Profitable Holiday Accommodation Must-Haves

Profitable Holiday Accommodation Must-Haves

As vacation rental owners face the increasingly fast growing competition, they have to be at the top of their game in order for them to succeed.

If you have a property to rent out for holiday accommodation, or are in the process of establishing one, we give you three of the MUST haves if you’re looking at making a good profit and to stay competitive in the holiday accommodation industry.

A Strong Holiday Accommodation Brand

Before the paint of your new holiday accommodation on your walls is dry, you are already keen to let your guest in – but wait, not too fast. There is something of utmost importance that you need to work on first: Your Holiday Accommodation Brand.

By defining your brand from the start will help you to establish the kind of image you are building and the specific markets for your Holiday accommodation. This includes everything from your logo to your domain name, all of this will help in creating your brand. Take your time, you don’t have to make a quick decision straight away.

As soon as you have a good idea what your brands nature is going to be – whether it’s pleasant, acquainted, casual, extravagant, elite, etc – it will show in everything you do as your brands expression. This means any content on your website, or emails you send or any marketing resources you create will have to use the same styles and tones to keep the same image.

You don’t want to be changing your logo six months down the line. This will only confuse your market.

An Optimized Holiday Accommodation Website

In this day and age a website is an absolute must for holiday accommodation owners who are hoping to get their business off the ground.  The website is not just convenient to get direct bookings; they are also avoiding the high commissions charged by some of the online travel agencies.

It’s not just about creating a website and expecting the bookings to just flow in. To make sure that your website is optimized for this particular industry there are a lot of features that it will need to have to stay competitive. Most travel bookings are now made from a handheld device, so your holiday accommodation website needs to be mobile friendly.

In addition to this you need to have an availability calendar that’s visible. A clear call-to-action button like “Book Now” with a booking engine that’s built into your website, so that potential guests can make their bookings without any hassle. As a part of the web development process this will include carrying out (SEO) Search Engine Optimization tasks. This is so your website will be easily found by Google.

Apart from all the technical sides, you will need a place to show off the beautiful photographs of your establishment with a space to write an appealing description, with functionality for your guests to leave those all-important testimonials and reviews.

A Well Thought Out Marketing Strategy

In order for you to get all those potential guests to see your establishment, you will need to have a well thought out marketing and delivery plan in place.

You will have to think of all your advertising strategies and techniques to get the visibility for both offline and online, when you are writing your holiday accommodation business plan. It must include thinking about your potential guests so that you can target these markets specifically.

If you are a new business that’s entering the holiday accommodation industry, it will be a good idea to start advertising on an assorted variety of websites in order to reach as wide a selection of an audience as you possibly can. In the early stages your presence on TripAdvisor or SafariNow can be a way to get the first bookings and reviews on your accommodation.

There are a lot of other ways to advertise your holiday accommodation establishment; this should be your main focus (as this brings in the money). Besides the online listing sites there will be tourism boards in your local area and it is critical that link up with them. You should also advertise your property on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

It is worth investing some money in Search Engine Marketing (SEM), like AdWords, in order for potential guests that are searching for holiday accommodation in your area to find your property and your website easily.

To make your holiday accommodation a success these are the TOP three things that you will need from the start. There are a lot more that you need to learn as your business matures.