3. Current Market Landscape
The Vacation Rental Industry is booming: Nearly half of U.S. travellers say
they have stayed in, or plan to stay, in rental homes for their 2013 leisure
trips.
There are approximately 6.1 million vacation rental properties worldwide
generating a revenue of $85Billion.
Takeaway: The Vacation Rental industry is quickly becoming saturated. It is
imperative to invest in marketing your properties in order to stay ahead of
your competition.
*Source: http://www.tripadvisor.com/PressCenter-i5890-c1-Press_Releases.html
http://software.homeaway.com/vacation-rentals/news-events/market-trends-reports
4. Vacation Rental Management
Source: http://discovervacationhomes.com/PhoCusWright_travel.asp
Vacation Rental homeowners have the option of managing their properties by
themselves or to go with a vacation rental agency.
More than half of the vacation rental market’s total rental revenue now goes to industry
professionals.
Location, saving-time, price and experience in the vacation rental market play an
important factor when deciding to use a professional vacation rental agency.
5. Marketing Your Vacation Rental
The vacation rental industry is becoming more and more competitive. In order to stay
ahead of your competition and increase your bookings, you will need to implement a
mix of marketing strategies:
• Partake in Channel Management (aka Affiliate Marketing)
• Create and Manage an Independent Website
• Ensure your Website is Multi-lingual
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Mobile Optimized Websites
• Managing Positive and Negative Reviews
6. Channel Management
To optimize leads and bookings, vacation rental managers can choose to advertise
their properties across multiple vacation rental portals such as AirBnb, HomeAway,
HouseTrip etc.
Portals have high traffic volume and large marketing budgets, allowing vacation
rental managers to promote their properties on established brands.
The audience you reach through portals can range from niche pet-friendly markets
to global markets with millions of users. Find out more
7. Channel Management
A number of factors will determine which portal you choose to use to promote your
vacation rental property:
• Cost: Do they implement monthly subscription, commission-based or a mix?
• Market Reach: Do they cater to a specific niche or are they global?
• Search Engine Ranking: Which portals rank high in your target market’s search
engines?
• Connection Type: In order to effectively manage your property information and
availability calendar across multiple platforms, the portals you choose must
have connection capabilities with 3rd party websites and software programs.
8. Managing Multiple Portal Listings
Marketing vacation rental properties on multiple portals allow you to increase your
exposure and increase your bookings. One of the risks of listing your properties on
multiple portals is that your property information and availability calendars may not be
up-to-date.
In order to solve this problem, Vacation Rental Software companies have introduced
Channel Managers that allow you to automatically have your availability calendars and
property information updated. If a guest makes a booking on Housetrip, your property
is automatically shown as “booked” on Booking.com and your own website.
Channel Managers reduce the risk of double-booking and allow you to save significant
amount of time managing your properties. Find out more
9. Independent Websites
Although using vacation renting listing websites are a good way to advertise your
vacation rental, owning and operating your own website will establish an online
brand identity and increase the trust between a potential guest and your
vacation rental agency.
With independent websites, you can centralise all of your marketing efforts, from
Adwords campaigns, e-mail marketing, local marketing to offline marketing
initiatives.
Implementing analytics programs will allow you to optimize your website by giving
you statistics on the location of your website visitors, the search terms used to visit
your website as well as the bounce rate. Find out more
10. Choosing the Right Website
There are a number of options you can choose from when selecting a vacation
rental website. It is imperative that you select a website that is created for the
unique needs of vacation rental managers.
Factors to consider when choosing a vacation rental website:
• The website should have in-built availability calendar capabilities so that
guests can search properties and book them straight from your website.
• The website’s backend should allow central management for all your
vacation rental activities from calendar syncing, channel management to
email inquiry automation.
• Depending on your budget you can select a custom website or a template.
• The website should be hosted on a trusted and secure network.
Find out more
11. Multi-lingual Websites
Vacation rentals are trending internationally - 2012 saw the growth of the vacation
rental industry outpace the hotel industry by 27% globally.
Although English is the primary international language, there are a large volume of
guests who do not speak English. In order to cater to the needs of an international
audience you will need to create a multi-lingual website. You should research the
top countries your visitors come from, and choose to translate them first.
There are numerous professional translation services who can translate your
website for a low-cost, as well as website platforms who have in-built multi-lingual
capabilities. Find out more
Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/1/prweb10367258.htm
12. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website to rank high
on search engines. Search engines are the #1 driver of traffic to websites, making it a
great source of low-cost leads.
It is imperative to be listed on the first page for selected keywords: 75% of users never
scroll past the first page of search results.
Keyword research plays an important role in SEO: you will need to select keywords that
you are able to rank high on. It is not advised to only focus on high competition keywords
such as “Vacation Rentals in Florida”, but instead create a portfolio with a wide range of
keywords that you know you can rank high. Find out more
Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/
13. Content Marketing
Content creation, blogging and creating landing pages, can significantly increase your
search engine ranking. Content creation allows you to increase your website’s page
number and allows you to place a wide range of keywords onto your website.
Consistent SEO orientated blogging and landing page creation shows commitment,
professionalism and as a result drives traffic to your website.
The more content rich in SEO keywords you have, the more people you will reach,
which means more bookings. Find out more
Source: http://www.impactbnd.com/blogging-statistics-55-reasons-blogging-creates-55-more-traffic/
14. Guest Reviews
Reviews and testimonials have become an important part of the booking process for
potential guests. They can be used as a powerful marketing tool to a vacation rental
owners’ advantage.
As a vacation rental manager, you should be encouraging guests to review your property
after their stay. Review reminders through check-out emails, leaving business cards that
encourage guests to review your property are a few ways in which you can obtain reviews.
The impact of a negative review far exceeds the impact of a positive review and could
affect vacation rental bookings. However, if you respond in a timely manner, and highlight
the positive points from their negative review, you can reduce the impact of the review.
Source: http://gigaom.com/2011/09/17/the-tripadvisor-effect-are-online-reviews-making-brands-irrelevant/
Find out more
15. Referral Marketing
The key to succeeding in referral marketing is going above and beyond for your
vacation rental guests. Apart from the guests’ satisfaction with the property, customer
service plays an important role in adding value to their rental.
An automated email response system is an invaluable tool for maintaining excellent
customer service standards. A check-in email with information about the property/area
is a good starting point for a great customer service experience.
Go that extra mile and pleasantly surprise guests with a welcome package. A great
marketing tool that will increase chances of being referred to the guests’ friends and
family. Find out more
16. Mobile Optimization
25% of internet users utilize smartphones, not computers, for majority of
their web surfing. This number will continually grow as tablet and mobile
technologies advance, making it imperative that your website be mobile-
friendly.
An important tip to remember is to keep your mobile website simple and
clean: an image heavy website full of flash plugins will make it almost
impossible to use from a mobile device.
Vacation Rental Software providers who have website platforms, can easily
create a mobile-optimized website for your agency. Find out more
Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Content-Vaults-No-1-Marketing-Priority-2013/1009648
17. Management Software
In order to save time, increase bookings and stay organized vacation rental managers can
utilize vacation rental system. With vacation rental software you can:
Automate every aspect of your business
• Automated email inquiry response
• Automatic availability calendar and property information syncing
• Housekeeping staff schedule automated through booking system
• Check-in/Check-out email automation.
18. Management Software
There is a significant ROI on using vacation rental software, from increased marketing
reach to decreased manual data entry and management:
With Vacation Rental Software you can:
• Promote your properties on portals
• Promote your properties on partner vacation rental agencies with an readily-
available data-base
• Dynamic pricing options to take advantage of last minute deals
• Online Payment Integration
• Email parsing to
• Reports
• Analytics
• And many many more features…Find out more
19. Marketing 101 has been brought to you by
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