The top line of the Holiday Rental Mastery website asks: “Are you a fully booked rental owner?”
Several rental owners have told me they don’t take the claim seriously that a property can be fully booked.
Many regions like mine have a peak holiday season and owners will say “Well of course I’m fully booked! In summer we’re booked solid for six weeks.”
When I say we’re usually booked 90% of the time, 90% of days of the year, their eyes glaze over. No one can do that. They are very happy with their six weeks.
This disbelief probably starts with the real estate agent who sold them their house.
“Oh, yes that is a great little renter. You will get amazing rental. You’ll be full over Christmas, Easter and all the holiday weekends. It’s amazing”. This sets expectations low and I’ve become used to the glazed-over look.
The reality, as savvy rental owners know, is different but sometimes it is hard to get the message across.
In our case, our Treetops holiday house was managed by an agent with modest rental over several years, while we lived our lives as cubicle rats in the corporate rat race. We did our homework and used several advanced marketing techniques to change things. Techniques like Adwords, our own website and SEO to drive traffic to the agent’s phone.
Soon treetops was booked 80%, and usually 90% of the time available. This pretty little house was always full. Locals would notice and wonder what was going on in this little house!
We did it again recently with a new rental.
So with this background I had to laugh at a story from my friends Mike and Fleur.
They were at a table with six others at the Sydney 2013 Stayz conference, listening to me speak about getting high occupancy. I was saying how I took my brand new rental from nothing to 80% occupied in three months, and 90% occupancy is quite achievable.
One of their fellow listeners at the table, put down her pen and said quietly “This guy is bulltish, no one can do that. No one can be occupied 80% of the time.”
“Yes it is, we do!” Mike said. Someone else at the table said “Sure, we do too, even better”
At this point the sceptic’s jaw dropped and she started taking notes furiously!
At the time I knew nothing of this and hadn’t even met Mike and Fleur. Later in the conference Mike and Fleur were to win a national award for their Liptrap Loft. We were to meet and become good friends.
Sometimes, it takes experiences like this to reset expectations.
Fortunately our holiday rental/ vacation rental industry has a wide spectrum of property owners. Many just want a modest return with the minimum of effort.
There is usually plenty of room for savvy, well informed owners to get their properties very well booked.
In most markets, with well tuned rental properties, being booked 90% of the time is quite achievable.
The key to this, is information. What are the few key things that get the best results? How to put them into practice?
That is the purpose of Holiday Rental Mastery. To give the vital pieces of information to property owners who want to achieve exceptional occupancy through Mastery.
