How to Manage Your Holiday Rental Listings Across Multiple Platforms
November 2024
Most landlords know the benefits of listing their property on several holiday rental portals. It’s one of the quickest, easiest ways to advertise your holiday home to different audiences and to attract more guests. However, it also has some pitfalls. What can you do if a guest books your property through one holiday rental website and another guest books it elsewhere on the same dates? Here are some of our top tips for managing your multi-platform holiday rental business.
Explore the features of each platform
Before you get started, it’s important that you understand how each platform works. If you’ve only used one holiday rental portal before, you may be frustrated when you start using others, as each functions differently. You could even find that some of your favourite features, which you take for granted, don’t appear on other platforms.
In particular, look for the unique programmes that some platforms run. Booking.com has its Genius programme, which can attract more travellers — but means offering a discount price. If you want to know how to manage a holiday rental on Airbnb, have a look at the Superhost programme. These initiatives can help grow your business, but they may mean changing your marketing strategy for each different platform.
Tailor your listing to different groups
This can be a little tricky and time-consuming, but it’ll definitely pay off if you can do it properly. When you publish your holiday rental on multiple platforms, you’ll be reaching different markets. For example, Airbnb continues to be popular with Americans. However, if you choose to manage your holiday rental on Holidu, you’ll be able to attract more European customers.
To optimise your cross-platform marketing strategy, consider tweaking your listings for each audience. This means a fair amount of market research. Discover what each different group is looking for in a holiday rental, and update your listings accordingly. You can also do this by speaking with your existing customers. See if you can casually ask guests why they’ve come to your area and what they’re looking for. Then, you can edit your advertisements accordingly.
Sync your listings across the different platforms that you use
Did you know that many holiday rental platforms allow you to sync your calendar? This is a great feature that will immediately make your life a lot easier! When you sync your calendar across different platforms, you won’t need to manually adjust dates of availability — that’ll all be handled for you by the magic of machines.
There’s one very important thing to remember here, though. If you have your own holiday rental website, as well as using various portals, it probably won’t sync up. You’ll still have to manually take care of it, adjusting your calendar as guests rent your house for the holidays. Oh, and don’t forget to make your property available again if guests cancel a booking.
Calendar management is one of the most essential skills for a holiday rental landlord. Use the tools available to you. If you try to do it all manually, you could seriously harm your business; guests are never happy if a landlord cancels a booking that they’ve made!
Keep your notifications turned on
Being a holiday landlord can be a full-time job. Guests may make a booking or an enquiry at any time of day. Okay, you’re not always going to be available to answer them — if you’re in Europe, an American, or Asian traveller may well contact you in the middle of the night, but you should strive to respond as quickly as possible.
This means that you’ll need to have notifications on for all the platforms that you use. You may want to experiment with which notifications to pay attention to. Most platforms let you opt into some and opt out of others. For example, you may not be particularly interested in the platform’s newsletters — but other notifications are crucial. Here’s our list of what you absolutely need to have turned on:
- Someone sends you a message. This is the most important: they could be a potential guest enquiring about your property, a former guest asking if you’ve found something that they lost or a current guest who can’t get the hot water to work. Either way, they deserve a prompt response.
- A guest makes a booking.
- A guest cancels a booking.
- A guest leaves a review.
Set up automated messages to communicate with guests
Even with notifications on, you might miss some important messages because you’re sleeping or busy. What can you do in that situation? Most platforms allow you to respond to guests with an automated message. No, it’s not as personal as a tailored reply, but it’s a great way to let guests know that you’re there and that they are essential to you.
If you’re trying to juggle listings on multiple platforms, then setting up automated messages is particularly essential. You may want to include another way of contacting you in your automated message. For example, you can offer your phone number to allow guests to call you directly.
Always check the platform policy
This is a big one. You’ve gone to all the trouble of setting up profiles on multiple holiday rental portals. You don’t want to lose any of those listings, so make sure you don’t break the rules.
Different platforms have different policies about what is and isn’t acceptable. For example, some platforms may only allow you to send guests your phone number or personal email address if they’ve already made a booking. Others won’t allow it at any time, as they fear you’re trying to undercut them. They can use AI to detect phone numbers and email addresses in your private messages and delete any messages that break the rules.
Similarly, make sure you’re familiar with each platform’s rules about pay. Some portals operate on a commission-only basis, while others will want you to pay an annual subscription or a one-off joining fee. Some special programmes, such as the Booking Genius scheme, oblige you to offer your property at a discount.
To mitigate this, some landlords put different prices on their property across platforms. This isn’t a good idea. If guests figure out that they’ve paid a higher price simply because of their booking method, they could be angry and may even write about it in their reviews. A better solution is to keep prices constant but monitor the number of bookings you get from each platform. If one platform is simply not profitable, consider changing the way you use it or delisting from it altogether.