s what the experience currently looks like:
The Experience Description:
We'll start our experience together where it all begins, walking in woods to feel the energy of the earth and plants surrounding us.
We'll make our way back to the stone cottage that I call home to warm up with a good cup of herbal tea. I'll help you to create the perfect formula based on how you are feeling that day, and what you'd like to experience.
You'll be able to make your own tea formula and take home a sample to drink at your leisure.
About the Host:
From the moment I set foot in the valley of Orsigna, I fell in love.
It was the wild way of the woods lining the roads; the hidden secrets waiting to be discovered; the plants calling to me from every direction.
More than anything, it was the place of Orsigna that inspired me to continue my studies (I graduated in Pharmacy in Australia before moving to Italy) delving deeper into the natural healing arts.
I took up studies with the Herbal Academy and have continued to learn more about plant medicine through the online school and reading books. I've been studying health and wellness for 10+ years and am passionate about natural ways to improve health and wellbeing.
Now, the time is ripe to share my passion for herbalism with others who are interested in the field.
It did take a few days for it to be approved and added to the website listings but other than that it was a very smooth process.
Promoting the experience
Once your experience is up, you have two options:
- Wait for the bookings to come in
- Actively promote the experience
The problem with option 1 is that bookings are less likely to come in when there are no reviews for the experience. (And of course, with no bookings you can’t get any reviews.)
At this point, Airbnb actually reached out to have a strategy call to give me some pointers on how to get people to book.
The call was super helpful, so I thought I’d share some takeaway points to help you:
- Open dates beyond just one month. (Experiences are shown to people who book houses in the area, but only if dates are open, and people often book accommodation 3+ months in advance.)
- Have morning and afternoon time slots (I just had afternoon previous, but opened up morning too... and that was the first booking!)
- Use different prices/offers (e.g. for weekends) to show up in different searches.
- Include more photos because people decide in 7-10 seconds. (I added 5 more photos of similar things because I haven't actually run the experience yet.)
- Ultimately, getting your first few 5-star reviews are super important for showing up in the results.
- After the call, I did a couple of things to get my first few bookings.
Firstly, I created an offer in Airbnb so that the price shows up as discounted because it is a new experience.
Secondly, I posted in a FB groups and shared my idea and the link. Here is what I posted in one group, to get 3 people signed up:
This single post was enough for me to get my first few bookings and 5 start reviews to start building up my reputation on Airbnb.
Running the experience
Once people have booked and paid for the experience, the next step is to actually host it… and make it amazing so that you get great reviews.
In my case, I spent several weeks planning out the first one because it included a forest walk and we had an entire month of rain, rain, rain. But we got there eventually!
Here's a rough overview of what we did for the 3-hour herbal experience:
- We meet at the agreed place to start, about a 10 minutes walk from my house -- next to the main road and easier to find. This worked well and we
- We walk up the mountain and along the ridge and back down the other side to our house in the woods.
- We go inside to warm up with some herbal tea tastings, 5 different herbs on their own to get a feel for each one individually and discuss them.
- We create our own herbal tea formulas to take home and write a label for them.
- That’s it! We head on home 🙂
Here’s what one herbal tea sample looked like:
The amazing thing about this type of experience, beyond having a darn good time, is the people that you meet.
So far, I’ve only run a few and I’ve already had people ask me for specific herbal product formulations.
This opens my business up to new customers and opportunities, which is promising for the future.
Another plus is that it's not just me having a great time but I'm sharing my love of herbs and natural health with other people who want to enjoy this path.
As I mentioned earlier, getting great reviews is essential for building a healthy business.
Here's the review for the first experience that I hosted, which has helped me to get more bookings since:
Overall, it's been a great adventure to try this out.
It's a way to simultaneously:
- Do what I love
- Get paid to do it
- Meet people who are interested in herbalism
- Grow my confidence as an herbal teacher on a smaller scale.
It's definitely a work in progress with a few things that could be improved but it's been a lot of fun... and I've got more bookings coming up soon!