Here are 5 quick tips for Marketing your Vacation Rental Listing.
You’ve researched the best location for your property and purchased your first vacation rental. Now all you have to do is market your vacation rental online and the money will start flowing in!
Unfortunately it is not quite that easy, but there are some easy things that everyone should do when marketing their vacation rental listing. Some of these may seem obvious. Just remember that having a successful vacation rental is about doing a lot of little things right.
Marketing Your Vacation Rental: Use Professional Photos
I can not tell you how many times I have seen a great vacation rental, in a great area, advertised online with photos that look as if they were taken with an early 2000 era flip cell phone.
I can not stress this enough. The photos of your vacation rental are the most important part of your vacation rental listing. They are the first thing guests will look at. They will look at the photos even if they didn’t read one word of your description.
If you do not listen to anything else on my blog, please listen to this one thing. Have professional photos taken of your vacation rental.
For around $150 (about what my customers spend for professional photos, even on a large home), you can get high quality, professional photos that you can use in all your vacation rental marketing efforts.
Even one extra night booked in your first year will typically more than pay for the cost of these photos. You can use the same photos for at least a few years if you haven’t made any significant changes in your vacation rental. You will almost certainly get several extra bookings a year simply due to the quality of your photos. This means you will get your initial investment of hiring a professional photographer back several times over. Simply put, having professional photos taken of your vacation rental will be one of the best investments you will ever make.
I also recommend offering vacation renters a large number of photos of your home to peruse. Display photos that show several different angles of each room, the outside of your home and any amenities. Renters love scrolling through photos on a vacation rental listing, so the more you have the better.
List All the Amenities your Vacation Rental Offers
Listing all the amenities your property has when building your vacation rental listing is another important step that sometimes gets missed out of carelessness. Most vacation rental listings sites will have a list of popular amenities that you can select, depending on whether your property has them or not. See the screenshot below from one of my properties on Homeaway.
Your property might have an ocean view, a community pool or a private yard. Vacation rental travelers will not know if your property has these amenities if you do not fill your listing out properly. They may simply assume your property does not and move on to the next listing.
Worse yet, a renter may filter their search for a vacation rental with a certain amenity, an ocean view for example. Your property will not even show up in their search results if you do not have that amenity selected.
Have a Well Written Description
The best vacation rental descriptions provide the basic information of the home, such as what bedroom has what size bed, while also acting as a sales pitch for your vacation home.
List what you feel are the most attractive features of your home first. Proof-read to make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors. My wife is a former teacher so I always have her write up our vacation rental listing descriptions. Don’t be afraid to ask someone for help.
Adjust your Rates Depending on the Season
Don’t expect to have a different rate for every day of the week. Hotels are notorious for having extremely complicated rate schedules.
You don’t have to take things that far. You do want to make sure you are maximizing revenue during your peak season while maximizing occupancy during the shoulder and low seasons.
Have a Clear and Reasonable Cancellation Policy
Just make sure the cancellation policy of your vacation rental is not too lengthy or complicated. Also I recommend having a similar or less restrictive cancellation policy than the majority of your competitors.
Vacation rental guests know they have a lot of options. Anything too complicated or unreasonable may cause them to simply look elsewhere.
Many vacation rental listings sites offer owners a range of pre-set cancellation policies, which makes things easier for you. Homeaway has a cancellation policy range from no refund to “relaxed” for example.
