Every hotel, resort and vacation rental experiences last minute availability. Hotel’s and resorts have sources that enable them to fill this quickly and effectively. But for the vacation rental industry this is a dilemma has been quite a challenge, until now. Today there are channels that help vacation rentals quickly distribute their inventory and there are many consumers who know there is a need to fill this gap and are searching the web for just this opportunity.
One great solution is Vacation Homes for Charity . Property managers and owners can post their listings for free. These listings will have the company logo and link back to your website to supercharge your SEO. There are currently over 1200 different charity websites featuring your inventory. Strong efforts can be placed on last minute and off-season inventory and get the benefit of a big SEO bump as we build out 1200+ websites for charities! Please visit the website to learn more and see how easy it is.
Vacation Homes for Charity also posts property listings on charity websites exposing these listings to a new and larger audience while helping to support a great cause. All property managers and owners who have a listing can also take advantage of a free Craigslist promotion. Just log into your account, go to “Your Properties” and you’ll see an easy way to get more free promotions! Your ad will automatically post with photos and a nice description and features.
HomeAway has created “deal alert” to fill last minute availability too. This alert enables travelers to receive special offers to their favorite destinations. If you haven’t already secured your listing you can do so here.
There’s also PackLate. PackLate is an online marketplace for last-minute deals on vacation rentals. Members can browse the site for exclusive discounts — often up to 45% off — on properties in approximately 30 locations, primarily in California, Colorado and Florida.
Have you heard of the “switch” yet? This is something fairly new to the vacation rental industry. Eric Mason owner/manager of the Linkedin Group Vacation Rental Professions recently said, “These platforms enable a supplier to elect to distribute their content and inventory to incremental sales channels, primarily B2C Vacation Rental Consumer Shopping Sites. The great thing about these channels is that they’re incremental to your own sales and marketing initiatives. Let’s face it, we all spend hard dollars to reach our immediate and known target consumer, these channels can help extend your reach to new consumers. It is important that a Supplier / Manager maintains their sales and marketing initiatives but in an ever increasing world of competition, leverage the tools that will make you successful.”
What do you do today to help fill last minute weeks?