Generating Repeat Clients
Generating Repeat Clients
Reduce your work, still get paid.
Over the past 30+ years, companies have tried to develop loyalty programs to help generate repeat clients. This goes back to airlines’ frequent flyer programs, total rewards programs created by the casinos, and offers to get an item free after making a number of purchases.
The main goal is to identify the most profitable customers and get them to shop more often. In the villa rental business, the traditional methods include providing a 10% discount for repeat guests. Each villa owner must agree to provide this incentive on a case by case basis. Other incentives include discounts for extended stays beyond the traditional seven.
Incentivize Your Clients
The complicated incentive is to hold the same days the client rented in the next year for 30 days after they return. There is a follow-up communication to request if the clients are looking to return the next year. This offer is generally far more powerful and valuable during the Holiday periods when the villas are in high demand.
What we have discovered once a client has found a villa they really like and get to know they generally will return to that same villa rather than go through the long selection process of choosing another villa. When a client becomes familiar with a villa it makes the adventure far easier to return because they know what to expect. This takes the anxiety out of the vacation.
We suggest to villa owners they should exhaust all efforts to guests to encourage them to return. Generating new quests takes far more energy. If guests return they often decide to extend their stays, which is the best means of driving more villa rental revenue. For each additional day, a guest stays beyond 7 days is a 14% increase in revenue.
At Generating Media we recommend villa owners to recognize their guests and let them know they appreciate their business. Our suggestions include gift certificates to restaurants, massages, or welcome food baskets that may include the first-night dinners.
Getting Creative with Incentives
One of the most effective suggestions we came up with was to provide a key to a private closet at the villa. We found a client had returned to the villa a couple of years in a row. The guests stayed over three weeks with each visit. Traveling with luggage can be a real challenge especially when the guest is staying for extended days. Each year the guests would return with many of the same types of clothing and items and forced to lug it back and forth. Our solution was to have the guest store some of his items in a private locked closet at the villa so when he returned the items would already be there. The guest loved this idea as we made his life easier plus he made an emotional connection with the property…felt like it was his home.
The key thing we learned is the more you follow the “best practices” of your competitors, the less different you are from your customers.
Generating Media welcomes the opportunity to help you create your own unique position in your industry.