Vacation Rentals

Vacation Rentals

Vacation rentals form an exciting and growing segment in the online travel market. More than 30% of travelers booked a vacation rental in 2018¹, and the popularity of these properties has continued to grow - since COVID-19, global vacation rental occupancy has increased 60%². In addition, vacation rentals tend to be booked further in advance, have a longer length of stay and have a higher average booking value³.   

EPS has over 300,000 vacation rentals in EPS Rapid, meaning you can benefit from bookings with a longer length of stay, longer booking windows and higher average booking value. They’re also easy to integrate and support. Read on to find out how.

Why travelers chose a vacation rental

Selection – more locations and superior amenities such as private hot tubs or kitchens.

Value – The leading reason why travelers choose a vacation rental over a hotel is for greater personal and shared spaces⁴.

Experience – over 40% of rental travelers chose a vacation rental for a unique experience⁵.

How to identify vacation rentals on EPS Rapid

By the 9 property categories of vacation rental, within the EPS Rapid Content element:

2. Additionally, properties in the above categories may benefit from custom property display, customer education and communication based on the following:

Multi-unit vacation rentals with a reception: These are the closest to conventional lodging, so you can offer them now without any concerns.

Multi-unit vacation rentals without reception: These have organized management but may require additional operational dedication as there is no front desk.

If you only want to map multi-unit vacation rentals, you can filter by the multi-unit flag that we’ve introduced in EPS Rapid 2.3+. Additionally, if you only want to show properties with a reception, you can use the filter above, and look for ‘24-hour front desk’ and ‘front desk (limited hours)’ in the amenities:

Single-unit vacation rentals: These require a high level of communication with end travelers prior to arrival. To offer these properties, you must clearly communicate that the property has no front desk (so check-in instructions will be provided post-booking), and whether the location is exact or has been obfuscated for privacy reasons.

To facilitate two-way conversations between the property and traveler (e.g. to confirm check-in instructions post-booking) please enable Property Message Center.

User journey – best practices

Here are our top 12 tips on how to increase conversion when selling vacation rentals.

Storefront

1. Integrated approach

For travelers who aren’t actively looking for a vacation rental you should:

• Boost vacation rental listings when a traveler searches for 3+ guests for 3+ nights
• Clearly distinguish the property type

2. Separate vacation rentals tab

For travelers who are coming to your site knowing they want a vacation rental, it can be more effective to create a separate tab for these properties. For the best customer experience, we advise adding in vacation rental-friendly search filters such as:

• Guest rating (vs property ratings)
• Number of bedrooms
• Property type

Search results

3. Help improve conversion by displaying trust indicators such as reviews and ratings.

4. Help improve the traveler experience by introducing fees earlier on in the booking process.

Property details

Required:

5. Remove urgency messaging (eg. "we have 1 room left") when Rapid Content returned statistics.52.value(Total number of rooms) with a small number.

6. In some regions, vacation rental properties might have longer property names than conventional lodging, in order to avoid ambiguous property names for marketing. Content Database Recommendations to the filed of the property name is STRING(300).

• Property registration numbers must be displayed as they are a legal requirement in many local jurisdiction. This value can be found in the EPS Rapid 2.4 content response element of registry_number.
  
• EU regulations require VR properties to display if they are managed by private hosts as opposed to professional property management companies. EPS Rapid 2.4 content response element attributes.general.1073745102 will be returned when the particular property is managed by a private host.
• When you see obfuscation_required=true tag, you must only share with travelers the address.city, address.state_province_name, and address.country_code of the address before a booking is made. You must also obfuscate the map property pin when you see this tag. Your site can display a circle on the map to help customers to understand the surrounding area of the property, instead of a map pin. The circle should over a random location 500 to 1,000 ft from the property’s latitude and longitude returned in Rapid Content element location.coordinates.

Optimize:

7. Include property configuration: Surface details like how big the property is, how many bedrooms and bathrooms it has, and occupancy allowance

8. Surface top amenities: Highlight popular amenities that the property has including pools, washer/dryers, air condition, parking and internet. 

Checkout

9. Clearly display the special check-in instructions on the checkout page, booking confirmation and email confirmations to the traveler. It is critical that the customer understands that the property may reach out via email or phone to provide arrival or access instructions.

Post-booking

10. It’s important to remind travelers that a property may reach out to them with information that is critical to their arrival (e.g. access codes for the property). Property Message Center will help support this communication channel and ensure a seamless check-in experience.

References

• Phocuswright, US Consumer Travel 2019: Travel Product Consumption¹
• The Ultimate List of Vacation Rental Statistics 2020 edition²
• Initial EPS production results from an EPS US-based partner (2019)³ 
• Turnkey, 2018 Consumer Travel Survey⁴
• Turnkey, 2018 Consumer Travel Survey⁵