You have a fantastic holiday home that is furnished with all the amenities for a cozy stay. But you’re still not getting the reservations you wanted. It may be challenging to ensure that your home stands out in the crowded vacation rental market. The number of available vacation rental listings is in the hundreds, if not the millions, so making a strong first impression is more crucial than ever.
Consider what you’re doing incorrectly for a long time before becoming comfortable and waiting for bookings to creep in. Even if you may not want to accept it, the problem probably has a simple solution.
This post will look at the top 9 reasons why you won’t be able to reserve more holiday rentals (unless you change something soon). Avoid the mistakes listed below, and you’ll quickly enjoy the benefits as your property receives greater exposure.
1. Your website’s design is awful.
You’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t consider your website to be the entrance to your vacation rental. Although the aesthetics of your website are still crucial, you need also be concerned with other factors.
Users will soon quit a website that doesn’t adjust to their mobile device since a rising amount of travel reservations are being made on mobile devices. Additionally, users will leave a website quickly if the navigation is confusing, the loading speed is bad, and there is no consistent design or brand across the whole page.
Don’t let poor site design deter people from making a booking since you never have a second opportunity to create a good first impression. A good user experience may make all the difference, but a poor site design will just discourage people from making reservations.
2. You Can’t Be Found
What good is it to have a beautiful design if no one ever views your website?
We can’t emphasize enough how important SEO and other internet marketing strategies are for driving website traffic, which many vacation rental operators neglect.
New visitors who are unaware of your vacation rental have just one option for discovering you and getting to your website: an organic Google search. Because keywords are crucial because they bridge the information gap between what users (i.e., prospective guests) are looking for and what you can provide them. Once your keywords are in place, you’ll quickly see how simple it is to increase website traffic and increase bookings.
3. Your Listings Need Improvement
You may have a fantastic website and have optimized it for SEO, but if you haven’t given your listings any care, you won’t be able to accept reservations. For the visitor who values originality over goods and personality above pricing, just writing one phrase about your ad is no longer sufficient.
A strong listing description is still crucial given the nature of the fast booking and the decreasing amount of guest/host contact before the transaction is finalized. If you need assistance writing your listing descriptions, there are numerous resources available, so don’t worry too much if you’re not up to the task. You may hire a lot of individuals or businesses to write for you nowadays.
Note: In your listing description, be sure not to include any of these 10 terms.
4. Your Pictures Are Terrible
What precisely do you have for sale here? Your residence? then flaunt it! One of the most effective aspects that may enhance your reservations is the use of photos. The majority of visitors won’t come to your house to make a booking, therefore the pictures you provide online need to be convincing and correct.
High-quality pictures are just as crucial as the ad description, if not more so. The photos you submit should represent the quality of the services you provide since so many people book their lodging online. You must thus have excellent, accurate images of your holiday property.
These images can help you manage expectations for the experience visitors will have at your house in addition to drawing visitors to your property. Alt tags and thorough picture descriptions should be included as they will aid in the SEO optimization of your photographs.
This cornerstone forms the core of your whole company. You can only increase the number of reservations you accept by doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the number of bookings your listing generates.
5. There Is Insufficient Detail
Spending some time on your description before going live can save you a lot of back-and-forth with possible guests, but you can always make changes afterward.
Spend the time to provide any future visitors with all the information that will make it scream, “We’ve got you covered!” Consider your visitors from their perspective. Who are they? From whence are they coming? What will be most significant to them? Prepare your listing to talk to them directly if you anticipate serving many foreign clients, families, or groups of travelers.
More is better when it comes to drafting your listing description. Write as concisely and in-depth as you can while maintaining clarity. It will be simpler for visitors to determine if you have what they are seeking as a result. Don’t forget to include all the features and services that come with your rental.
6. Your response times are too slow
Every host dreads returning to their computer after a few days away to discover they have missed an inquiry and prospective booking since they weren’t made aware of the request. However, the truth is that some hosts are still experiencing this, and this is not how your reservations will ever increase.
For whatever reason, if you prefer booking requests to rapid reservations, you’re going to need to have certain measures in place to prevent inquiries from vanishing because your visitors will undoubtedly seek elsewhere if you don’t respond right away.
Create email autoresponders, enable mobile email push alerts, synchronize all of your booking channels to prevent multiple bookings, and take any other necessary steps to ensure that you don’t miss that appointment.
7. There Are Not Enough Reviews
How often do you look up restaurant reviews online before dining out? or maybe see a movie? or maybe even get an app? It will take a very long time for your reservations to increase if you don’t have any reviews.
Nobody will give you the time of day or even consider reserving your vacation rental if your website lacks online ratings, which are essential in our internet-fueled life.
A sort of social proof called endorsements from previous visitors who can attest that your vacation rental is as good (or better) as it seems online are crucial for establishing your brand and persuading future travelers to book a stay with you.
Developing the practice of asking every single one of your visitors for a review may have a huge impact on your booking volume. Even unfavorable reviews aren’t all that horrible, and hosts may benefit from them by learning important lessons—as long as they know how to handle them.
8. You Are Not Marketing
How would visitors locate and book your vacation rental if they are unaware that it even exists? Have you considered all the various potential methods to advertise your rental, besides having it listed on OTAs and your website?
Now is the time to set up a business account on Facebook and Instagram if you don’t already have one. You may reach a larger audience and increase the exposure of your property by using social media.
You may start a blog as part of SEO, as was already discussed. In addition to providing information about the location for visitors, vacation rental owners may use blogs to boost their website’s ranking on Google and generate content for social media posts.
Your company will get increased exposure via advertising on various platforms and channels, which will result in more reservations!
9. Your Prices Are Inaccurate
We freely concede that setting pricing is difficult. However, if your pricing is off, your vacation rental will be marked with a huge black cross. If you haven’t considered your price presentation or haven’t established various rates for your peak and low seasons, you can be in for a rude awakening when your lovely vacation property doesn’t rent out.
For many hosts, pricing is a source of frustration. Make sure your prices and policies are comparable to those of other properties in your neighborhood if you want to establish competitive ones. Investigate listings with comparable facilities, rooms, beds, and other features to see what the competition is offering.
It might put you (and your reservations) in a rut if your rivals are much less expensive or if your property strikes out as a bargain in contrast. If you want to achieve maximum occupancy and that much-anticipated rise in reservations, research and put into practice a sound pricing plan. Don’t be a rule-breaker; else, visitors could think your place is a vacation rental fraud.
What to Remember
You must convince visitors that choosing your property would provide them with the ideal holiday. All these problems are simple to resolve, regardless of how long you’ve been hosting or whether you’re just getting started in the vacation rental industry. It’s never too late to adjust your tactics and increase your reservations. Sign up with Lodgable for free if you don’t already have a website.
Because of this, having a comprehensive listing with accurate, current, and most importantly, up-to-date information saves everyone time and effort and encourages more stress-free reservations for your property.
