Boost Your Vacation Rental Marketing Strategy with Videos

Two out of three U.S. consumers watch travel videos before booking a trip. 88% of those travelers focus their YouTube searches on destinations, attractions, points of interest, or general travel ideas*. Many property managers use video content that includes 360-degree property tours, which are very useful. However, if your videos are purely property-focused, you might be missing a huge vacation rental marketing opportunity. You should also consider creating or curating social videos of interesting local hangouts, local events and attractions. What's the lesson? Vacation rental management companies can drive more bookings by utilizing a smart video content strategy.

Leverage Local Events

Local events are great vacation rental marketing opportunities. For instance, a staggering 167,227 travelers attended the 2016 Kentucky Derby. Imagine if even a fraction of those tourists booked your vacation rental properties - a huge revenue boost indeed! While not all tourist events are as big as the Kentucky Derby, local events of all types and sizes can draw hundreds, thousands or even millions of tourists all in need of a great place to stay.

Say you own vacation rental properties that are most popular during winter months. Why not create (or curate) videos of local holiday events? Focus on property location as you major marketing/selling point. Are your rental properties close to a large local attraction? Why not shoot some video in that location and pair it with an engaging blog post? Most municipalities have special events during the year, be it a local craft show, a local street fair or holiday parade. Blog content is the perfect place to offer a vacation experience package that includes attraction tickets or discounts.

Create a Good Mix

Google reports: "Of travelers who watched online videos while planning travel, 45% of leisure travelers, 72% of business travelers and 74% of affluent travelers said they were prompted to book as result." Travelers watch a combination of professionally made videos and user-generated videos during the researching and planning phases, so encourage present and past renters to shoot videos inside the rental as well as around town. Guests should tag you in their videos and utilize your recommended hashtags. Your users are likely on Snapchat or Instagram and their content can influence future bookings. Check out our basic Instagram guide for vacation rental managers. As far as best practices for remembering the difference between social video providers, commit these super easy tips to memory:

Instagram feed: Host short property videos or branded content
Instagram stories and Snapchat: Record quick live moments that disappear within 24 hours
YouTube: Host evergreen property videos, create different property channels and embed links to these videos within your website pages and blog posts

Using Kigo Tools for Guest Outreach

Kigo helps vacation rental managers make their properties shine. With a Kigo web design, you can easily incorporate high-quality videos of both your properties and local events and attractions right onto your website. Kigo web designs integrate seamlessly with your entire vacation rental booking software system to help guests who enjoy your videos to book quickly and easily.

Meanwhile, Kigo's vacation rental reservation system includes handy email templates to help with guest outreach. This means that when you post a new video, you can easily let your guests know via a simple email link. Make your vacation rental marketing simple and easy with Kigo.

Are You Ready to Drive More Bookings with Kigo's Vacation Rental Booking Software?

Kigo's software is designed specifically for vacation rental bookings. Every feature is carefully crafted to make your job as a vacation rental manager easier. Check it out for yourself and get a demo of Kigo’s vacation rental management software at no cost and no obligation.

*Source: Think with Google