Update Your Vacation Rental Listing for 2024 with these Tips
How to Make Your Vacation Rental Listing Stand Out in 2024
When you own a vacation rental, each new year brings with it a different landscape and set of rules for you to follow to become a success. Although it can be tough to keep up with the most current trends, in today’s hypercompetitive short-term rental market, it’s more important than ever to be up to date on the latest information on how to make your listing stand out from the crowd.
If you haven’t updated your vacation rental listing for 2024, now’s the time. Today, we’ll be sharing with you 6 different tips for overhauling your listing to help you get more visibility and more overall bookings.
Write an Eye-Catching Title for Your Vacation Rental Listing
When a potential guest reads your listing title, they should immediately think, “This rental is perfect for me!”
However, when guests are lost in a sea of great listing titles, it can be tough to stick out in this way. That’s why you should take some time to update your listing title on all the booking sites that you utilize–on Airbnb especially, coming up with a great title for your listing can be the difference between one booking and one hundred future reservations.
Click here to learn tips and tricks for creating an eye-catching vacation rental listing title.
Focus on Updating Your Listing Description with Keywords
Our next tip for updating your listing for 2024 focuses on appealing to the search engines on sites like Airbnb and Vrbo. Most search engines work similarly to the Google search engine, which means that the best practices of search engine optimization apply to these sites. Instead of searching for a match for your entire query, these search engines utilize things called keywords, and the more matching keywords you have with a search query, the more likely your listing will pop up when guests search for something similar.
In order to make your rental listing stand out in 2024, you’ll want to include as many often-searched-for keywords as possible in your listing description. Often, guests are searching for places that have premium amenities, such as a hot tub or sauna, so it’s important to feature this information in your listing. They might also be searching for nearby locations, so mention any nearby attractions in your title and description to get this search engine traffic directed towards your listing.
Take Some Time to Get the Right Photos
Find some popular comparable listings to your vacation rental and take some time to look at how the photos were captured. Then, find a professional photographer and show them the photos, letting them know that you would like your home to be shot in that same style.
Periodically updating your listing photos is not just a good way to stand out–it should be standard practice in your short-term rental business. Camera lenses are always getting better, and screens get better at displaying photos, so if you want to keep up with the times, re-shooting your home should be on your agenda each year or so.
Don’t Forget About Photo Captions
One thing that short-term rental owners often forget about or leave by the wayside is their listing photo captions. While these might not seem all that important, guests who are especially interested in your listing will take the time to peruse these, so it’s a good idea to pay attention to some of the best practices for writing photo captions.
Here are a few tips to make your captions stand out:
Be specific about what amenities the photo shows–don’t just say, “This is the living room,” but rather mention the fireplace, the Smart TV, and the home entertainment system shown in the photo.
Keep your captions on the shorter side–no one wants to read a 3-sentence description of a room–but do be descriptive about the guest experience. .
Update Your Listing Periodically With New Amenities or Features
When you add new amenities or features to your vacation rental, guests won’t know about it unless you update your listing description to showcase this. And as we mentioned before when talking about vacation rental search engine optimization, the more amenities and home features that you have in your listing description, the more likely search results will come your way. So, whenever you add a new amenity to your vacation rental, be sure to update your listing to include this information.
Include Activities and Nearby Attractions in Your Location and Neighborhood Descriptions
Our final tip for updating your listing in 2024 is to focus more on the activities and nearby attractions when updating your listing description. Not only will this help with your traffic on Airbnb and Vrbo’s search engines, like we mentioned above, but it will also just help to give guests more information about what they’ll do when they’re in the area. Include details about your favorite attractions and those that aren’t often mentioned, like museums and art galleries, to entice guests to book with you and your eye-catching location.
Check Out More Owner Guides on the LocalVR Blog
Each and every year, you should be updating your vacation rental’s listing description, titles, and photos to get with the times. As a vacation rental owner, you want to stand out from the competition, and the above tips will help you to better optimize your listing for the 2024 year.
Searching for more ways to become a better homeowner? Check out the rest of the LocalVR blog, where you’ll find guides on how to handle difficult guests or ways to minimize costs to maximize your revenue.
