In today’s online world, it’s so easy to get your holiday rental live and start accepting bookings by using an OTA (online travel agent) without having your own direct booking website.
And whilst there’s nothing wrong with doing this, (it’s a great way to get started and I’d still recommend that you were listed here anyway for extra visibility), I’d really recommend setting up your own direct booking website for your holiday rental too.
Here’s 5 reasons why you need a direct booking website for your holiday rental…
1. More Control over your Holiday Rental Business
Having a direct booking website for your holiday rental means that your eggs aren’t all in one basket and you’re not just relying on one platform or OTA.
Although very rare, I have witnessed an owner’s listing being paused after a disgruntled guest left an awful false review.
If that were to happen to you, how would you take advertise your property, contact your guests or take bookings?
Having a direct booking website for your holiday rental gives you full control over marketing your property and accepting bookings.
2. More Visibility for your Holiday Rental
Having your own direct booking website adds another layer of visibility to your marketing strategy and means that you can be found on search engines like Google and Bing and proactively work on your SEO (search engine optimisation) to improve your ranking.
You can then be listed on Google Vacation Rentals and show up on the map with a link for guests to book direct.
We’re also seeing more guests realising they’re paying inflated fees on the OTAs, so they want to be able to easily find you when they do a Google search.
3. Increased Profits
Every booking you receive through an OTA, you’ll get charged anything from 15% to 25% for every single booking!
For example, if you own an average sleeps 4 property at £200 per night with a 35% occupancy over the year, that’s anywhere between £3,801 and £6,387 paid in commission which could be in your pocket!
And that amount could be so much more if you own a larger property, or have a higher occupancy rate than in the above example.
Plus, not to forget you don’t have the guest email addresses, so the lifetime value of the guest is low and they’re unlikely to stay again.
4. Collect Guest Email Addresses
A great way to increase momentum and bookings year on year is to collect guest email addresses. And that’s exactly why the big OTAs don’t give you your guest email addresses!
Email marketing helps you to add another touchpoint to your marketing and get straight in front of potential guests without having to rely on social media algorithms!
It’s such a great way to generate more bookings, repeat guests and fill any last-minute gaps without broadcasting on your social media channels. And by having a direct booking website, you can easily collect email addresses.
5. Create a Brand for your Holiday Rental
Having your own website also means you can go one step further and create a brand for your holiday rental, which will make a much bigger impact and hopefully mean guests are more intrigued by the experience you’re offering and want to book more holidays!
Decide your colours, fonts, photos, blogs and so much more to make your property really stand out from the competition!
Okay, I want to create a direct booking website for my holiday rental, where do I start?
You need two things to create a your own website to take direct bookings… a booking system and a website builder.
You need a booking system which syncs with your existing listings to stop any awkward double bookings and that takes payments from your guests online and can send them automatic communications without you having to do anything. A huge timesaver!
The second thing you need is a website builder. This can be something that you outsource, or you can do it easily yourself (I know it may seem daunting, but there are actually some great options out there).
Do you recommend a specific system to do this?
Yes, I’ve scoured the internet and had demos with lots of different systems.
I work with Lodgify, an all-in-one system to help you manage your bookings across all platforms, and build your own direct booking website.
It’s super easy to set up… click here to book a demo call, AND you can save 15% when you use the code HIVE15 at the checkout.
