July 3rd, 2019

While it’s important to maintain a visible presence with online vacation booking and travel sites like Airbnb, Vrbo, HomeToGo, and others, to truly develop your brand requires building direct bookings. It’s critical for a vacation rental property management company to maintain a professional looking website, and all of your marketing efforts should work to drive traffic to your branded site.

In this multi-blog post, we’ll share with you 7 best practices you can use to accomplish the goal of driving more direct bookings to your site. We’ll explore the strategies, techniques, and tactics you can use to develop a comprehensive online marketing plan that will keep your properties visible, build your brand, and increase direct bookings to help you grow your business!

Best Practice 1: Website Optimization

Any strategy for developing direct bookings needs to start with your website. All of your marketing efforts should be directed at driving traffic to your website and it should be the hub of your overall marketing strategy.

Your website should define your brand, allow guests to make inquiries, offer value to drive conversions, and answer any frequently asked questions your guest have about who you are, what you offer, and why they should rent from you. Here are key elements to include on your website to help accomplish your goal.

• Professional Photography
  A picture is worth a thousand words, and when it comes to vacation rentals, well done professional photography can be the difference between a solidly booked season, and open slots on your calendar! Always use professionally shot photos on your website. A professional real estate photographer understands what sells. They can provide you with well composed, well lit, photography that can convey a real sense of what your property has to offer. Make sure to include shots of local attractions, like beaches, ski resorts, restaurants or street scenes, and exterior shots of your properties to give a sense of all that your properties and the community have to offer.

• Well Written Unit Descriptions
  Too many property managers just list a units vitals, for example, number of bedrooms, baths, full kitchen, etc. Take some time and write a description of the property beyond the basics. Give the viewer a sense of all the unit has to offer… “just steps to the best beach in Boca” or “five-minute walk to the downtown arts district.” Paint a picture with your descriptions to enhance the visual images.

• Location Information
  Again, be thorough. List the street, city, and state, but also include major landmarks, detailed directions from the North, South, East and West and any other pertinent location data.

• Key Factors – Pricing and Special Offers!
  This is an important element if your website. Your reader will have a budget in mind when researching properties. Nothing is worse than finding the perfect place only to discover it’s outside of your price range. Make sure each listing shows the price of the unit – both in season and offseason, include the dates if availability (a booking calendar widget or app is perfect for this) and also make sure to include any discounts or special offers – for example, stay for three nights, get the fourth free, or book today and receive a 20% discount for your stay.

• User Reviews
  User reviews are one of the most trusted elements when making a decision for people researching vacation properties. Positive reviews add weight and authority to your website, your brand and your properties. Reviews and testimonials can be placed on individual unit pages or can be aggregated and used throughout your website.

• Online Booking Capabilities
  This is a critical element for optimizing your website. All of your marketing efforts should direct prospects back to your website. If they arrive and there is not an easy process for booking your properties, they’ll click off the page, never to return. Give them an easy way to directly book their vacation on your website. This will also help you to build your email contact list, and work to nurture them into a long-term customer.

• Speed and Accessibility
  Some important considerations for both visitors to your website as well as search engines indexing your site are page load speeds, navigation, relevance, and accessibility. To provide your users with the optimal user experience, make sure images are optimized, navigation icons or menus are readily visible and that your content is relevant to your industry and property. Today, more users are using their smartphones to research their vacations so it’s important to also make sure your website is mobile ready. In terms of the search engines, they will look at load times, responsive (mobile-ready) design and relevance as key factors when awarding rankings.

• Cross Platform Usability
  Today, you will have customers who use cellphones, laptops, tablets, or desktop computers to view your site. They may use Apple OS, Android, or Unix operating systems, and screen sizes can vary widely among devices. To maximize your website’s effectiveness, you need to design it to function in any situation. This is called responsive design and you need to make sure your site is designed taking this into account.

Your website is the hub of all of your marketing and branding efforts. These tips will not only provide your users with the information they need, but they will also work to improve your search engine ranking. Use these tips for maximum effectiveness, usability and user experience.

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