Increase Your Short-Term Rental Bookings With These 5 Easy Tricks
Short-term rental properties can be a risky investment. Despite their high cash flow potential, their success balances largely on consistent demand and a strong tourism industry. So, it is important that you find a way to keep your property in-demand so that your well of cash flow does not begin to dry up.
So, how can you increase your bookings to keep your short-term rental afloat?
While people may boast a variety of ‘trendy’ tips and pointers to make the rental feel more modern and up to date, there is not much a simple redesign can do if your rental is already visually appealing. Instead, you need to find a method that gets more eyes on your property and increases the value that your guests receive from your rentals so that you can beat out the competition.
So, in order to help you achieve new levels of success with your short-term rental investments, here are five tips you should consider and how they can help you.
But first, if you are interested in investing in new short-term rental properties and need financing to make that happen, click the link below for a free strategy call to start getting paired up with the best lenders at the best rates today.
Expand Your Marketing Approach
With the popularity of short-term rentals at an all-time high, the truth is that it is no longer as simple as just uploading a listing to Airbnb or VRBO and waiting for the requests to roll in. There is a lot of competition on the market, so people are going to be drawn towards the properties that draw their eyes first instead of spending their time scrolling through options after already finding accommodations they like. So, you need to be the first option they see.
There are plenty of ways you can go about expanding your marketing for your short-term rentals. The first is by sharing photos and reviews from your rentals on social media. These can be through dedicated pages or through sponsored ad space if you are looking to massively increase your reach.
You can also go through the route of traditional advertising by promoting your rental on bus stops, billboards or in newspaper ads if it is located in a high-traffic region where people are likely to respond to the ad.
Consider Adding New Amenities
Another key trick to increasing your bookings is by offering more to your tenants in each of your rentals. This way they feel like they are getting a better deal on your rental.
This can be done by including things such as free Wi-Fi on the property, access to popular streaming services such as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney+, or including forms of active entertainment in with your rental such as pool tables, popular board games, and fire pits where they are permitted.
Discover How To Rent A Property With This Step By Step Guide
Update Your Listing with New and Creative Photos
Even if you do not need to redesign your property, it can be incredibly valuable to update your listing in order to make it more appealing to potential renters. To be honest, a lot of short-term rental listings have boring photos. So, updated photos can be a great way to make your property stand out.
Start by getting the traditional shots you would normally take to show off the property, and then throw in some more creative shots. You could consider including shots of key amenities from new angles, lifestyle elements that fit your theme such as cheese platters or local wines – or if you want to be really creative, invite some friend over to grab photos of people hanging out and enjoying the property so that guests could imagine themselves in the space more easily.
Offer Discounts During the Slow Season
Slow seasons are a fact of life for any industry that relies on local tourism to thrive. So, as the tourism industry slows down for the season and bookings begin to dwindle, it can be hard to find guests to rent your property.
However, you can increase your odds at grabbing the attention of the potential guests that remain by lowering your prices for the season to compete with more affordable rentals.
Naturally, you do not want to lower your prices too much when you cannot afford to, but sometimes as little as $20 per night can be enough to tip a guest’s attention in your favour.
Reach Out to Old Guests
After a guest checks out, consider holding on to any contact information you might have from them. Then, after a short period, reach out to them and ask them for their thoughts on their stay. This can give you valuable feedback to improve your property as well as potentially encourage them to leave a review thus increasing how often your property is shown to others.
If a guest was particularly pleasant, you can offer them a deal on a future stay to encourage them to come back again.
Bonus: Invest in Local Tourism
The popularity of short-term rentals is often tied directly to the local tourism industry, so sometimes the best way to increase the number of bookings for your short-term rentals is to invest in local tourism. By supporting local businesses and events, you increase the demand for people to come to town and visit – thus increasing the demand for short-term rentals across the board.
Financing Your Investments
Short-term rentals are a creative investment, and as a result they need creative financing solutions. In order to ensure that you get the best available financing for your investments every single time, give us a call at LendCity. Our agents will take your application through our vast network of experienced lenders to ensure that you have the best experience with your mortgage.
To get started today, visit us online at LendCity.ca or give us a call at 519-960-0370 to book a consultation today. Alternatively, you can click the link below for a free strategy call today.