Vacation Rental Tips on How to Survive the Off-season

Travel trends play a big part in which seasons are considered the high season and the low season for your area. While these trends are usually weather-related, sometimes it can be for other reasons. As a result, you need to be prepared to receive less traffic to your listings at certain times of the year. During these times, you’ll need to put in a bit of extra work in order to increase your chances of a booking.

Here are few vacation rental tips for running the business and earning Airbnb income during the off-season.

Know Your Dates

You know the low season is coming but do you know exactly when it starts and ends? Before you start experiencing fewer inquiries, take a look back at your previous years’ trends to determine exactly when the low and high seasons are for your properties. You may find that they don’t exactly correspond to the seasons or that your low season starts earlier or later than what is traditionally considered the low season for your location according to vacation rental tips from other Airbnb hosts.

This is also a good way for you to predict how long you can survive with fewer bookings before your cash flow is severely impacted. The mortgage and tax payments will still need to be made regardless of whether or not you have booked guests.

Lower Your Pricing

Guests are often on the lookout for deals during the low travel season because they know that they will have more listings to choose from. Another one of the useful vacation rental tips to follow is to experiment with lower pricing to help attract more guests. Besides, you might want to increase discounts for staying 3, 7 or more days.

Plan in Advance

By lowering your prices for low season dates before they arrive, you can increase the chances of getting bookings for your low season dates during the high season when there is more demand. Don’t wait until the last minute. It will be much easier to make the adjustment to having fewer inquiries when at least some of your low season booking dates are already reserved.

Beef Up Your Marketing

It’s time to take a good look at your listing to see where you can make some improvements to better follow the vacation rental tips that are recommended by the experts. Perhaps adding some additional photos or replacing the current ones with higher quality photos will make your listing stand out more.

You can also try changing your listing description so that it more closely aligns with the most popular vacation rental tips and what guests are looking for during the low-season. Make it stand out from the crowd. You may even need to target a different type of guest temporarily, such as business travelers rather than tourists.

In addition to the photos, you may also want to rethink your property’s décor. Switch out the current décor to some furnishings that are more appropriate for the current season. This will also help your listing to stand out as recently updated in comparison to other competing listings. So, put on your marketing hat and start planning some improvements and changes.

Offer Some Extra Perks

You always want to deliver an exceptional customer experience. However, during the off-season, think of vacation rental tips that you can follow that will really catch the attention of your Airbnb guests. You can add perks to your Airbnb listing that are only available during the off-season, such as free breakfast or tickets to a local event. With a little something extra that they probably won’t be able to get from a competing listing in your area, you can increase the chances that someone will book a stay at your property.

Spread the Word to Your Network

If you have a large network of friends and colleagues, reach out to them via social media and let them know about the listings that you are offering at a discounted rate. You may be able to score at least a few bookings this way without costing yourself any extra money for marketing.

One of the best vacation rental tips suggests that you use LinkedIn to connect with work colleagues that might be looking for business travel accommodations.

Improve Your Communication

During the busy season, you might be able to get away with taking your time to respond to inquiries from Airbnb guests. However, with less interest in your listings during the low-season, you’ll need to respond rapidly to every question that comes in. To stay on top of your messages, consider upgrading to a software solution.

These are just a few vacation rental tips to help you survive the off-season on Airbnb. Hopefully, these suggestions will mean more bookings for you when you need them most. As always, delivering great service and a nice property will bring you bookings all year long if you’re truly dedicated to your job as an Airbnb manager.