Hello fellow owners:
Marketing your vacation rental website online can be an excellent way to keep your property fully booked. These days, with a bad overall economy, it is even more important to keep that revenue coming in even when you are not in your peak season. Fortunately, there are lots of options for vacation rental owners to choose from when it comes to selecting an online vacation rental advertising medium. That can be a good and a bad thing – just because a vacation rental website exists, that does not mean that paying an annual fee to have a listing on that website is going to lead to inquiries and bookings for the owner. As with many things, there are lots of dependencies that will determine success. As a vacation rental owner, here is the checklist that I use to determine which vacation rental websites I am going to pay to advertise my property on:
- Check where that particular vacation rental website you are considering advertising on shows up in Google rankings for searches that a renter is likely to enter. For example, if you had a beach condo for rent in Daytona Beach, Florida, see which vacation rental website comes up first for a Google search of “daytona beach condo rentals“. The higher the vacation rental website is on that list, the better you are likely going to do by paying them for a listing on their vacation rental website.
- After clicking on the link from the Google search results that takes you to a particular vacation rental website, take a look at how many vacation rental properties show up on that page that Google took you to. In the vacation rental website business, we call that a “city index page”. The closer to the top your property shows up on the city index page, the more pageviews and leads you are going to get. Many vacation rental websites will charge more to be closer to the top of the page. This will lead to more inquiries and bookings for you, but as a business owner, you have to weight that against how much more that will cost. On our website, http://www.findvacationrentals.com, we put together a matrix that compares the cost of advertising on some of the top vacation rental websites.
- Pay close attention to the organization of the city index page on the vacation rental website. Is it easy to use? It is cluttered? Is there a search box available so the renter can hone down there search? Is the text so small on the page that it is hard to read? We have put a lot of thought and incremental improvements into our city index pages. Our Daytona Beach vacation rentals city index page is an example of a clean, easy to read interface that allows renters to quickly find and inquire about vacation rental properties that they have interest in.
So, in the context of the Daytona Beach condo rental example, if you were to compare a basic listing on www.findvacationrentals.com versus a listing on vacationrentals.com, you would be looking at a base price of $125/year versus a base price of $199/year for the listing fee. On Findvacationrentals.com, you would be listing #56 if you listed today and selected a basic listing level. On vacationrentals.com, you would be at listing #230. Current, vacationrentals.com is #5 for the search “daytona beach condo rentals”, whereas findvacationrentals.com is #1. While I would like to think that we beat our competitors in every market, I know that’s not the case. My point in making the comparison is that when you are evaluating your advertising options as a vacation rental owner, you really need to focus on the performance of a vacation rental website for the searches that your renters are likely to do, and then you need to look at how much it will cost you to be towards the top of the city index page on that vacation rental website. Those factors, along with how well written your advertisement is and how good your picture are, are the key factors in determining how many inquiries and bookings you are going to get.
Jon Ludwig
How to get more Bookings for your Vacation Rental:
When advertising your rental on FRBO websites, remember that you are not just marketing a house to vacation in. You are marketing a total vacation experience and the more you can paint a picture in your tenants mind of what the experience will be like, the more bookings you will get. The first step is to pick a Name that represents pleasure and relaxation and compliments your home’s location and decor.
Consider purchasing a ” House Sign” that is designed to give your home character and carry out the “theme” of your home. The pictures you post should capture the House sign, unique features of your home and pictures of amenities close by. If you have no unique features, then consider adding some, such as a water garden, fountain or barbeque pit. These are small upgrades you can do with minimal cost that sets the ” mood” of the vacation. Always remember that you are selling a “dream” not just renting a home. Instead of cutting costs if rentals are slow, add services and you will get the booking over the com-petition every time. The more information you can give them about what to do in the area, the happier they will be. My tenants always get a Check In Booklet with lots of information on what to do in the area along with contact numbers. Most tenants like being able to plan ahead what activities they will indulge in during the stay. The more you help with this process, the happier the tenant. A happy tenant is a repeat tenant.
Finally, having your own web site is imperative and makes renting easy.
I can’t imagine having to answer the same questions over and over again with each tenant. I simply send them to my website and tell them to email me should they have any questions “after” reviewing the web site.
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