Promote Direct Bookings On Your Holiday Rental Accommodation Website
Direct Bookings Not Booking Portal Promotion
Please do not fall into the trap of inserting booking portal widgets (3rd party booking sites/channels branding and links) into your own website or social media pages. They'll offer to allow review feeds or events or anything that will redirect a prospective guest, who lands on your website, to their own website.On your website and social media pages you should only promote yourself. Ideally you don't want to redirect a prospective guest away from your Facebook page with third party content links, from your website with review and other widgets.If you want to build direct holiday rental bookings and remain independent and sustainable you need to make sure third party holiday rental advertising sites logo's/widgets/hyperlinks, aka booking portal brands, do not appear anywhere on your sites.The single biggest error that you can make is linking your holiday rental's booking portal listing from your social media pages or website. I am not sure why any holiday rental manager would redirect a prospective guest to make a booking portal booking when they found them direct in the first place. If you redirect a lead from your website to a booking portal you are driving the price of the booking up (not good for the guest or industry) and you will most probably have to pay for that privilege. Remember every guest of your holiday rental accommodation that books on a third party site is either paying more themselves or you are footing the commission/ subscription fee.If you have enjoyed this article maybe you'd like to subscribe (free) to the Welcome In e-news. I try to publish these every few months to a community of holiday rental managers in Australia. I encourage you to make contact with me if you have any queries about any aspect of your holiday rental management journey. If I cannot assist you I can certainly point you in the right direction. I am well connected with niche industry holiday rental stakeholders in Australia.