Even in the Vacation Rental Industry, the most important factor before marketing is to understand where you stand on the scale in your industry. For this, you need numbers, data and analysis of your current state and a thorough understanding of your income potential and expected occupancy.
Know what you are now before you can become what you’re supposed to be.
After you’ve got the foundation set, your next step is to move on to setting up your vacation rental Channel Manager. This is the medium between your starting point and the finish line. There is no way around it.
Before moving further, we need to get rid of the elephant in the room,
WHAT IS A VACATION RENTAL CHANNEL MANAGER?
A Vacation Rental Channel Manager is an essential tool which helps property managers to synchronize availability, rates and content across numerous external OTAs (Online Travel Agents) or listing sites like Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, TripAdvisor and more.
Providers will typically distribute your property listings and update availability calendars across anything from 5-50 partner websites.
All information is easily managed by the one channel management portal which will, in turn, ensure that guest reservations and property information are quickly updated and consistent across all online platforms.
And if you’re as busy as JZ Vacation Rentals who has numerous properties, this will come in handy for you as it reduces the time it takes to update all listings across the internet.
JZ Vacation Rentals have made use of various Channel Marketing Partners overtime and is ready to share that information with you. Here are some of our current OTAs as well as some potential ones:
- Airbnb has almost 2 million listings available and more than 80 million guests have stayed over using the platform. Your properties will reach a worldwide audience in over 190 countries and you just pay a 3%-5% booking fee per booking.
- Despegar.com is the largest travel agency in Latin America with sales up to 3,5 billion US dollars. The company, based in Buenos Aires is present in 21 countries in the region and has registered 25 million downloads of its own mobile application so far.
- Only-Apartments has over 200,000 apartments in more than 20,000 destinations all over the world. Portal reach: Worldwide, being Europe their main market.
- Way to Stay currently promotes close to 4,300 properties. Top Destinations: Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Lisbon, Porto, Florence, Milan, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Krakow, London, Madrid, Prague, Valencia, Brussels, Istanbul, Seville, Vienna, Budapest, Rome.
- Flat4Day is a leading vacation rental platform, hosting over 50,000 properties from 1,000 cities around the world, servicing more than 100M travelers quarterly in +20 languages. Flat4Day is a 0-commission platform for property managers and they have full control over their properties and reservations. Portal reach: global
- TravelStaytion provides more than 20,000 holiday accommodation in more than 300 destinations across the globe.
- Holidu is a global price comparison platform for holiday homes. Holidu works with both global portals and local experts from every region. Portal reach: global
- Travelopo is working with the most comprehensive and trusted network of established property managers and local agents across 192 countries to provide a reliable and relaxing booking experience for every type of traveler. Portal reach: worldwide.
- LaComunity.com currently have more than 25,000 apartments, villas and unique accommodations around the world. Top destinations: Barcelona, Madrid, New York, London, Rome, Berlin.
- MagicStay.com is a booking platform for alternative accommodation exclusively dedicated to business travel. Offers over 130.000 apartments and villas carefully selected to meet the needs of business travelers, in terms of comfort, safety and proximity to business centers. Portal reach: European cities, Middle-East, North and South America.
Seems like a lot of work to be working on each site page individually doesn’t it? This is why hiring Channel Management companies like JZ Vacation Rentals is crucial to sustained success across all marketing channel platforms.
What is a good average occupancy rate?
A good Vacation Rental occupancy rate will vary, depending on:
- The nature of the Vacation Rental
- Where it’s located
- Guest experience
Your goal is to fill all of your homes every night, everyday. But that’s not a practical outlook. You may have vacant homes at times, for example on weeknights.
With your channels and vacation rental channel manager set, you can now redefine your occupancy rate and hence re-evaluate your income potential.
You will now have answers to these simple questions. Now you can determine your present occupancy rate, how advantageous your channels are, and whether there are particular times you should be focusing on to get the highest income potential. This way, you’ll be targeting the perfect peak times for marketing and saving your resources in the meanwhile.
If your Vacation Home occupancy is high on the weekends but low during the week, or if there’s an off season where your Vacation Rental really struggles, that’s worth the analysis.
For example, your average occupancy rate may be near 100% on Saturday nights, but it may be up-to not even 30% on Tuesdays.
Since seasons affect the occupancy rates a lot, it’s very important to target the market seasonally as your occupancy rate dips lower than you would like during the off season. For example, if your vacation home is based near a famous beach, you may see lower occupancy throughout the winter season. A vacation rental at a ski resort will see lower occupancy rates in the summer season.
Target your channels strategically.
Channel Optimization is also the best way to achieve this. You can read more about it by clicking, JZ Vacation Rentals I Channel Optimization.
The end result is a rise in income potential.
JZ Vacation Rentals also incorporates all these techniques into our Vacation Rental Management Services. You can be rest assured that we leave no loose ends with our services.
Alex Zemianek, the CEO of JZ Vacation Rentals not only agrees but also brings it out as a point of interest at the Fasterhouse presentation.
