How can I get last-minute bookings?
Vacancies happen, but your vacation home doesn’t have to sit empty. Here are strategies for Airbnb hosts and vacation homeowners to attract guests with narrow booking windows.
Reduce your minimum stay
Today’s travelers are flexible; your booking calendar could be too. Last-minute stays tend to be 1 to 3 nights, versus the traditional 1-week long vacations. Consider removing minimum stays to make your vacation home more attractive to these spontaneous travelers and encourage shorter stays.
Simplify the mobile booking experience
Smooth out your mobile user experience so guests can book a stay with the least amount of effort possible. This will also help prevent them from stopping midway through the transaction and booking someplace else. Some ways to do that:
- Get rid of any unnecessary visual clutter and excessive copy
- Minimize the number of steps it takes to book
- Continue to test and collect feedback from users on how to improve their booking experience
At Vacasa, we’ve made booking a vacation home super simple. Our Vacasa app allows guests to easily search and book thousands of homes, see their trip details, have access to their vacation home guide, get digital lock codes, quickly access the Wifi, and more.
Adjust your rates
Pricing for last-minute bookings is critical. However, don’t just blindly slash your rate. Price your vacation rental to maximize both your bookings and your rental income.
This is where it helps to have a dynamic pricing tool. At Vacasa, we automatically adjusts your home’s rates according to market conditions that drive or drop demand, such as:
- Season
- Holidays
- Weather
- Upcoming events
- Competition
Offer discounts or incentives
Last-minute bookers are often looking for a discount. Consider offering a special to fill in those gaps in your calendar. The discount should:
- Make sense for your bottomline. For example, the discounted rate should still cover your cleaning costs.
- Encourage last-minute bookings
- Make you stand out from the competition
Discounts aren’t the only incentives you can offer. You can get creative here. Create partnerships in your destination and offer tickets to a local show, festival, experience, or activity.
Airbnb makes it easy to create custom promotions to reduce your nightly rate as the vacant dates get closer. When you offer at least a 10% discount, Airbnb will automatically cross out your original rate and show the new rate—letting users know you’re offering a deal and encouraging them to book with you.
Send out marketing emails
If you’ve built an email list of your past guests, send out emails announcing your vacant dates and a special offer to book. Try to specifically target those guests who are within driving distance and more likely to take a spontaneous trip.
Target your drive market with social media ads
Facebook advertising can be powerful. They collect so many data points from users that you can place your vacation rental in front of a very targeted audience—including users who live within driving distance and have liked or visited other travel-related Facebook pages.
When building out your ad, use your most attractive exterior home image (our own Vacasa digital marketing team has found those images generally get the most clicks) and write strong copy to compel last-minute visitors to book.
