Today in Vacay: Three Ways to Up Your Vacation Rental Management Game

We created the Today in Vacay series to keep readers up-to-date on the rapidly changing trends and updates impacting vacation rental management.

No doubt you’ve been extremely busy making mid-winter memories for your guests, which means you might have missed out on the latest vacation rental goings-on.

Here are three recent updates from the industry you can put into practice to up your game.

1. Drive direct bookings

There are two great ways to help guests find you. One is to maximize your reach on all of the vacation rental listing channels with a channel manager. The other way is to reach prospects looking for direct bookings. Here’s one way to do that: Check out this Vacation Rental Shopping 101 article from VRMintel, which shares five ways travelers can bypass fees and book directly with the vacation rental manager or owner. Consider these suggestions, and use to your advantage. For example, include keywords in your image alt text, implement great vacation rental SEO practices, and create thorough listing descriptions that point back to your website.

2. Guide your guests to you

A guest welcome book lists resources you want to recommend to your guests, including everything from a guide to local attractions to the instructions for using the TV remote in your property. This helps your guests make full use of your property, which leads to a better experience. So how do you get started? A new article from Evolve Vacation Rentals gives you all the details. To make your welcome book extra effective, make sure it includes links to your website. You can provide information and links to activities on your website that make it even easier for your guests to make the most of their stay with you.

3. Join the fight for short-term rentals

The Battle of the BnB’s continues as Airbnb adds more punch to its lawsuit against the city of Santa Monica. Airbnb’s attorneys say Santa Monica’s ordinance, which allows rentals for less than 30 days when the host is present, limits the supply of lower-cost vacation accommodations. This makes it harder for low and moderate-income Californians to access the coast. Airbnb just upped its game by including the California Coastal Commission’s recent vote to reject Laguna Beach’s short-term vacation rentals ban into its argument.

Whatever the outcome of this lawsuit, it will be just one more battle in a war that has been heating up for the past couple of years. What can you do to get your point of view across? Get involved with VRMA Advocacy efforts to keep our businesses healthy and growing. Talk to your local legislators, too.

Stay tuned for more vacation rental management news updates from Today in Vacay!