Every owner hopes to increase their holiday home booking rates. How you go about getting more bookings can make all the difference between a successful short term let and a less than successful one however. While every holiday home owner wants to ensure that their property is never left empty, not all of them take into account the factors that separate quality, reliable bookings and cheap, poor quality bookings.

One of the most important things to consider when considering how you will boost your holiday home booking numbers is how you plan to market your property. It is also essential to consider how you will manage your bookings, too. When comparing self-managed rentals to fully managed rentals, you can quickly see the value in a dedicated manager who can help you increase bookings while also managing your holiday home.

The danger in trying to manage your own property are multi-fold. A major challenge is to market your property in a way that increases bookings effectively, without scamming, spamming, tricking, compromising or winging it at any point. Keep reading to find out why these strategies always end up in failure.

How Not to Boost Your Holiday Home Booking

How can you increase your holiday home booking numbers without failure? Let’s take a look at some of the things that you certainly want to avoid…

• Scamming. There is always the risk of guest scams. But there is also a risk for guests when they are searching for places to stay. Trying to ‘beat the system’ by scamming guests in any way is a recipe for disaster. Some of the typical holiday home scams include deliberate double bookings that result in lost deposits, fake listings, duplicated listings that do not belong to the person listing the property, bank card fraud and over pay scams. To learn more about how to avoid these cons, read our article on how to avoid holiday rental scams.
• Spamming. On a similar note, it is also never a good idea to spam your listings. Examples of this include joining large numbers of Facebook groups and sharing your listing dozens of times a day, along with spamming your email database with multiple messages each week. The risk of spamming is that you may end up getting blocked or reported. Worse, you may end up losing credibility and respect, too. Another problem with spamming is that you are not targeting your listings at all but rather taking a catch all approach, which seldom works.
• Tricking. Likewise, it is never a good idea to try and use underhanded tactics to trick people into making a holiday home booking. Tricks include angled camera shots that make your swimming pool, bedrooms or living room appear bigger than it really is, being vague about the size of the property, trying to sell a studio as a one bedroom apartment, editing your photographs to make them look way better than reality, using outdated photos that do not reflect the current state of the property, not being open about what is included in the nightly rates, changing the rates at the last minute and any other moves that deliberately try to lure people into booking your holiday home.
• Compromising. On the other hand, it is also never a good idea to compromise, either. If you are trying to bring in more bookings through lowered rates that end up making it hardly worth your time and effort, you will certainly get more bookings. You will not end up succeeding in the short term rentals industry however if you are not charging within reasonable averages. A good way to determine your worth is to speak to your holiday home rental manager for pricing advice, or do your own research to see what similar properties in your area are charging per night.
• Winging. Finally, it is also never a good idea to try and wing it. Ultimately, success in the short term property industry comes down to having a clear plan in mind. You will need to determine how you will get bookings not only during the busy summer months, but also the quieter winter months, and the mid seasons as well. This is once again where a good short term rental manager comes in to help you plan and strategise.

___________________________________________________

To learn more about working with a professional short term rental management service, simply contact Totalstay today and we will give you all the information you need to get started.