4 Steps to Market Your Vacation Rental For Local Events
Localized Events Could Be Bringing You Bookings Already
While major national events like the Super Bowl and Coachella are well-known, smaller, localized events such as the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival or the Kimball Art Festival in Park City also draw significant crowds. Every year, thousands of travelers visit these destinations specifically to attend these unique events. As a vacation rental owner, you're perfectly positioned to capitalize on these local happenings. By highlighting these events, you can boost your revenue and potentially secure repeat bookings from travelers who come back year after year.
In today’s blog, we’ll go over a 4 step plan that will aid you in capitalizing on the local events in your market to increase your bookings and maximize your profit, all with only a little bit of extra legwork.
Step 1: Plan Out a Calendar of Upcoming Local Events
The first step toward leveraging local events for short-term rental bookings is to get some knowledge under your belt, and that’s as simple as doing a Google search for “[location] events and festivals”. If that search doesn’t bear much fruit, try searching by season–in Lake Tahoe, for instance, the festival and event season occurs during the summer months, with a whole calendar packed full of things for travelers to see and attend. Other good terms to search for include “[location] yearly conferences” or “[location] yearly retreats”.
Once you have a fairly-comprehensive list of popular local festivals and events in your area, it’s time to create a calendar that has entries for each. This calendar will not only become a valuable resource to you in future years time, but it’s also an evolving document, where things can be added or deleted based on peaks and valleys in the event’s popularity.
Step 2: Implement Special Event Pricing to Stay Competitive
Once you have your list of local events, it’s time to land some bookings from those who will be coming into town. For especially popular events and festivals, it’s important to implement special event pricing far in advance. We’ve talked a lot about pricing strategies in the past on this blog, but special events can often lead to competitive markets, especially if other short-term rental owners in the area are in the know.
While you may have to lower your prices to compete with your competitors in the area, it’s a smart idea to research the ways in which pricing has changed due to these events in years prior. For some events, you may have to lower your daily rate, while for others, you can charge more for a premium location.
Step 3: Market Your Rental on the Right Channels for Localized Events
Now that you’ve figured out which events will bring you the most potential guests and implemented a pricing strategy that will work to attract them, it’s time to get into the nitty gritty of marketing. For this step, social media is your best friend–there’s no better way to advertise in a hyper-local capacity, nor is there a better way to reach your intended audience. The best way to determine which social media channels to use is to take a look at the demographics of the upcoming event. For an older audience, Facebook marketing and advertising is a surefire way to get attention to your rental, whereas Instagram and Snapchat would be better for those in the younger generations.
For more tips and tricks for vacation rental social media marketing, check out this blog post that covers the topic.
Step 4: Quiz Guests on How You Can Improve for Future Events
After the event is completed and your guests have gone back to their hometowns, it’s a good idea to see how you can improve for next year. There are many reasons to keep an email list of your past guests, but for one, this list can come in handy when it comes to asking previous guests for private feedback. Private feedback differs a bit from guest reviews–instead of feeling the need to be overly kind or incredibly critical, guests can offer honest feedback that you can then use to improve your event offerings in years to come.
When asking for feedback, offer open-ended questions like, “What could we could do better for next year’s event?” or “Were there any specific things that took away from your enjoyment of the rental?” The answers to these questions can help a ton in improving your offerings for years to come.
Uncover Tons of Vacation Rental Owner Tips and Tricks with LocalVR
Planning for local events is not just a smart move for your revenue–it’ll also help you to gain loyal guests for years to come, if you do it the right way. By looking into upcoming events, implementing a solid pricing strategy, marketing on social media, and asking guests for feedback, you’ll have a surefire way to make the most of upcoming local events.
Hoping to find out more vacation rental owner tips and tricks? Take a look at our guide to branding your short-term rental or check out our recommendations for using targeting to get more guests.