A prospective guest is scrolling through social media when up pops an ad of your picturesque vacation home. Let the daydreams ensue! Moments later, they are snapped back to reality by the ringing of a phone or the ding of an email. Daydream over – potential vacation booking lost.
How do you engage travelers throughout the customer journey and drive vacation rental bookings? You need to make your online presence so strong that the daydreamers can’t help but book. With direct, efficient, customer-focused best practices, those daydream bookings can become a reality.
Take a look at your vacation rental website. Does it make an immediate impression that helps your business stand out in a crowded market? Updating your website's look, navigation, booking system, and social media presence are key when it comes to solidifying your conversions from browsing to bookings.
Guests are looking for more than simply a place to stay, they want an unforgettable travel experience. Market your property as a destination with a customer-centric attitude. With up-sell options, high-resolution photos, carefully chosen lead images, and strategic content marketing placed on your new user-friendly mobile accessible website, the conversions are yours for the taking. Encouraging and tracking user reviews to build trust and assurance with current and potential bookings is another critical step to attract new guests. Set up a system for easy authentic user-generated content to let your property’s customer service skills shine, further enhancing the guest's vacation experience.
Making sure you collaborate with the right media channels provides maximum exposure where you want it the most. It's important to identify what channels are the best fit for your properties – providing maximum exposure and compatibility to increase bookings. It's also important to have a platform for rate-tracking history, from season to season and year to year. With a solid pricing strategy and revenue management system, you can ensure the right price is reflected for your properties at the right time.
This article first appeared here.