Traditionally most vacation rental managers realized that the way to generate the most revenue was to maximize their calendar & reduce gap days in between renters.
This led to many property managers restricting their properties to only allow week-long Saturday to Saturday stays without realizing all the guests they are turning away.
We decided to dig in and analyze 10 million searches for our properties and found
Only 7% of travelers searched for Saturday to Saturday
We were shocked to find out that our listings were not showing up in 93% of searches on our website & likely on OTAs.
I’ve been doing this for years what’s changed Most Property Managers
Instant Booking
Before instant booking most search was undated. In 2015 60% of HomeAway searches were undated and all listings showed up in the search results.
Then if a guest clicked on your listing they would see a quote response explaining the rules or sent request or via email & phone where our reservation team could explain the rules.
Now your listings just don’t show up.
What Can We Do About It
We realized that if we started lowering our min length of stay and opening close to arrival rules as we approached check-in. Based on our analysis
We could go from 7% to 40% of searches
Here are the stats that show how changing your min length of stay prior to check-in will allow you to pick up additional traffic adding up to 40%.
This is not a critique of weekly restrictions & the analysis assumes that you would only allow weekly stays until 90 days to check-in. We just need to weigh the benefits of a full calendar with the benefit of greater visibility of guests searching for shorter-term stays close to check-in.
This strategy can also be paired with yielding rates towards the weekend to make shorter-term stays a higher transaction value & increasing your weekly discount to still encourage weekly stays, but be open to shorter stays if they are there.
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