When you rent out your apartment and see guests arriving regularly, the feeling is wonderful. Everything is running smoothly.
But as time goes by, you start looking at other things and, more often than not, the alarm bells start ringing: How much money are you paying intermediaries to bring you those bookings? 😩
Yes: getting bookings — full stop — and getting direct bookings for an apartment are not the same thing, not by a long way.
The difference in terms of profitability can reach 15-20% depending on the case.
Let's say the intermediary charges you 20%: if you bill 4.000€ a month in bookings, 800€ will go straight to the OTA.
800€ a month, which is no small sum; you could be spending it on anything else.
Conclusion: direct sales, the kind that bypass intermediaries, are essential for your apartment.
And we are going to give you six tips to boost them 👇
1. Create exclusive offers for direct bookings
Let's start with the most logical thing, which is often overlooked: creating value propositions for bookings through the direct channel.
Why should a guest book on your website rather than on the OTA's?
You need to make it clear at all times.
Ideas: a small discount, a welcome gift, some free service included such as bike hire, a very flexible cancellation policy, etc.
2. Make effective use of social media
And by “effective” we don't mean getting your nephew to upload photos, no.
We're talking about thinking through a short, medium and long-term strategy. Planning in advance what is going to be published and why.
The dates, the graphic material, the networks you are going to work on, what you are aiming for with each one… and then, only then, you will need to publish regularly and gradually build a brand image.
Over time, if you get it right, you will have a constant trickle of traffic from social platforms that will also be warm or hot — because they already know you —, so it will take much less for it to turn into a direct booking.
3. Work on organic traffic from your blog
As we said, for there to be bookings from your website, there have to be visits.
Social media is one way of getting them, but there are more. The blog, for example, should be your base of operations.
It's a space where you can publish whenever and however you like.
If your apartment is in San Vicente de la Barquera, for example, you could write to rank for keywords such as:
- What to see in San Vicente de la Barquera, which has 4.400 searches a month in Spain alone
- What to do in San Vicente de la Barquera, which has 590 searches a month
- Restaurants in San Vicente de la Barquera, also with 4.400 searches a month
If you manage to get a post about what to see in San Vicente de la Barquera to the top of Google, 4.400 people a month won't all see you, but a high percentage of them will.
And if they like what they read and are already on your apartment's website, why wouldn't they book directly with you?
4. Apply copywriting and turn visits into bookings
Tourism copywriting, applying psychology to the text on your website to convince users that booking direct is the best idea.
Copy is about writing persuasively.
It's going from saying “The best apartment in the centre of Madrid” to “Apartment in Madrid, ideal for exploring the historic centre on foot thanks to its strategic location in a central, noise-free area”.
It's going one small step further.
That small step, applied to your home page — which needs the value propositions for booking through the direct channel we mentioned earlier — makes a real difference 👏
5. Personalise the experience and build loyalty
You know what they say: it is considerably more expensive to win new guests than to retain the ones you already know.
To increase direct sales for your apartment, work on loyalty, even among those guests who come to you through an OTA.
How? By personalising the experience, for example.
You can ask guests what means of transport they will be arriving by, to make it easier for them to get to the apartment.
Or ask about their eating habits and give them a surprise at breakfast.
Or put together a possible plan for your city depending on how many days they are staying.
Any personalisation, however small, will help you improve their satisfaction with the service.
6. Optimise your booking platform
The final tip, without which none of the others would make sense: the booking engine.
The booking system has to be clean, fast and effective, and it must not clash with the rest of the website experience.
How many times have you seen an accommodation website you liked, only for the booking engine to be a world apart? 😑
Look for an engine that lets you customise the gateway, that is functional, that integrates easily with a channel manager and PMS and that, in short, is your ace up your sleeve when it comes to direct bookings.
If it's your first time, you don't want to know about the problem after problem that the engines you'll find online usually cause.
And if not, you've already experienced it for yourself 😅
Here at Alojapro we know this, which is why we developed a simple yet practical and powerful engine that also helps you work on guest loyalty.
