Maximize your high season bookings

The beginning of the summer season is a key moment for the vacation rental industry with the arrival of the period known as high season in many regions with tourist interest. In this time of the year vacation rental businesses experience an increase in their income and bookings, so it is necessary to know how to manage your business and act strategically to take advantage of this impact.

In this blog post we offer you some tips and advice to help you prepare your booking and listing strategy to make them more attractive to your potential guests and maximize your occupancy. Thinking about what your potential guests are looking for in your area is essential to catch their attention and offer a competitive vacation rental service.

Even if your listings have good descriptions and complete details of what you offer, it is important to pay attention to make sure that the content is relevant to what your potential customers are looking for in your area. For example, it might be interesting to highlight which leisure activities or sports are the most popular in your area during the summer or which popular events or celebrations are held in the region at this time. It is also a good idea to highlight the facilities such as barbecues or outdoor areas that your property has. Many tourists are looking for an accommodation that allows them to enjoy the outdoors during the summer season. In terms of local celebrations, events or festivals, summer is the time of the year when many of these types of celebrations take place and many tourists are attracted to discover local traditions, so this is a great opportunity to increase the occupancy levels in your vacation rental business and it's important to highlight that in your listings.

To attract travellers to your vacation rental, you need to be aware of the competitive rates in your area and establish a rate plan based on the season and location. High season rates should be different from the others used in other periods of the year and take into account possible events or leisure activities to set a rate plan according to the demand to ensure that you don’t lose income. Last minute offers can also be a good option to fill vacancies caused by cancellations and keep your occupancy at an optimal level.

To help in your rate management and pricing you should use dynamic pricing tools, that automatically calculate the most accurate price for each date automatically based on information of your area. These solutions free you to keep paying attention to the constant fluctuations in demand, something especially complicated due to the complexity of the market. At Icnea, we have at your disposal some Dynamic Pricing tools fully integrated such as Beyond Pricing, Turbosuite or Pricelabs to help you manage prices and rates.

With the beginning of the high season it is necessary to optimise your occupancy levels with an appropriate pricing policy, but also to adjust your minimum length of stay for the period of maximum occupancy. If your business has already established a minimum length of stay policy, it is advisable to maintain it and not to force your guests to extend their stay during the high season. If your high season occupancy levels meet your business objectives, it is advisable not to change your minimum length of stay. However, for last-minute bookings, you can set a shorter minimum length of stay to complement these last minute offers for this type of guest, which will help you to fill your occupancy in case of cancellations.

Finding a balance in your cancellation policy is another key point to maximize your bookings in the high season. Having a very strict cancellation policy can turn travellers away from your business, whereas having a more flexible cancellation policy will get you more bookings, but at the same time it is more likely that guests will cancel their booking leaving empty gaps in your occupancy.

Each of the main channels on the market such as Booking.com, Airbnb or Vrbo have their own multiple cancellation policies, so it is a good idea to take a look at them to choose the most appropriate for your business having in mind that guests are more willing to choose a booking with more flexibility in case they need to cancel. If you also offer direct bookings through your website you will need to prepare your own cancellation policy, so it is important to take a look at the policies available on the channels in order to use a similar strategy for your direct bookings. It is also important to analyze your cancellations to identify their channel of origin and make corrections based on specific data.