Vacation Rental Marketing: 101 Guide

If you have a vacation home in a popular tourist destination that you visit only a couple of times a year, renting it out may be the perfect side hustle for you. You can hire someone to manage your property, clean it, and maintain it when you’re not there. But as a vacation rental homeowner, you’ll need to take care of marketing to help potential guests find and book your property.

Vacation rental marketing is imperative to survive and thrive in this highly competitive market. Even unique vacation rental homes can remain empty if potential guests are unaware of their existence. That means you need the right vacation rental marketing strategy in place to build your vacation rental brand, keep your property visible to your target audience, and get bookings.

Digital Marketing for Vacation Rentals: Start Getting Bookings

The vacation rental industry is constantly evolving, and attracting potential guests and driving bookings is becoming increasingly challenging. However, investing in digital marketing for vacation rentals and developing a comprehensive strategy can set your business up for long-term success.

Identify your ideal guests

Before creating your marketing plan, you need to identify your target audience and determine your ideal guests. Consider who would be most interested in staying in your vacation home: business travelers, families with children, couples, large groups, or individuals who travel with their pets.

Consider your guests’ preferences to determine the types of experiences they are seeking. Are they seeking a family-friendly space or a luxurious getaway? It’s also essential to understand the motivations behind your guests’ trips—vacations with friends, romantic escapes, or business travel.

This essential step will guide the rest of your marketing efforts and help you determine how to furnish and decorate your home to create a welcoming space for your potential guests. In your marketing, you’ll be able to tailor your messaging, visuals, and offerings to meet the needs and expectations of travelers who wish to stay at your property.

You’ll also want to highlight some unique features and popular amenities that cater to those travelers. For example, if you decide to target families with children, you should mention items such as baby gates, a high chair, and a shatter-proof dishwasher in your listing description. Highlighting features that resonate with your target audience can help you attract the right guests, secure more bookings, and significantly improve the overall guest experience.

Creating an outstanding vacation rental marketing strategy requires time and effort, but vacation rental software like Hospitable can free up your time by automating repetitive tasks. Our STR super app can put your business on autopilot, so you can focus on marketing your vacation rentals and other functions that contribute to your business growth.

Find the right mix of channels that fit your rental

Vacation rental platforms are a great way to get started in the vacation rental industry, as millions of users visit them daily. Listing your home on them is the easiest way to market your property and start getting bookings. It’s also better to rely on more than just one source of bookings and list your property on several popular online travel agency platforms, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and local listing sites.

Consider listing your place on niche sites that offer unique opportunities to market your property to highly targeted groups of travelers interested in pet-friendly accommodations, luxury properties, or eco-friendly options. You should research online channels for marketing rental properties that align with your vacation rental and target audience, and create listings on as many as possible.

For example, suppose you own a luxury villa with an exceptional design and some remarkable features. In that case, you may consider applying so that your property can get listed on Plum Guide. And if you own a cozy log cabin in the woods, a good idea is to list it on Glamping Hub in addition to your listings on major booking platforms.

Just make sure that your listings are optimized for better performance across all your channels:

• Provide basic details about your property (its type, size, location, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, amenities, any accessibility features, how many guests you can host, etc.)
• Create a catchy title to attract the attention of travelers—highlight what’s unique about your rental, for example, any exceptional amenities, proximity to a local attraction, etc.
• Write a detailed description that explains what makes your property special (your unique selling proposition). Highlight features of your rental space that are specifically important to your target guests, using language and tone that resonates with them.
• Add professional photos of every room in your home, highlighting key amenities such as a fully stocked kitchen, a hot tub, a game room, or eco-friendly elements that set your vacation rental apart.
• Include your house rules to explain what is and is not allowed at your rental, setting clear expectations for your guests. Adding house rules also helps ensure an enjoyable experience for guests.

Optimize your pricing strategy

Create an effective pricing strategy to attract your target audience. Remember that price is one of the most significant factors that travelers consider when choosing a place to stay. You need to find a balance that ensures your rates are competitive and allows you to make a profit.

The easiest way to get your pricing right is to use a dynamic pricing tool that will automatically adjust your rates across all your booking channels based on real-time market conditions and trends. Such tools respond to changes in market demand and competition, helping hosts maximize revenue during peak periods or strategically adjust rates to remain competitive when demand is lower.

Hospitable users can take advantage of our built-in Dynamic Pricing, included at no extra cost in Host, Professional, and Mogul plans. Hospitable’s dynamic pricing solution enables you to automatically optimize your rates across all connected channels, maximizing revenue and occupancy.

Expand your online presence with social media

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok have billions of users and offer much potential for your vacation rental to capture someone’s attention. Social media enables you to reach a wider audience, attracting prospective guests and connecting with travelers who have stayed in your rental space.

Create business pages on social media platforms to provide viewers with relevant information, including photos of your vacation rental home, contact details, and a booking link. It’s important to stay active—regularly post traveler-centric content, update your photos and videos, and respond to comments, questions, and reviews. You can also share promotions and discounts you may be running, local information, restaurant recommendations, and travel tips.

If running multiple social media accounts seems like too much of a burden for you, you can start with a couple of social media websites you are familiar with. For example, Facebook offers one of the largest audiences for marketing vacation rentals. You can find Facebook local travel groups and communities, and share your property with people looking to visit your area.

Instagram is popular among travelers seeking travel inspiration, so you can use it to showcase the aesthetics of your home, especially if your property boasts amazing views and unique décor. You can post pictures of your property and photos of local attractions, adding relevant hashtags to help your posts appear in searches.

Facebook and Instagram also have extensive online advertising capabilities, so if you have a budget, paying to advertise your vacation rental on these platforms can be a worthwhile investment. You can filter who’ll see your ads to get the most out of your advertising budget.

Join vacation rental forums

Participate in online conversations and discussions, offering advice and support to travelers who may become your potential guests. For example, websites like Quora and Reddit have threads dedicated to travel. Being active in these communities, you can establish a good reputation as an expert who offers helpful advice and may even secure a few bookings.

Marketing Vacation Rentals: Optimize Your Online Presence

A professional vacation rental website should be a crucial pillar in your marketing plan, as it’s your strongest marketing tool. Think of it as an online hub to drive travelers to with all your marketing efforts. It can be an excellent place for potential guests to learn more about your vacation rental home, check availability and amenities, see photos, and take a virtual tour of your property.

Your website will also allow you to accept direct bookings, build relationships with guests, and generate new leads.

The good news is that you don’t need to hire a developer or learn coding skills to build your direct booking website. There’s an easier alternative—you can build a fully functional direct booking website quickly via Hospitable Direct. You’ll have a beautiful website that perfectly showcases your vacation rental property, comes with a booking widget, and has built-in automated guest communication tools.

Your property will get listed on Google Vacation Rentals, and travelers will be able to discover it when they use Google Search to find accommodation and when browsing the Vacation Rentals tab in Google Travel. Since Google services are free, you can secure bookings with minimal investment in promotion and without incurring high third-party fees.

Your direct booking website is always your best distribution channel because you can save money on OTA’s fees and commissions and secure repeat guests. But creating your vacation rental website is just the beginning, so don’t expect to achieve online success overnight. To reap the benefits of direct bookings, you need your target audience to find your site first. So let’s take a closer look at the top ways to drive traffic to your direct booking website.

Incorporate SEO to improve visibility

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it encompasses a range of techniques that can help your vacation rental property rank higher on Google and other search engines. Here’s what you can do:

• Optimize your website and brand name with relevant keywords to rank on Google search results pages when your target audience looks for a vacation rental in your area.
• Include professional photos of your property and write alt tags for all your images to provide context and allow search engines to index images correctly.
• Create and claim your vacation rental on Google Maps—it’s crucial for local SEO and allows guests to find you via location maps and leave public reviews.
• List your business in local directories and review websites to build “local citations”—online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP). Your NAP mentions will help prove that your business is real and trustworthy.

Organic search traffic comes to you without you having to pay a cent. Just ensure that your website visitors are directed toward a booking. Write a vacation home description that effectively sells, and include numerous CTA buttons that encourage potential guests to book.

Pro Tip: Direct bookings have been around for a while. Guests are aware that booking directly is cheaper than doing so on OTAs. Some guests will want to find your direct booking website after seeing your listing on OTA. Your job is to help them.

Create a catchy and memorable name that reflects your business, and buy a domain for your direct booking website. Choose a registrar that offers reasonable pricing so your domain won’t cost you more than $50. Ensure that this brand name is reflected in the names of your listings on OTAs. With this approach, your direct booking website will pay for itself with your first guest and save you a significant amount of money in the future.   

Create a Vacation Rental Marketing Strategy to Get Repeat Bookings

Obtaining repeat bookings through your website is the most effective way to increase occupancy rates, foster customer loyalty, and achieve higher profits. And it also means less stress for you. No wonder repeat guests are a vacation homeowner’s dream, especially if they are responsible and treat your property with respect.

But repeat guests don’t just appear out of nowhere—you need to give them a reason to keep coming back by exceeding their expectations. Therefore, you should strive to provide your guests with an exceptional stay, maintain effective communication with them, and prioritize building relationships with them before, during, and after their stay.

Use email marketing

It’s essential to maintain relationships with your previous guests on social media and via email to keep your place at the forefront of their minds. When your guests book for the first time, capture their email addresses and add them to your database. When guests arrive at your vacation rental, you can collect their contact information (name and email) using WiFi marketing.

For example, Hospitable integrates with StayFi, which can capture the contact information of every guest who stays at your property when they log into your WiFi network, not just the booker. You can use this info to establish a direct line of communication with potential repeat guests. If they permit you to email them with marketing updates, you can send them regular news, out-of-the-box content, deals, and discounts to entice them to book again.

Your guests will appreciate it if you add a personal touch by timing your messages with key events, such as their birthdays, anniversaries, or seasonal holidays. This way, you can show your guests that you are a real, friendly person who cares about them, and they will be more likely to book again or even recommend your vacation rental to their friends.

Establish effective communication with guests

However, before you start emailing your guests after their stay, it's essential to establish a good rapport to make them feel cared for. You’ll need to develop an effective message flow for the best guest experience. Writing each message and sending them at appropriate intervals is a rather time-consuming task, so coordinating it with other daily operations can be very challenging.

However, with Hospitable, which offers excellent communication tools and numerous other useful features, you can automate approximately 90% of your guest messaging, making the process significantly easier.

You can also take advantage of the Suggest with AI feature in your Inbox to quickly draft detailed responses when manually messaging a guest. Hospitable will generate a draft response within seconds, based on the conversation with the guest so far, property and booking details, guest information, your previous replies, and the guidebooks you have uploaded to the Knowledge Hub. You can provide some bullet points as guidance and choose 'Improve with AI' to rewrite your message, ensuring it’s warm and professional.

Ensure a smooth check-in process

Many vacation rental guests prefer the convenience of self-check-in, which ensures a stress-free arrival experience. You can create a smooth self-check-in process, even for last-minute bookings, by installing a smart lock, which gives your guests the opportunity for needed privacy so they can relax after a long day on the road.

Smart locks are effortless to manage remotely using your smartphone, and many of them integrate with property management systems, such as Hospitable, allowing you to automate the sending of unique door codes to your guests. You can check our Integrations page to find a list of the popular smart lock systems that Hospitable integrates with.

It's also a good idea to install a smart thermostat that can help you set the perfect temperature in your rental property when your guests check in, ensuring their comfort. Smart thermostats allow you to automate temperature control, optimize energy usage in your vacation rental, and provide a consistently comfortable environment for your guests. This way, you can encourage 5-star reviews and repeat bookings.

You can connect your smart thermostats to Hospitable, and it will automatically adjust your thermostat settings based on your guests’ reservation status, so you won’t have to do manual adjustments.

Go beyond the basics

Consistently deliver exceptional experiences that exceed guest expectations to create lasting impressions on your guests and build loyalty. Offer thoughtful amenities and personal touches, such as a welcome basket. Consider offering unique guest services tailored to individual preferences for an additional fee. You may also partner with local businesses to provide your guests with yoga classes, exclusive tours, or event access.

Tech-savvy guests will appreciate it if you create a digital guide, which they can access at any time online using their smartphones and find quick answers to their questions about your property and the local area. You can also share your recommendations for shopping, dining, activities, local attractions worth visiting, and hidden gems in the area.

Digital guidebooks save hosts time on guest communication, give guests independence to plan their journey, and allow them to navigate their stays with ease. There are numerous software tools available that enable users to create beautifully designed digital guidebooks. Hospitable has integrations with the leading guidebook and guest portal providers. Check our Integrations marketplace for more details.

Final Thought

Marketing vacation rentals is a complex task, and it takes a lot of trial and error to find the best tools, tactics, and overall strategy to outrun your competitors. Hopefully, our tips can be a strong foundation for getting your vacation home booked. Over time, you’ll be able to determine what tactics of digital marketing for vacation rentals work best for you.

Then you’ll be able to refine your marketing strategy to attract more guests and run a successful vacation rental business.  Remember that it’s essential to be consistent in your marketing efforts and continuously adapt your strategy to guest preferences and market trends.