Advertising Your Vacation Rental Via Online Marketplaces
In a difficult economy, an increasing number of second homeowners decide to make extra money by renting out their vacation homes. Accommodating a guest is one thing, getting the guest to stay in your home in the first place, however, is a different matter. This article will give you a good overview on how you can promote your vacation rental and increase bookings.
Operating a vacation home is similar to operating a small business. Your potential customers need to get aware about it, they need to know that it actually exists. As it is the case with almost every business, this is done via advertising and promotion.
A very effective way to advertise your vacation rental is the Internet. In a recent study conducted by us, 79% of the survey respondents stated that their most effective advertising channel is the World Wide Web. So the first step for promoting your vacation home would be to create an online presence that provides all the required info such as availability calendar, photo, map etc.
The easiest and quickest way to create an online presence is to advertise your property on vacation rental marketplaces. That will not only give your property a place on the web, but also attract visitors to view and book your property. In fact, 92% of vacation rental owners already list their property on marketplaces and 67% consider them to be their most significant promotion tool.
Interestingly, 93% of homeowners use more than one marketplace to market their property and 66% of homeowners advertise their vacation homes on more than 5 marketplaces.
Clearly, there are many marketplaces out there. Usually, they charge owners yearly advertising fees of up to $300 in return for booking inquiries. While others do not charge anything at all. In general, owners pay an average of $700 for having their properties listed on such sites. Half of the survey respondents consider these expenses to be too high, yet the other 50% is happy with the return given.
Thus, not every marketplace delivers enough booking enquiries that justify their annual fees. Getting informed about the size of their vacation rental portfolio, popularity and search engine rankings is crucial before advertising on any paid marketplace.