For many travellers, researching, shortlisting and booking a vacation rental is now easier than ever in the modern day.
For homeowners, the growth of home-sharing sites like HomeAway Listing means that anyone can catalogue their property and become a host in a matter of moments. As a result, competition is extensive between owners looking to stand out from the crowd and achieve bookings. When you’re up against hundreds of your rival neighbours, your listings have to do the hard work for you so you can attain the optimum occupancy rate
Make sure you accept payments and bookings online
Almost all travellers prefer the option of booking and paying for a HomeAway listing online. Contrary HomeAway has set a pricing strategy to reflect this scenario where users pay an annual subscription fee allowing the HomeAway listing to have online bookings available. Consequently this boosts your search ranking result on the platform, potentially allowing more visibility and increasing the amount of enquiries/bookings.
Try and respond to all enquiries as-soon-as-possible
Responding within 24 hours of a guest enquiry can positively impact your HomeAway listing search ranking. HomeAway reward this as they acknowledge travellers are impatient and want almost instant answers due to the variety of options available. This makes it key for you to respond as swiftly as possible, providing excellent customer service in a super competitive market. Remember your response score takes in to account the response time and rate so make sure you reply to all enquiries.
Have a complete host profile in place for your HomeAway listing
When potential guests are contemplating between your HomeAway listing and another competing option, your host profile may be the deciding factor. Don’t miss out bookings because you have not bothered to add your details to complete the profile. Ideally you should upload a clear inviting photo of yourself with an interesting owner biography; this is where you persuade potential guests to select your property rather than someone else’s.
Try not to cancel bookings
HomeAway see cancelled bookings as a big no. Furthermore this can damage your search ranking, so be careful. However if you are worried about a fraudulent booking, you can mark it as spam in your HomeAway inbox without facing the consequences of cancelling a booking reservation.
Assemble a catalogue of superb reviews
Like any other platform, user reviews are key. When potential guests are reviewing your HomeAway listing they will view past or more recent reviews helping them in the decision making process. Ideally to stand out you should attain at least 12 reviews, with the more recent reviews the better.
Keeping booking calendars up-to-date
Your booking calendar is an essential tool on HomeAway. Having an accurate and updated calendar is paramount to attaining new bookings as it shows that your place is available or not available for the selected days. HomeAway push hosts to update their calendars, consequently if you do not update your calendar for more than 60 days your listing may be removed from the platform.
Authenticate your location/vicinity
Detailed and accurate information regarding the location and area your property is based in is key in optimising your HomeAway listing. Make sure you provide the correct and valid address for your place. Keep in mind that HomeAway will never showcase your exact address on your listing page, so no need to worry. Your location will help travellers decide whether your place is based near what they need or want to visit, so make sure to highlight local attractions and particular areas of interest.
Thanks for reading the article! We hope you have greater understanding of the topic discussed above.
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