It might seem a little obvious that vacation rentals come in all shapes and sizes nowadays; from tree houses to cottages, villas to farmhouses, mansions to houseboats.
In the last few decades, the vacation rental industry has exploded into a $100 billion market while the global vacation rental market will reach $170 billion by the end of 2019.
Airbnb is the first name that comes to our mind while talking about vacation rental accommodations. With the upsurge of such home-sharing platforms, anyone can list their property and easily become a host.
It is very evident that Airbnb is among the forerunners on a global scale, but many entrepreneurs with similar business ideas are trying to build their own vacation rental marketplace like Airbnb.
In this article, we’ll uncover the five essential tips for building a booming vacation rental business. Have a look!
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1. Build Your Online Vacation Rental Marketplace:
By building your own rental marketplace like Airbnb, you can provide a wide range of vacation rental choices across your locations. You can also provide your guests and hosts with an elegant and robust booking platform that allows easy searches and a seamless booking experience.
Thus, an increasing number of owners are beginning to build their own vacation rental websites in order to run their businesses independently.
Having your own website means your business is in your hands. You can manage all your other channels in one place. This ultimately saves your time and energy. In turn, a website can help boost bookings and build up your brand and credibility.
Moreover, there is an undeniable advantage of gaining profits as commissions from guests and hosts. You’ll also get transaction fees once they list their properties on your website. It’s more essential you have your own online space that you’re totally in control of.
As per the question about how much does it cost to build an app like Airbnb is concerned, the following section will explain three major options to minimize the same.
2. Different Options to Build Vacation Rental Website:
Renting business is a quick back idea where vendors and marketplace owners both can earn a profit. The marketplace admin can keep the commission fee for providing services. If you are looking to start an online rental marketplace, you can build it with the following options:
- Develop a rental marketplace from scratch
- Launch using a SaaS-based software
- Start with ready to launch solution with rental marketplace software
You can develop your site from scratch if you are sound at technical skills and coding. Undoubtedly, developing from scratch will give you a unique value to your website, but it is a time-consuming process that requires much effort and resources.
SaaS-based platforms are also available in the market for entrepreneurs who want to create an online rental marketplace. You will get an easy and simple user interface that satisfies your needs it. However, you need to pay the SaaS vendors a monthly commission or a subscription basis to the service provider/vendor.
If you are looking to enter the marketplace rapidly with investing less time and resources, then start with a readymade Airbnb clone script. You can set up your rental marketplace within a less span of time and cost-effectively.
There are many multi-vendor e-commerce rental platforms with Airbnb clone available in the market that allows you to run your site off your own server, fully customization with intriguing renting and selling features.
You can build your own marketplace and publish your catalog for your hosts and guests to rent out items. You’ll get multiple payment gateways and multi-layer security for distributing payment to vendors.
With the help of readymade rental marketplace software, you can start a wide range of eCommerce rental businesses from small webshops to large and multi-store online marketplaces.
These platforms are customizable, simple to use with no developers needed with many tech skills, and only need a few minutes to set up.
3. Create a Brand For Your Vacation Rental Business:
Building a brand for your vacation rental business will help you stand out from the crowd in the saturated market. It will also help build trust and loyalty with potential guests. So, give your vacation rental marketplace its own trademark style that provides real recognition among your guests.
Your brand has to fit the identity you are trying to create for your vacation rental business. For example, the name, logo, color, and tones of voice you use in communications. You can integrate these styles into all other areas of business. For example, website design, business cards, emails, coffee cups, invoices, rental agreements, etc.
Adding these small personal touches to your website will gather the interests of new customers. Starting and marketing your website along with listing it across the web helps in improving the property’s visibility.
4. Market and Drive Traffic to Your Vacation Rental Website:
It’s very important to focus on different channels for marketing your website. You’ll have to invest your time, money, and effort to get your website booming. Social Media, E-Mail Marketing, and Search Engine Marketing are the three essential ways to invest a bit of money to get a solid return.
These marketing initiatives will help drive traffic to your website. You’ll be able to have more customers and more referrals if you market yourself appropriately and obtain visibility throughout different channels.
Email marketing strategy is the perfect marketing strategy. But don’t overwhelm your customers by bombarding more emails. Instead, you could create a quality newsletter that links to articles and features on your website to get more attention.
Social network marketing helps in driving traffic through advertising and creating great content. You can create ads that consist of finding the right demographics to target people to view your advertisements.
5. Use the Right Tools for Business Development and Management:
Managing a vacation rental business on its own can be a time-consuming task. In particular, if you are using multiple booking channels to market your website, then many listings for different properties will be on the funnel from different channels. However, that can make it hard to keep track of every booking request, managing online payments, invoices, etc.
Many tools are available in the market for developing and managing the business that can help you juggle all these different tasks with ease. For example, you’ll get the tools that can be integrated with your marketplaces such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), live chat for support, Analytics tool, and various other automation tools.
Final Thoughts:
Whether you’re just starting or you’ve been renting your homes for years, it’s always important to know the current trends in the market. As the vacation rental industry is expanding enormously, many rental owners are becoming more knowledgeable about how to run a successful short-term rental business.
Using the above-mentioned tips wisely, you can market your website to receive more guests and simplify the overall management of your website.
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