10 of the best ways to get more airbnb holiday rental bookings in 2024
Every year there are some critical things needed to generate more bookings for your Airbnb holiday rental property. The property managers at Professional Holiday Homes have built their knowledge over years of looking after hundreds of different holiday rental listings.
Some are extremely successful as they follow the advice we provide and the top ten things that we work on are as follows
1. Professional photography of the property
When it comes to people deciding on which holiday home to book it is all about the visuals. No property owner should kid themselves and think that their mobile phone photos are good enough.
Professional real estate photographers can create a photo library of your holiday rental property that will give it a premium look and feel on any listing site or our website.
How our holiday management company can help with this?
Professional Holiday Homes provide professional photography only by experienced real estate photographers. This sets your listing apart from 80% of the competition who haven’t invested in photos. Professional photos are the best investment you can ever make.
2. Choosing the right rental pricing rates
The key to maximising your holiday home rental pricing rates is to firstly understand your % occupancy (number of nights booked versus number of nights available to book). If you are within 3 hours of a major city and thereby your property strongly appeals to a weekend market, you should look at your occupancy for both weekends and weekdays.
If your occupancy is below 90%, look to gradually drop your rates (e.g. $25 per night) until you see occupancy start to rise. As your occupancy gets above 90% it’s time to start nudging prices up.
Using HomeAway’s Marketmaker tool is very useful to gauge the level of demand for properties and the average rates booked-but be careful to select your comparison set of properties as similar to yours as possible (capacity, location & facilities).
How our holiday management company can help with this?
To ensure we’re in the best position to capitalise on future shifts in demand and our listings stay ahead of the competition we utilise a dynamic pricing system built for the short-term rental industry.
The dynamic pricing system gives us real-time data and market insights to understand how our listings are performing so we can adjust pricing to maximise revenue and occupancy. Similar to how hotels and airlines adjust pricing according to demand, we are able to capture more dollars in busy seasons and improve our occupancy during slower seasons.
Our pricing model considers the pricing data from your property’s prior bookings along with seasonality, local demand/events and the day of the week. We set conservative minimum prices to protect your returns.
The dynamic pricing system manages the nightly rates as well as last minute discounts and even increases the pricing for bookings further ahead.
3. Embrace the availability of technology in your holiday rental
These days guests expect things such as unlimited wifi. You will lose around 20% of the potential market if you don’t have it. We aren’t talking about WiFi dongles either, we are talking about a proper ADSL or (even better) NBN connection which is more reliable and less prone to causing problems when in use.
Another common expectation is access to content streaming services such as Netflix which costs less than $15 per month. Don’t expect guests to log into their own Netflix account it ruins the experience and can cause issues with them leaving their details.
In these examples they are things that should not have an ‘extras’ charge. They are amenities that will help increase your occupancy closer to 90%. Don’t forget that these additional ‘costs’ also form potential tax deductions depending on your financial situation as they are additional costs related to managing your property. (Your accountant can provide more specific advice)
How our holiday management company can help with this? Craig add here what you’d say to a client over phone/email
4. Wide range of amenities
Not only are guests’ expectations higher than ever before but the booking platforms allow them to filter on amenities they are looking for. So if your property doesn’t have what they want, a tick in a box means they won’t even see your property.
So in addition to WiFi and Netflix, here’s some other things that people expect these days when renting a holiday home instead of staying in a hotel:
- Linen and towels
- Air Conditioning
- Dishwasher
- Espresso machine
- Fully enclosed garden
How our holiday management company can help with this? Craig add here what you’d say to a client over phone/email as in would you help them assess this / add things etc
5. Fast responses to rental enquiries
Speed of response is a competitive differentiator. If you can respond to a customer quicker than anyone else (we recommend within 30 minutes using a professionally crafted template) your conversion rate will dwarf your competitors (conversion rate = number of bookings divided by number of enquiries).
Conversion rate is one of the most important factors of rank calculation on the booking platforms. High conversion rate equals greater rank, greater rank equals greater visibility, and greater visibility equals more bookings.
How our holiday management company can help with this? We respond quickly to any enquiry via booking platforms, eMail or phone.
6. Experiential descriptions for your holiday rental
You need well-crafted words to transport the guest into your property. A photo can show the whitest sand in the world, but the words needed are: “Wriggle your toes and watch your feet disappear into the sand! Doesn’t it feel great?”
A photo of a person in a hammock doesn’t connect as well as saying: “Just try and stay awake as you watch the clouds pass overhead.”
If you don’t have the skills to create a compelling description, it is worth investing in having your description professionally written. Online services such as Guesthook will do it all for you for a fee.
How our holiday management company can help with this? We write all the copy of your listings to be optimised and attractive.
7. Remove rules and restrictions
Excessive rules in a property description are a sure-fire way to make a guest bypass your listing. A few simple rules (2-3 is ideal) won’t scare your guests away. Common rules such as whether you allow parties or pets can be toggled on or off within the booking platforms and do not have to be stated as text in addition.
Other rules that are specific to your property should be added in the rules sections on the platform, not the description itself. Investing in an online guidebook system (such as Hostfully.com) is a great way of letting guests have access to information about facilities at the property without bombarding them with instructions and rules.
How our holiday management company can help with this? We help set appropriate rules and vet your guests.
8. Provide Instant Booking options
Many owners are scared of using instant booking because they want to carefully vet guests. However, if you clearly specify in your rules the criteria for the guests you accept (without being too onerous) you have protection from the wrong kind of guest booking your property and you can cancel without penalty.
Instant booking not only receives higher exposure on the booking platforms but appeals to guests who don’t want to wait around for confirmation 24 hours later.
9. List on multiple booking sites
There are so many different platforms you can list your holiday rental on these days. For example Booking.com isn’t just for hotels anymore. The number of holiday homes is growing at an incredible pace – as are the bookings!
Airbnb, Booking.com and other platforms are all fighting for a slice of the holiday rental market so it is important to work with a property management company who has experience working with all of them.
10. Never Cancel Bookings
If there is one thing that will reduce your property listing exposure very quickly it is canceling bookings.
Now let’s make one thing clear here. If a guest breaches your rules when booking and you are entitled to cancel the booking and you should always request that the guest cancels the booking, not you, just to be on the safe side.
Be diligent and make sure you never get the price wrong or have a double booking. Cancellations have a negative impact on your rank (visibility) which can be catastrophic. If you have cancelled more than one booking in the past twelve months we’d recommend that you delete your listing and create a new one.
Bonus ideas
- A Guest Guidebook: You can promote the availability of a detailed guidebook for your guests, including property information, local attractions, and amenities. A well-prepared guidebook enhances the guest experience and reduces the need for frequent inquiries but can also be used to attract new bookings if it is shown and promoted in your listings.
- Targeted Marketing Campaigns: Invest in targeted online marketing campaigns to reach potential guests. Utilise social media, email marketing, and search engine optimisation to drive traffic to your listing
Professional Holiday Homes have a team of property managers who have years of experience helping property owners manage their Airbnb holiday rental to achieve high occupancy rates and great rental returns.
