So, you have a holiday home or vacation rental and you need to advertise it in order to increase your rental revenues? Where do you start and what is the most effective way of achieving this?
By far the fastest, cheapest and most effective way to advertise your holiday home is by utilising the power of the internet. In todays modern high tech world you have the ability to advertise your holiday home to thousands if not millions of people from all corners of the globe in a matter of seconds. It has many advantages over the older style methods of advertising such as magazines, shop windows, and newspapers.
Firstly, printing costs are extremely high and this all adds up to incredibly high prices for even the smallest of lineage adverts in your local newspapers and magazines. Secondly, try changing your images or text at short notice. Not a chance. Once that ad has gone to the printers its to late. You then have to wait for days if not weeks before your advert is published only to find out that you have made a mistake with your weekly rates, photo´s or property description. The result is potentially a loss of enquiries and ultimately this leads to a loss of bookings and rental income.
There are literally hundreds of holiday home advertising websites on the internet charging anything from nothing to a couple of hundred pounds a year for the pleasure of putting your holiday home advert out there in front of millions of web users just looking to find their next holiday home rental.
But which ones are the best to list your holiday home on? With so many around, the choice is difficult but there are some tips and pointers that you should look for before taking the plunge.
Firstly there are 3 main types of holiday rental listing websites Paid, commission based and free. All have their own advantages and disadvantages which we will now take a look at.
Paid Listings: These are the holiday rental listing sites that charge a yearly or monthly fee to advertise one or more of your properties on their website. Prices can range from as little as £25 to £150 per year with extra reductions for every subsequent property that you add. Features include the ability to control your ads 24hrs a day, ability to upload numerous digital pictures to your ad, and availability calendars to keep track of bookings. A good example of an excellent paid holiday rental listing site is www.directholidaylets.com
Most holiday home owners who use these paid sites normally use a number of them to advertise their properties as these on average produce the majority of their bookings throughout the year. Holiday home owners generally use around 3 listing websites in order to produce as many bookings as possible.
Commission based: These are the holiday home listing sites that charge around 10% for each booking that is made via the website. There is not normally a subscription or sign-up fee charged but in the long term these can prove to not be so cost effective as every time you make a booking you are losing 10% of your rental revenue.
Free sites: These as the name implies are free for you to list your holiday homes on. No commission or percentage of commission is normally charged. Sometimes these sites offer a free service with the option to upgrade to a paid account which will include extra facilities and benefits. Free sites sometimes make money through advertising and affiliate programs, arrangements in which an online merchant Web site pays affiliate Web sites a commission to send them traffic. Around 80% of holiday home owners use free sites as well as paid as part of their advertising campaign and in my opinion this is a good approach as it wont cost you anything other than a few minutes of your time.
Conclusion: If you are the owner of a holiday home or vacation rental and are looking to maximise your rental income by using the internet there is no doubt that using at least 3 paid and as many free holiday home listing sites as possible is the best route to take in order to generate enough exposure to gain maximum return. To advertise on 3 paid listing sites may cost around £300 per year but when you consider that just one booking will probably exceed this amount, your yearly advertising is covered automatically. Everything else is profit. Which is what we all want at the end of the day. Happy renting!
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