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Grow your vacation rental business by welcoming guests that spend more, stay longer, and bring the whole family.
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Checklist: Get ready for your first vacation rental booking
This checklist is designed to help you earn your first booking fast. From syncing your calendars to setting up your rates, find out how to get your listing booking-ready.
Booking-ready checklist
When your listing’s new, it can be a challenge to get those first few bookings. To help out with that, we’ve created a checklist of key actions you can take to make your listing a booking magnet. Now go forth and conquer — we’re rooting for you!
Calendar
Having an up-to-date calendar is key to getting bookings and preventing cancellations. Make sure your calendar’s all set by taking care of these steps.
Sync your calendars
Managing multiple calendars for your business? Leverage calendar syncing to save time and avoid double-bookings. Calendar syncing automatically keeps your calendar on our platform up to date with any other calendars you may have on websites like Google, Booking.com, or Airbnb.
Double-check your availability
Because people and technology can make mistakes, it’s important to double-check that your calendar shows the correct blocked and unblocked dates. Pro tip: You can also put on your “traveler hat” and search different dates on our website or app to confirm your calendar shows the correct availability.
Review your booking window
Choose how far in advance and how close to the stay date you’d like to accept bookings. Pro tip: Many travelers make vacation plans a year in advance or more, so it’s a good idea to set your window over a year out to make sure you can capture those bookings.
Confirm your minimum stay setting
We recommend keeping your minimum stay to three nights or less. That length of time maximizes the number of searches you appear in and helps fill all available nights in your calendar.
Rates
Travelers care about cost. In fact, price is the most important factor in booking decisions for the majority of travelers. That doesn’t mean you need to lowball your rates to get bookings — but it does mean it could pay to be strategic with your pricing. Take these steps to maximize your rental income while staying competitive.
Add custom rates and discounts
Scroll through your calendar and make sure the rate you see on each date is the rate you want to charge. Pro tip: It’s a good idea to add custom rates for any busy seasons, holidays, or special events in your area to ensure you’re earning top dollar for those premium dates.
Add weekly and monthly rates
Fill up calendar blocks fast by offering guests a price break for longer stays. To implement this strategy, simply set up weekly and monthly discounts.
Review your payment terms
Paying for the full stay upfront may be a barrier to booking for some. Consider allowing for more flexibility by letting guests break up their payment into installments.
Property details
Travelers often make the decision to book or not based largely on a listing’s property details page. Take these steps to make yours the type of listing that gets travelers to stop scrolling and book your home.
Preview your property like a traveler
Preview your listing to see what travelers see when they look at your property online. This is a great way to identify updates you might want to make to your photos, description, and amenities.
From your dashboard, click on the image of your listing above “Dashboard” to preview.
Review your photos and add more
Stunning pictures drive bookings by helping your listing stand out from the rest. Review your photos, upload more, and add captions to really make your place come to life.
Add more property amenities
Maximize the number of times your listing shows up in searches by adding every single amenity your property has to offer. Pro tip: Seriously, no detail is too small. Travelers often filter searches for properties by their amenities, and you don’t want to miss out on a listing view just because a box isn’t checked that should be.
Policies
When you first go live, we choose certain default policies on your behalf. But you know your needs better than we do, so be sure to review these policies and update any preference you’d like to change.
Review your cancellation policy
The default selection we choose is a “relaxed” cancellation policy. On this policy, guests will get a full refund if they cancel more than 14 days before check-in. They’ll be refunded 50% if they cancel 7 days before check-in.
Set up your house rules
House rules put you in control of the types of guests who can stay at your property. Travelers have to agree to your house rules before they can book your place.
To review your cancellation policy and house rules, log in to your Vrbo dashboard and visit Property > Rules and policies.
Take action
Help earn more bookings fast by meeting — and exceeding — guest expectations. Head to your dashboard to complete the checklist.
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