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Why do agencies need vacation rental websites?

The web is packed with options for website creation. From do-it-yourself efforts like Wordpress and, to a lesser extent, Blogger, all the way to creative agencies who can cost millions (just ask Four Seasons all about that…) to create you a state-of-the-art site with every feature available, it’s easy to get lost in the myriad of options for vacation rental websites and just decide to stick to your current operation; offline. You might also be seeing great volumes of inquiry and bookings through major portal sites through the Kigo channel manager and wonder if you need a website. So let’s look at why your agency will benefit from a vacation rental website…..

Keeping your customers close

The advantages of having a Kigo vacation rentals website

Portal sites are excellent channels for a vacation rental agency. Here at Kigo, we advocate all our owners and agencies use them because they can help to expand a company’s reach, keep costs low and get maximum exposure for your vacation rental properties very quickly. So on these sites, there are millions of listings spread across hundreds of sites, which is great and very useful, but in having their own vacation rental websites, agencies can focus on just their properties and bring the properties they want to sell into focus. This is a clutter-free environment to push their portfolio only; there are no distractions for the customer.

Credibility

Security in online holiday transaction is a big factor in vacation rental e-commerce, and it’s only going to get more and more prominent. The rise of internet fraud through holiday rentals is constantly in the news, and people are becoming more and more aware of their security when they book a vacation. In having your own website, you are confirming to the customer that you are a trustworthy organization in which to invest their holiday funds. A customer may find your property on a portal site or through some offline marketing activities, but are likely to consult Google using your company name. If a branded vacation rentals website with your content and images in place, it reassures the consumer and is far more likely to result in a booking.

Brand, identity and other options

A website is the first point of call between your vacation rental agency and a prospective customer in many cases. It is your chance to create an initial impression, to emphasize your brand values and how you want your vacation rental agency to be regarded. It’s a vital too to communicate this information instantly. If you don’t have a website, you don’t have this instantly-stated “voice” or easily-communicated identity, so creation of this will prove far more difficult.

Having your own vacation rental website also opens up many other avenues, like short term added value offers (such as a free bottle of wine with certain bookings) or flash sales for a brief period of time. Being able to offer these little extras can secure you bookings, but it’s hard to offer these time-sensitive deals without a website to display them. Calling or email these deals to your customer-base can be time-consuming and difficult, but through a vacation rentals website, you can communicate these deals easily and quickly.

Remarketing to your past customers using vacation rental websites

Get more bookings through a Kigo vacation rental website

If you have had a vacation rentals agency for a few years, you are likely to have a customer database. When you market to these agencies through emails, being able to send your past customers to a website to convert reduces the chance that they might leak to other sites, or look to find you on a portal but become distracted by other properties from different agencies. Having your own vacation rental website gives you an immediate point of contact to your past customers and keeps them engaged with your agency and, most importantly, your properties for their vacation rental. You can include links to the site in all your communications to reinforce this point constantly.

So there are just some reasons why you should look to establish your own vacation rentals website. There are so many benefits, and these are just a brief selection of all the advantages that you can enjoy when you decide to launch your vacation rentals website.

If you are in the market for a new vacation rentals website, we at Kigo can create a fantastic website, along with the best reservation system and channel manager in the industry. For more information, contact us at [email protected] or on the phone (Spain) +34 512 702 105 ‧ (France) +33 1 84 17 04 18 ‧ (USA) +1 (786) 292-0030

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