Promoting Vacation Rental Properties, Explained

If you have a short-term vacation rental property, it is a good idea to promote and advertise it properly and effectively. The amount of people you can reach now with the internet is infinite and if you advertise properly you could be looking at regular bookings and referral business. There are several ways to promote vacation rental properties that are reasonably priced and effective in getting the clientele you want to book.

Benefits of promoting vacation rental property

Post an impressive listing

You may be asking yourself how to promote a vacation rental with limited knowledge of the tools available. When you look online at forums that advertise these listings, you usually notice the ones with the best resolution and most eye-catching pictures. The first picture that a potential renter needs to see is the property in its entirety with beautiful scenery such as trees or water if that is a feature. The other photographs should be equally as impressive and show the whole property from front to back.

Some tips on how to promote a vacation rental listing include:

Give your listing a catchy title that describes what the property is. Instead of just a description like a 2-bedroom Seattle home, try using descriptive words that garner interest, like 'Seattle 2-bedroom with dazzling beach view'.
Write an informative property description using all of the positives that the rental has to offer.
Take high-resolution, quality photos to post with your listing. Use the highest settings on the camera or phone and take pictures in the best light possible. If your property has an amazing view at night, make sure to capture that and post the picture.

Use vacation rental apps to save time

Using an app for vacation rentals can save you a lot of time by doing tedious, repetitive duties for you such as bookings and answering frequently asked questions. When you are looking at this kind of software, ask yourself "how should I promote my vacation rental and what do I want to achieve?"

When you know this, you can choose a vacation rental revenue management software that will work with your needs and make the process easy for your guests to access.

Some more ways rental apps can help increase vacation rental revenue and free up more of your time include:

Use the app to send automatic messages to guests so they know their question is in the queue. You can also gather all of your email addresses for the rental property into one unified inbox so you never miss one.
Manage multiple listings and accounts in one application so you don't need to constantly be visiting multiple websites to check how listings are performing.
Use other programs to streamline communication with guests
Synchronize bookings on one application instead of different platforms to avoid double-booking the property.
Create accounts that can be integrated into the app so all of the invoicing and payouts are in sync.
Automate reply emails and guest review emails to be set for check-out when the experience is still fresh in their minds.
Share schedules for cleaning, maintenance, and lawn care with your contractors in these areas so everything is auto-assigned.
Manage bookings with specific tools within the app.
Have reports available at your fingertips for tax purposes, invoicing, or auditing.

Advertise rental property across many different platforms

You can only be limited by the number of bookings you have, so advertise your property on as many appropriate platforms as possible. When you use a good management app, it is easy to keep track of all of these advertisements because the questions and bookings can all come through one application.