Is your calendar looking a bit bare right now? Is your phone refusing to ding with new booking alerts? Many hosts came off a busy holiday season and their bookings fell off a cliff- here are eight booking strategies for low season.
Slow season seems to have hit hard for many STR hosts this year. The Pandemic still kicking all of our proverbial business backsides. This uncertainty in the market leads to really big peaks and troughs in bookings. It is so hard to come up with a good strategy for getting bookings in the low (and slow!) season.
Don’t wait for bookings to come to you, get proactive. Here are a few booking strategies for getting more traction on your Short Term Rentals – whatever the season.
- Reach out to past guests by email, text or whatever option you have. Let people know that you’ve enjoyed hosting them in the past and invite them to book again. Or ask them to tell a friend.
- Do some sleuthing with the local tourist offices or chambers of commerce. Find out the dates for special events or conferences that you may not know about. Adjust your copy to appeal to folks attending these events. Or better yet, reach out to event organisers to find out who is coming to town and if you can market directly to attendees.
- Stalk some facebook groups for people who have a “special interest” for activities in your area. Listen to the discussions and make a note of the sorts of questions people ask. Offer up your local knowledge and add value to the discussions. Build a relationship with the group admins and ask if you can post links to your properties if appropriate. Always give more than you receive – it is only polite. This is my fave way of getting new guests. I have taken this a step further by paying introduction fees to a few different facebook group admins for bookings that have come from their group. If you want to know how I have done this, reach out and I will walk you through the strategy.
- Speak to realtors in your local area and offer up your place for their clients who are considering purchasing in the area. Or if they have clients relocating and need a Short Term Rental while in escrow.
- If you have dropped down on the rankings, you will need to give your listing some love. Tweak the copy, move around photos, adjust the title. Just play and take notice what responses you’re getting. If you’re super curious about your rankings, use Rank Breeze tool for excellent market insights.
- Seasonally adjust your photos. People tend to book long holidays 6 months in advance, so right now they’re considering their Summer holidays (for the northern hemisphere). So your photos SHOULD be all about Summer fun right now. In these dark cold days of February, giving people some sunshine to look forward to lets you capture that early bird action.
- Are you using a dynamic pricing tool? These will automatically adjust your pricing and tell the OTA algorithms that you are an active host. There are a few of them around, but Wheelhouse is simple to use and will give you a ton of data. But like any of the tech, if you are wanting more information, reach out to me and I can break it down for you.
- Play with pricing – I mention this strategy last.. discounting is a blunt instrument. It may cause more issues than it solves. If you are on Airbnb or another OTA, use the “Promotions” option to do a short burst of special pricing. This leaves your standard pricing as is, but will give your listing a boost by promoting it. Look for a future blog post and I will explain how to use the discounting promotions to get a quick lift for your listing.
If you are struggling with slow season, or want to talk more about booking strategies, and are wanting some one-on-one help, please reach out. I can customise some strategies specifically for you in your market and for your type of property. The main message I want for you is to take action. Don’t sit around waiting for the phone to ding… let’s get these booking strategies into play!
P.S. My good friend Julie George (Million Dollar Host author) is part of the new STR Legends X program. They have only a few spots left for their next cohort. This program has catapulted hectic STR hosts to hero million dollar hosts. If you are run off your feet doing every little job in your business, you are burning yourself out. The STR Legends X program will solve that – work ON your business not IN your business. Make sure you let Julie know you learned about this program from me as this link will give her small a commission if you decide to join the program. But only sign up if you are ready for the next step. The tools and training are there but you have to do the work to get the results.
disclaimer: We may receive a small introduction fee from vendors. This will not affect any prices that you are charged. But I will only recommend vendors that I know and love and ones that I have used for myself as a customer.
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