Our tips to nurture repeat bookings

Customers are a potential continued revenue for your holiday rental business. Actions taken by your guests after and during a stay can help gain new guests or nurture repeat bookings. Gaining customer loyalty and good feedback is a goal of most holiday rental companies. How do you achieve this if your starting out or growing rapidly as a business?

There will be many different ways to nurture repeat booking and it will be dependent on the business structure with your owners. We have put together three general tips on how you can nurture repeat bookings for your business.

1. Positive Experience

If the customer journey is positive it can make a difference in the decision to book again. From the property they are staying in through to the communication with the company the smallest detail can alter a person’s perspective on a situation. Getting feedback of their stay is a great way to foster a repeat booking. It opens up the conversation with the guest to find out what you can improve on to understanding if they would be likely to book again. This information can help shape marketing campaigns for your existing customers.

2. Email Newsletters

A great way to keep your previous guests interested in the properties you have is create an email campaign. A reminder close to seasonal times like Christmas may pursued customers to book again. It could include holiday extras or special offers to attract bookings.

With a regular newsletter campaign you can share updates, highlighting new properties to blog articles the company has written. These emails could inspire, the guest to look coming back to the area and re book with the company again. There is a lot of flexibility with email campaigns with the type of campaign to the engagements you can drive back to the website or social channels.

A larger holiday rental agency may want to think about automation of marketing emails. There are a number of different platforms where you can set up triggers and rules based on a users activity. It will send automated emails to the guest at the right time with out much effort. Setting up an automation can take time, but getting this right for the business will allow you to focus on other activities which cannot be automated.

3. Loyalty Scheme

A loyalty scheme isn’t just for the big brands or agencies it can work for smaller businesses. From fostering customer engagements through to increasing the likelihood of repeat bookings. There are many different types of programs you can try in your business from refer a friend incentives to special rates or rewards with repeat bookings. Even if you are a small business a loyalty bonus can be as simple as a welcome basket or something which you know that guest would appreciate.

4. Over Deliver

It sounds simple but can you really look back on each individual booking and say ‘WOW’ I really over delivered for that guest.  Imagine if you invested 10 – 20% of your commission into every booking would that generate more money on the backend? i.e. Repeat or Referral.  Without investing money, how much time can you give to each guest?  What information do you provide them with? what do you book for them to make their holiday easier? What surprises do you have for them on arrival? What surprises do you have for them before they go on holiday or as the holiday gets closer?

It is here that you can really inspire an emotional connection between you, your company and the guest.  Once they are fully connected emotionally you have a great opportunity to create a customer for life and a brand ambassador!

Did you know the iPro platform allows you to send special offers in the booking management system to specific guests?

Getting repeat bookings will ensure your business has a continued revenue from guest who are already more inclined to book. Our booking system allows you to create and send offers to anyone who has enquired through to stayed in a property.  These offers can be a general code to add to a campaign of 20% off, through to a per person unique offer.

Want to find out more about this feature and the other we have in our system book a demo today! Let us show you the benefits of a customer relationship based platform.