Vacation rental marketing is as important as ensuring that the sheets in your vacation rental are clean. There are many ways to market your vacation rental to help increase views on your listing and hopefully make more bookings. Below we will share some ways that hosts can improve their vacation rental marketing.
Improve your listing:
The first step is to improve your listing, as this is what potential guests will be seeing when browsing places to stay. Your listing should have a title that grabs their attention. The description should provide information on what the vacation rental has to offer. The listing should also have professional photos that show all areas of the listing, to help the potential guest decide if the place is right for them.
Spend time on your personal profile:
After browsing a vacation rental listing, potential guests will browse your personal profile to see what kind of host you are and what reviews have been left by other guests. It is important that you spend time making your personal profile look as pleasant as your vacation listing. If you look like the kind of host that cares about their guest’s experience, you will be one step closer to securing a booking.
Setting the right price:
At the end of the day, the price you set is very important in helping guests decide if your listing is right for them. Research what you should be charging and look at what the competition is charging. If your listing is new, you may need to charge less, to build up some bookings and reviews. Your pricing should change throughout the year. When times are not busy, lower your prices to get bookings and when they are busy, you can increase your pricing.
Don’t forget to promote your listing:
Once your listing is looking top notch, it is time to promote it. You can create social media accounts to share posts about your listing. Join forums where people talk about the design of vacation rentals and share photos of your listing. Reach out to design blogs and get them to feature your listing. Let influencers stay for free in return for social media coverage or blog posts. Connect with the tourism agency in your area and ask if they can list your vacation rental on their website. Use discount and promotion websites to offer specials at certain times of the year. You can never over promote!
List on more than one vacation rental site:
There are many vacation rental sites available, such as Airbnb or Booking.com, and there is no harm in adding your listing to a couple of these sites, to get more views and bookings. Do a search to find the sites which suit your listing.
Being popular has its perks:
Popular listings which get more bookings can be rewarded by the vacation rental website in the form of badges or features. This will help guests find your listing as it could be bumped up to the top!
Improving the marketing of your vacation rental is the best way to get more views and bookings. But listing your property on multiple vacation rental channels can get challenging when it comes to tracking your reservations and ensuring no double bookings. There is software available that can assist in making this process easier such as RoomRaccoon and iGMS.
