4 Strategies to Get Last-Minute Bookings On Your Vacation Rental
A Full Booking Calendar is the Key to Short-Term Rental Success
For vacation rental owners, a fully-booked rental calendar is always the number one goal. There’s nothing better than taking a look at your future bookings and seeing your real estate investment paying off. However, many owners struggle to book their homes during every one of their open dates, forcing them to lose out on potential revenue. And while there’s nothing better than a fully-booked calendar, there’s nothing worse than a calendar full of nights where your rental is vacant and not making any income at all.
There is a solution: pursuing last-minute bookings. While it’s wonderful to have your calendar full for months to come, not every guest is able to plan that far in advance.
So if you’re on the hunt for ways to get those last-minute bookings, we’ve put together 4 strategies that will help you start earning more revenue from those last-minute travelers.
#1: Lower Your Minimum Stay Threshold
Keeping a higher minimum stay threshold during busier periods can be a great way to maximize revenue. But if you’re looking to get some last-minute reservations, try lowering your minimum required booking length. While a five-day minimum might work during the high season, it is not always the best strategy when time is running short and your calendar still has lots of empty slots to fill.
Not only will a lowered nightly minimum help your short-term rental to appear on more vacation rental search engines, it can also help you to hook in more guests who have a shorter window of travel time. Shifting your standards can be important when it comes to getting every last dollar you can out of your vacation rental. Nightly minimums are an easy change that you can make to scoop up those last-minute travelers.
#2: Reach Out To Previous Guests
Another strategy that can help you land last-minute bookings is to offer discounts to previous guests. They’ve already shown themselves to be great after staying and leaving a wonderful review. Why not send them a message and let them know whatever last-minute deal you are offering?
It’s far better to top up your calendar with an already-vetted guest at a slightly lower price than it is to let those dates stay vacant and lose out on the potential revenue. In addition, past guests already know how much they love your property, and this can be your opportunity to get another easy five-star review.
#3: Decrease Your Nightly Rates
If decreasing your nightly minimums isn’t an option and your guest outreach isn’t getting the bookings you’d hoped, decreasing your nightly rate can help to attract guests who are looking for last-minute deals. Whether it’s for a surprise vacation or just a spontaneous desire to travel, there’s plenty of guests out there who want to book on the fly, and they are always to aiming to get the best deal possible.
Nowadays the competition on vacation rental sites is steep, and sticking out from the competition is tough when your rental isn’t priced attractively-enough for last-minute guests. While lowering your rates might not make sense during the busiest times of the year, dropping down by $20 or so can make a big difference when it comes time to pad your booking calendar.
#4: Brush Off Your Email List
If you’re aiming to be more than just a host and want to market your vacation rental as a business, an email list is an absolute must. Your email list can be made up of both past guests and potential guests who have inquired about the property. This is why it’s vital to capture contact information for every guest stay and potential guest question: to build out an email subscription list that comes in handy at times like these.
Another plus of emailing your subscribers directly is that it is much more personal than just searching on a site like AirBnB and finding a place to stay. For past guests and potential guests whose trips never panned out, there’s something special about hearing from a host who wants to invite you back or help you find a way to enjoy their property for the first time.
An Easier Way to Get Last-Minute Bookings
Managing vacation rentals can be a trying and time-consuming endeavor, but it’s not without its own rewards. While it might not be possible to fill your calendar during every open night of the year, implementing some of the above strategies can be helpful in padding those extra nights when your rental would’ve gone empty and without profit.
However, if you’d like to take the stress of landing last-minute bookings off of your plate, LocalVR is here to help you turn your real estate investment into a passive stream of income. Our team uses a proprietary dynamic pricing technology that takes all of the guesswork out of pricing your rental, especially during those times you find a lot of empty space in your calendar. And along with our marketing and local ground ops team, LocalVR can take the weight off of your shoulders when it comes to marketing and caring for your short-term rental.