Vrbo Marketing Strategy: Getting Your Property Booked | Hospitable (2024)

Preparing your vacation home for your first guests and creating the best possible listing are important for your success on Vrbo. But even the most fantastic home can sit empty if you don’t have the right strategies to ensure a regular flow of guests, allowing you to cover all costs and make a profit.

You need an effective Vrbo marketing strategy to correctly target your listing to potential guests, set your business apart from the competition, and keep your vacation rental property booked year-round.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to market your Vrbo property, reach more potential guests, and maximize your bookings.

Vrbo Marketing Strategy: Make Your Listing Stand Out

Your Vrbo marketing strategy depends on the size of your STR business, target guests, and your goals for the future. But everything starts with creating a successful listing that is targeted to your ideal guests who would be most interested in staying in your home.

Use these tips tocreate an eye-catching Vrbo listingthat stands out among competitors to attract potential guests:

• Write an attention-grabbing headline and focus on the unique selling points of your vacation rental property. If your property has a name, include it in your headline as well—this way, savvy travelers can find you again via a Google search.
• Create a clear, accurate, and informative description—include details about your rental space, the surrounding area, and local attractions. Your goal is to sell the experience your guests will have while staying at your property.
• Provide as many details as possible, but don’t be overly wordy. Use short sentences and paragraphs and include bullet point lists and subheadings to make your listing as easy to read as possible.
• Upload at least 20 professional photos of each room in your vacation rental and highlight its unique features and amenities. Be sure to use the photo captions to explain additional details.
• Price your rental competitively and consider integrating dynamic pricing into your listing to ensure that your nightly rates align with demand, seasonality, and other factors.
• Gather 5-star reviews that build trust with your potential guests and increase your occupancy rate.

The best way to get positivereviews from your Vrbo guestsis to deliver a memorable experience. Provide your guests with clean accommodation and ensure perfect communication during all customer journey stages. Be ready to answer guests’ questions as fast as possible and proactively ask guests to let you know of any issues.

It’s important toestablish an effective message flowto give each guest the necessary information at the appropriate time and show them that you’re an attentive host who cares about them.

Communication with guests via messages is very time-consuming if you write and send each message manually. But with Hospitable, you can automate almost all your conversations with guests and save time to focus on growing your business.

Focus on Direct Bookings

Vrbo can provide a lot of exposure for your vacation rental, but with so many hosts who list their properties on this OTA platform, it’s easy to become just another listing among thousands. Besides, hosts who use the Vrbo platform are chargedservice fees, which can significantly reduce your profits.

To maximize your revenue, you should focus on driving direct booking. Build a functional direct booking website and use it to establish personal connections with your guests and retain them as repeat customers. It’s easy if you opt for Hospitable—you can create yourdirect booking websitefor your properties using our dedicated service, Hospitable Direct, even without technical skills.

We’ll help you screen your guests in the booking flow (powered by Autohost), and all your reservations will be covered by up to $5M worth of damage protection (powered by Know Your Guest by Superhog). Your property will get listed onGoogle Vacation Rentals, so you’ll be able to get bookings with zero investment in promotion and without paying high third-party fees.

Remember: a professional direct booking website is always your best distribution channel if you want to build a sustainable vacation rental business. It will help you become less dependent on OTAs like Vrbo, establish strong relationships with guests, and build your brand.

At first, marketing your STR properties on your direct booking website to new prospects and converting them to bookings can be rather challenging. So often, a more effective approach is to target previous guests who booked your Vrbo listing. If they are happy with their stay, they will likely book you again, especially if you offer them additional incentives.

As guests arrive at your vacation rental property, you can use WiFi marketing (StayFiis a good example) to collect their contact information (name and email). If you host a group of people, you’ll have access to a person who made a booking and other guests who have great potential to stay with you again.

You can use this contact info to establish a direct line of communication with potential repeat guests and start marketing to them with email campaigns. Target your guests with tailored promotions and special offers to entice them to book your home or apartment again.

Promote Your Vrbo Listing on Social Media

Use social media to expand your online visibility and reach new audiences. Sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest can boast billions of users daily, offering much potential for your vacation rental to capture someone’s attention.

Create business pages on social media platforms to give users all the relevant information about your vacation rental, including photos of your property, contact information, and a link to a book. Focus on the social media platforms where your potential guests hang out.

For example, Instagram is an excellent place to reach younger audiences and people looking for travel inspiration. LinkedIn is a great option if you want to attract business travelers. And Facebook has one of the largest audiences for marketing different types of vacation rental properties.

It’s important to post content about your short-term rentals as often as possible to stay top of mind for your followers. Regularly update your photos and videos and stay engaged with your community by responding to comments, questions, and reviews.

You can also share helpful tips for travelers and recommendations on the top destinations in your area, as well as your promotions and special deals. If you have the budget, you can use Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest paid advertising to raise awareness about your vacation rental and attract new followers to your page.

List Your Property on Multiple OTAs

To succeed, you should maximize your online presence and create listings on multiple marketplaces, including Airbnb and Booking.com. Then you’ll be in a better position for bookings.

Of course, it’s a lot of work as you’ll have to update calendars and prices and keep up with guest inquiries and reservation requests across multiple platforms. But it’s worth it because you’ll be able to increase your visibility on platforms where travelers search for a place to stay most often.

It can also be easier if you use the right vacation rental software to help you put your business on autopilot. With Hospitable, you can rest assured your calendars and pricing are in sync across platforms, and guests receive the right information at the right time.

Offer Expert Advice on Vacation Rental Forums

A lot of people look for recommendations on online forums when they are planning their future trips. So, joining such forums and offering helpful advice to potential guests makes sense. For example, sites like Reddit or Quora have many threads dedicated to travel. Being active there can help you build a good reputation, and you may even get some bookings from your useful advice.

Bottom Line

Marketing your vacation rental property effectively is imperative to survive and thrive in the highly competitive short-term rental market. There are different ways to market your vacation home that can help you reach more travelers and maximize occupancy and profits.

We have discussed the most successful tactics to focus on when developing your Vrbo marketing strategy. Although every business's needs are different, these tips can be a solid foundation to start with if you want to beat your competition and increase your bookings.

If you list your vacation home on Airbnb, you may also want to check out our blog post, where we discuss techniques to include in your Airbnb marketing strategy.