If you're a property owner and never considered Expedia for listing your property, you're missing out on profits. Most of the people perceive Expedia as a booking platform for hotels, cars and flights. However, it is much more than that. It is one of the powerful distribution partners for vacation rentals. In this post, I will tell you how you can list a vacation rental on Expedia. This is gonna be very interesting, keep reading till the end!
As a matter of fact, Expedia is not merely a platform for searching accommodations. It integrates with all kinds of properties and works with more than 200 booking sites across nations.
As the vacation rentals take over the hotel industries, Expedia is emerging a major marketplace for temporary rental bookings.
If we talk in numbers, Expedia receives over 750 million visits per month which are far greater than Airbnb's 80 million visits per month and even more than HomeAway's as few as 27 million monthly visits. Expedia has become a tough player over the years.
The main reason for the growth of Expedia Groups is their unique placement between hotels and short term rentals. It has become an ideal platform for property owners who want to maximize their profits by attracting new guests from around the world.
At present, Expedia is helping people to book their airline tickets, hotels bookings, and vacation packages for short-term rentals.
It enables short-term property owners to make their property visible to the international targeted audience in more 75 countries and in more than 35 global languages.
For other Tips on How to advertise your vacation rental, click here.
To provide you with a better understanding here is how Expedia works :
Similar to Airbnb, HomeAway and Booking.com, Expedia has a very functional backend that offers a number of options for listing your property. Expedia Partner Central is a platform which is specially designed for the property owners. It comes with a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface allows the owners to list their properties, manage their reservations and monitor the growth of their business.
The Better Your Property Looks On Expedia, The More It Will Attract New Customers
It simply means high-quality photos (let me help you with that) have more chances to be rated high. If you want maximum bookings, you should upload sharp and high-quality professional pictures of your place. If you think that photos clicked by your phone or tablet can work then, you're definitely wrong!
You need to get your property clicked perhaps by hiring a professional photographer.
So, whenever you prepare your property for listing, work on its outlook. Make sure it stands out and looks flawless. This is the first and most important aspect to keep in mind before listing.
Expedia Listing Using Property Management Software
Another thing you can do to maximize your make your property visible on Expedia and achieve success is to make use of property management software. At the time of adding a rental suite to your database, make sure the entire information about it is consistent and unambiguous across all the booking platforms.
The description, pricing and availability should be managed simultaneously. There should be no discrepancies when it comes to booking because a double booking can do more harm than good for your vacation rental business.
Maintain The Quality of Your Rental Space.
Since Expedia is a go-to space for travellers to plan their vacations, it allows you to reach the most engaged travellers across the globe. They look for accommodations that are beautiful, clean, comfortable and well facilitated. Hence, you need to meet all these requirements of customers by maintaining the quality of your place. If your property meets all these expectations and offers additional luxuries and modern amenities, it can easily outperform the others.
Your Reviews Decide Whether You'll Get Success on Expedia or Not
Similar to the other booking platforms, Expedia weights your property on the basis of reviews. They can mark the success or downfall of your rental business. Expedia reviews reflect the instant credibility of your guests. When the reviews are positive, the new customers will easily get the idea that the previous guests have enjoyed their stay and hence, they will prioritize your suite. On the other hand, if the reviews are negative, your property will be ignored – plain and simple!
Higher Your Ranks In Google, Better The Performance of Your Vacation Rental Business
Be it any business, Google plays an important role in deciding your success or failure. Basically, the higher the rank of your property in Google, the greater will be its visibility.
Since Expedia is a highly reputed platform, your business will perform better under its brand value and recognition. The potential customers will be directed to your listing from a simple Google search.
Benefits Of Listing Your Property For Vacation Rentals
There are a number of benefits of listing your vacation rental property on Expedia. Below are few you should consider :
Reach a Large Number of Targeted Customers
Expedia is huge, you can target the international customers at the last point in a far better way than other OTAs. Listing on Expedia will help you to reach the international travellers who are looking for a vacation package. They are less likely to cancel their books and are confirmed. As noted above, Expedia's high brand value and reputation will make your property visible across targeted booking websites.
You Can Enjoy The First Mover Advantage
Gone are the days when Booking.com was only used for booking hotels, at present it is one of the finest marketplaces for vacation rental bookings. Consider this case with Expedia and adapt its space now to gain the advantage of staying among the top short-term vacation rentals on this emerging platform. It is less competitive now but will open great paths of success in future for sure.
You Can Shine Among Your Competitors By Attracting People Searching For Hotels
You stand a chance to target a whole new audience who are searching Expedia for traditional accommodations i.e hotels. You can present them with your vacation rentals and make them switch from their traditional accommodation. The traditional searchers will get a huge advantage because traditional accommodations are more expensive than vacation rentals. And who doesn't want to have a better space with full amenities at a pocket-friendly price? This simply hints that your property will gain huge popularity and success by outperforming the traditional accommodation options of the same location.
Additionally, by making use of a property management tool for listing your property on Expedia, you can monitor and optimize your channels well.
Now that you know about the benefits and the functioning of Expedia, it is the right time to learn the ways to list your vacation rental on it. To help you with this, here I am sharing the complete step-by-step procedure using which you can list your vacation property on Expedia.
How To List A Vacation Rental On Expedia
1] Create Your Account And Give A Brief Introduction Of Your Vacation Rental
First of all, you need to introduce yourself and your vacation rental on Expedia. For this, you need to provide a basic background of your rental including address, total space and other details. You also need to provide your own contact details.
2] Verify Your Account
After creating the account on Expedia, you will need to verify it using the email you've received after signing up. From there onwards, you can have a full view of the business terms and conditions, ways to get paid and also the compensation percentage.
3] Start Creating The Listing Of Your Rental Space
Now, you need to provide full details about your rental space. (More tips on writing a description) These details include the information travellers generally look for. This information includes the following :
- Number of rooms, layout, size of bed
- Details about the amenities. For example Swimming Pool, Wi-Fi, Kitchen Space etc.
- Pricing (we wrote a whole article in that) for the specific type of rooms
- High-quality professional pictures of the rental property
- Available dates
- A well-prepared list of policies and pricing
And other necessary information about the rental. You can fill out this information by taking your time. It will be saved automatically and you can resume it any time.
4] Receive Your Guests
Voila! You're almost there. Your vacation rental will be live in some time and will be visible to millions of people searching for accommodation. After receiving a booking, you can contact your guest and provide them with all the information they might need. You can coordinate with them easily while helping in check-ins. For this, you need your management team to be highly responsive in providing the necessary information and respond to the queries of the guests.
Moreover, you can make use of the Partner Central mobile application for getting updates about your bookings and the guests. You can get this app from the app store or Google Play.
That's about it. It is as simple as that. I hope this post helps you to grow your rental business. So, get started by listing your vacation rental on Expedia and start earning surplus incomes with a little investment. Be sure to check out other OTAs as well to list your vacation rental property, to make sure you get as much bookings as possible. If you really want to stay somewhat independent from the Big OTAs, check out this article .