As a vacation rental owner, one of your primary goals is simple: attract more guests and get highly reviewed.

Providing indoor/outdoor amenities and five-star guest experiences are crucial pieces of the puzzle, but your road to success begins long before travelers set foot in your home. The truth is, it starts with Online Vacation Rental Marketing.

In Checkmate Rentals, we make sure your property will be seen in the right places, in front of the right people, all the time. We put the right strategies in place making sure your amazing homes will not sit empty.

Vacation Rental Marketing that beats the competition

So your vacation home is freshly cleaned, your keepsakes are stored away, and you’re ready to welcome guests. Your next goal is to turn that wide-open reservation calendar into a full one (and keep it that way).

Digital marketing is the key to keeping your vacation rental booked year-round. In today’s article, we will be sharing how short-term rental property management can use digital marketing strategies to create long-term success in the vacation rental industry.

This industry may vary significantly from city to city depending on the tourism market and the types of visitors coming to the area each year.

The primary goal of any rental property marketing campaign is to generate interest and book your rentals! Any property manager specializing in vacation rentals knows it is a difficult market, but we’ll show you how to stand out from your competitors.

Vacation Rental Marketing Tips

From listing must-haves and distribution best practices to what we at Checkmate Rentals consider a secret marketing weapon, this is your starting point for getting your vacation home booked and earning more.

Tip#1 Create an Attention-Grabbing Headline

Especially in high-tourism areas, a catchy and descriptive title for the vacation rental property can mean all the difference in terms of clicks, inquiries, and bookings.

A rental listing should be SEO-friendly to help it rank higher in search results and garner interest from potential guests. Here are some of the best practices for creating a click-generating, catchy title for your vacation rental listings:

A. Maximize your word count. Be strategic in the words you choose to help potential guests understand what makes the property unique, just from the title.

Your title should be comprehensive, not wordy or redundant. When creating a successful title, every word should be strategic and intentional. Don’t forget to include the property’s location, with applicable landmarks, to help narrow the focus for potential guests.

For example, a listing titled “4-bedroom condo in Escondido” versus “NEW! Home w/ Pool+Spa! Near Safari Park, Legoland!” will garner very different search results, even if the property described is still the same.

B. Use symbols for connecting words to help cut down on word count and maximize your title space. For example, using “&” or “+” rather than “and.” However, be careful not to go overboard with these symbols; it still needs to be professional in your vacation rental listing.

Tip#2 Write an Engaging and Informative Description

Writing an engaging, informative, and eye-catching description is the crucial time investment you will make when creating a listing. Your “description” should leave no questions unanswered for the potential guest, and portray professionalism and trustworthiness.

A clear and compelling listing will provide a glimpse into the vacation rental properties you manage and should paint them a picture of what their time in the space will be like.

Some best practices when writing vacation rental property descriptions include:

A. Avoid overused words like “nice.” Be as descriptive as possible while not overloading the content. Help the potential guest visualize the space and how they will use it.

B. Don’t oversell. Be transparent and honest about the property without overselling the property and its features. Being dishonest and overselling the property will only hurt you in the long run, as you are more likely to receive negative reviews that will harm your reputation online.

C. More is not always better. Try not to overwhelm your potential guests with an overwhelming amount of information. Short, sweet, and to-the-point copy is the game here.

D. Break up the text by theme or subheading so potential guests can quickly scan your description.

E. Avoid passive voice in your writing.

Tip#3 Include Professional Photography

While it might seem easy to snap a few pictures on your phone, the impact of professional photos is pretty astounding: Data shows owners who bring in experts see, on average, a 309% increase in listing views and two extra bookings a month. (Over a year, that adds up!)

Here are some vacation rental photography tips the professionals live by:

A. Take at least 30 high-quality, with resolution 1024px x 683px and upload a minimum of 25 (and a max of 45) to meet the requirements of major listing sites like Airbnb and Vrbo.

B. Show off your indoor and outdoor amenities without relying on any distorting lens or editing tactics that portray your home in a misleading light. (This could cause negative feedback when guests actually step through the door.)

C. Edit photos to eliminate any mirror reflections or shadows.

Tip#4 List on Multiple Marketplaces

Getting your vacation rental on all the top sites maximizes your online presence and puts you in the best position to attract guests. That said, it’s a lot of work to keep up with guest inquiries, reservation requests, and reviews across multiple platforms. It might even be why surveys show over 80% of vacation rental owners only list on Airbnb. But those who put in the work — or have a short-term vacation rental management company like Checkmate Rentals do it for them — report earning two to four times more annual revenue.

Here are some tips for listing across multiple marketplaces: 

A. Clearly understand how the different listing sites operate, from their website functionality to the criteria that impacts your listing’s performance.

B. Create a game plan for how to consolidate your day-to-day operations and distribute any updates to your listing automatically.

Conclusion

It’s undeniable: Vacation Rental Marketing can be complicated and overwhelming. There are endless moving parts, marketing channels, and technologies to manage. Yet, it’s crucial for attracting as many guests as possible to your vacation rental.

At Checkmate Rentals, we make it effortless for you. When you trust us with your home, we’ll make sure it’s everywhere your guests are online. The result? A steady stream of reservations year-round.