When you list your vacation rental, you hope that bookings will just start flowing in. Why wouldn’t they? Your property is looking fresh, your photos are perfect and your rates, based on your market research, cannot be beaten. Sometimes, though, even the most splendidly appointed properties lag in bookings.
The reasons for such gaps can be varied, but the good news is that there’s an easy solution: using a vacation rental software will help you boost your rental property business. In this article, we look at some of the best perks that specialized software can provide.
Easily Create a Professional Vacation Rental Website
The way your property looks online will be a major indicator of how well it will perform in the booking category: when information is out of date or missing, many potential renters will go running. You can avoid this pitfall of property rentals, though, with the help of software.
Not all software for vacation rentals come with a website builder and booking system, so make sure you look out for those so you can input your property information easily and easily create a webpage that will make your property shine. As an added bonus, the vacation property website can take direct bookings, so that you can save on commissions from third parties like AirBnB and Vrbo. More bookings plus more profit: what could be better?
Build your Brand’s Online Presence
Having your own website can also help you build your property’s brand. This goes beyond great photos and descriptions of your amenities. By having your own website, more potential guests will find your property based on keyword searches. Stronger performance when it comes to search engine results, means more returns.
Your vacation rental software can help with this as well: you can always assess how your website property listing appears to your potential renters and make those small tweaks that can make a big difference.
Synchronize Your External Listings and Calendars on One Platform
Don’t try to jump between platforms to manage your various property listings on different websites: vacation rental management software with a channel manager can help you set up a one-stop-shop that connects all of your external listings across booking sites, like AirBnB or Vrbo, so that you can work from one single calendar. This centralized platform makes adjusting your property’s availability a breeze and can also make double-booking errors a thing of the past.
Automate Guest Communications
Responding right away to all inquiries makes potential renters feel that you care and are committed to their satisfaction, which will make them all the more likely to consider your property and can also build customer loyalty. Vacation rental software makes this follow-up fantastically easy as it offers a central inbox that consolidates all your messages and ensures that no client outreach falls by the wayside.
A specialized software also makes it easy to ask for reviews. Utilizing an integrated property owner dashboard means you can easily keep track of your current and former guests and follow-up with requests and links to review. Get a not-so-stellar review in response? Not to worry: you can always respond to reviews, and these responses at times can be just as valuable as the review itself. According to a recent TripAdvisor survey, nearly 90% of travelers noted their opinion of a property grew when an owner responded genuinely to a critical review.
Offer Promotions and Implement Dynamic Pricing
Another surefire strategy to draw traffic to your listing is to provide special deals or promotional offers, whether they are reduced prices for early-bird bookings or dynamic pricing to adjust for seasonality or market trends among competing properties.
Your vacation rental software can make putting these special offers in place straightforward: in addition to the ability to efficiently sync availability calendars for your rental properties, software can help you set up promotions with a few clicks and can integrate them efficiently so that your potential renters know right away the deals you have in place.
Vacation rental software has made the process of managing your rental properties easier than ever. The streamlined, intuitive systems allow property owners a smooth and convenient means to list and customize their spaces, so owners should take advantage of these impressive functionalities to use them to their best impact and make their property pop to the top of the booking queue!
Author Bio
Alberto Fernández is an SEO and Content Marketing Specialist at Lodgify, an all-in-one vacation rental software with all the tools that property owners need to boost their vacation rentals business, such as a website builder, a booking system and a channel manager.