Five top tips to ensure you maximise off season bookings
As an airbnb property management host, you’ll very quickly appreciate that there will be periods during the year when bookings dip, or at the very least are less fluid than in busy periods. Like most other businesses airbnb holiday let management is subject to seasonal traffic. It can be frustrating, indeed even worrying, when there are periods when a beautiful property lies empty, but In this blog Elite shares it’s top tips to help you remedy these annoying, yet predictable, booking slumps. A fully booked off-season isn’t guaranteed, of course, since every location’s desirability varies, but you can be sure that these simple tips are going to make some difference to you.
1. Adjust your airbnb property management prices
The best way to attract off-season business is relatively simple. Adjust your prices. It’s not an exact science since demand for different properties in popular locations will vary, but it’s a good way of attracting new bookings, whilst potentially rewarding returning customers. It doesn’t take a fancy automated application to make seasonal rate adjustments. The rules are simple – if traffic goes down, your rates should go down. To help make this easier to implement, find a minimum rate that meets your operating costs and you may just find a sweet spot that helps you turn a good profit. The other thing to keep an eye on is what your main competitors are doing in this space. This will at the very least give you an idea of what your pricing strategy should be before you implement it.
2. Consider the terms you’re using
Depending on the advertising channels you’re using, you may have a few extra terms you could use or adjust, in the circumstances. ‘Minimum Stay’, ‘Gap Nights’, ‘Last Minute Adjustment’, ‘Minimum/Extra Guest’ – these are all terms you could relax if/when you need to attract business. However, you don’t need to adjust all of these terms. It’s best to change one or two and then observe how they perform before you go looking to change others. You may just find that you don’t need to actually change that much.
3. What else is happening in your location?
This is where your extensive local knowledge comes in. Edinburgh, for example, enjoys thriving tourism all year around, but many people also enjoy a visit to the capital during the Autumn and, in particular, when the Winter festivities arrive in the city centre between mid November and early January. It’s wise to promote these as a reason for booking your airbnb holiday let property, particularly when the action is quite literally on your doorstep. Beyond that a visit to your city’s chamber of commerce website or community Facebook pages could be enlightening as well.
4. Think about seasonal pricing packages and re-target existing clients
As mentioned earlier the simple law of supply and demand applies. One of the best off-season strategies is to use a seasonally discount rate. It can be a flat discount (“25%-off winter bookings”) or something more focused (“30%-off for return customers til January”). Once you’ve established an enticing discount, you’ll maybe want to draft an email to all of your previous guests (or a specific segment if you’re using advanced segmenting). Within that email you should look to include all of the reasons people should visit your location. You should also make it as easy as possible for guests to book, for example, make sure you include instructions to make the booking through whichever channel you are setting up any discount / coupon code with.
5. Let Elite Property Management take the pressure off you
We can take care of all your airbnb property management needs from your property listing and price, key exchange, cleaning, laundry, maintenance and much much more, so you can sit back and relax whilst your rental income grows, and your guests go home happy with the service they receive. So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve got the property, we’ve got the airbnb property management expertise to get things off the ground for you, allowing you to fully enjoy the financial benefits. Contact us today to find out more.