Your property is ideal for a fantastic vacation and your guests have been extremely satisfied with the service. Year on year the customer base has witnessed an upward trend. Yet, you know the industry is competitive and it is important to always work towards increasing the vacation rentals.
Analysis of the market and talking to experts led to us to devise 12 vital tips to get more bookings for vacation rentals.
It is crucial to have a virtual identity and a unique place on the web for your website with exclusive details of your properties. This alone will give viewers a complete picture of what you have on offer. Having a website helps potential guests to concentrate just on your properties with no other interference from competition. It also lets you showcase your property in the best possible light, with the right images, call-to-action phrases and testimonials from past guests.
Design your website to be extremely user-friendly and proactive where potential guests and even past ones can quickly browse through the site to make online reservations and bookings. These days ease of booking from the comfort of your home or office is need of the hour, just like we make booking for flights cars and hotels. Guests are quite in a hurry to make snappy bookings and may lose interest if they need to wait endlessly to book their accommodation.
Any communication to potential, existing guests or prospects should ideally carry your website address. This is no rocket science and it is quite easy to get a signature file ready for e-mails with your website address. This means all e-mail communication that goes from your end will include your website address automatically. This makes it easy for guests and prospects to go through the site and the properties almost instantly.
This also is a good way to market your property, as many people who have used your vacation rental will forward your electronic newsletter to friends and acquaintances. So, having your website address makes perfect sense, as those new recipients can easily get onto your site without really
Advertisement is everything and you need to leave no stone unturned finding methods to let people know about your rentals. It is important to allocate some funds for advertisements and also use tools to track the results.
Use online and offline marketing opportunities to promote your vacation rental. Use vacation rental booking sites, flyers, brochures and social media. Facebook and Twitter are a must, especially if you want to enjoy viral marketing and publicity.
How do we achieve this? Use Pay-per-Click advertising which is available on Yahoo, Google, Bing and Vamoose to ensure the advertisement about your website and services are reaching the target audience.
Make sure you follow through once you get the leads by having an opt-in form for visitors subscribe to your newsletter or updates and special offers on your property.
Create a dedicated e-mail account for rental inquires which can be used in all your advertisements. Have an auto responder configured for inquiries which have come through advertisements. This way the e-mail auto response will carry your website address and a quick response through auto response ensures the communication is instant and the customer can also make an inquiry or a booking even while you are away.
There is no time wasted and in a way you are also beating competition. Time delays in response can cause potential customers to go to competitors or lose interest. Time is definitely money here!
Strike the iron when it is hot and this is so true for any vacation rental owner or property manager. The fastest and easiest way to enhance the probability of an inquiry getting converted into a booking is by responding quickly to inquiries.
Take each lead seriously and do not delay the response. By responding quickly you are ensuring your guest does not look for other options. Create a text message alert to ensure you do not miss an inquiry. For most of us getting many emails in a day, it is easy to miss important inquiries. Therefore, creating text message alerts for inquiries can help us ensure we do not miss any inquiry.
Make sure you optimize your website so that it appears on the first page of the major search engines. Online marketing relies on search engine optimization and it is really important considering 70% of all travel reservations begin with an online search.
SEO ensures your website is found by prospective guests, who are looking for vacation rentals. And, the higher your site ranks, the bigger the chances your property will be the first choice for these organic website visitors.
Previous guests would love to know they are still remembered. Most will be delighted to receive newsletters and e-mails and this will show how much they value your patronage. Use tools pertaining to email marketing programs that can effectively work to manage your customer database.
Loyal customers are more likely to spread the word about your property through word-of-mouth, which is the best form of advertisement.
Seasons greetings to your past customers are a good way to remind them about your property and how they can perhaps plan a vacation there. Direct mail is a good way to also inform customers about special deals and discounts from time to time.
Make sure the people receiving the mailers have opted in. And, do have a link to opt out, should some people feel they don’t want to receive them. Just don’t go overboard with sending mailers too frequently. Focus on creating direct mailers that have substance and can offer some sort of benefit to the recipient.
By becoming a member of trade associations, it can help enhance local channel marketing. Draw from the support of well know trade associations such as Vacation Rental Owners Association (VROA.org) or BBB which can help with support and resources, important contacts and local resources which can all work towards boosting your ranking on the search engine.
It also lends more credibility to your property and you. Prospective guests are more likely to rent a property that is affiliated to a trade association.
Vacation rental marketers, travel agents and property managers can also help with booking and enhancing the occupancy to ensure your property is always booked. Using the resources of resellers you can tap markets that you would not perhaps have touched or been in a position to support.
Potential guests are sometimes impatient and want answers to their queries quickly. In fact, some of them show a preference for interactive chats or live chats where they can pose a question and a designated representative from your organization can engage with the guest immediately and answer any question. This also enables a live experience and makes a prospective guest feel special.
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10 Tips to Handle Complaints from Vacation Rental Customers![Quick Tips about growth of U.S.A Vacation Rentals Industry [Infographic]](https://www.vacationcluster.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/4-2-2014-10-20-59-AM1-150x150.png)
Quick Tips about growth of U.S.A Vacation Rentals Industry [Infographic] |  |  |  |  |
