Collecting Data on vacation rentals is a game-changer.

In the early years of getting involved in the short term villa rental industry, we discovered the major players in the industry collected very little data from their customers. They directed their time and resources on trying to generate new customers. Marketing budgets were set with direction on placing ads in magazines, doing travel shows, and a series of direct mail pieces. By comparison, very little time, effort, or money was targeted at generating repeat or referral customers. The cost of generating new customers is enormous.

Collecting Data on Every Guest

Even before we noticed this we were amazed that the average villa rental included 4-6 guests, but they only collected the contact information of one key person that actually generated the reservation. This translated they had no idea or record of the guests’ names or contact information. In a high percentage of the villa rentals, it was 2-3 different set of couples sharing in the costs. In other words, these additional guests were direct customers, but they were invisible when it came time to collect data.

We were in shock that the standard procedure when generating a villa rental reservation did not include capturing the contact information of all guests…they were all customers! Many couples often had no idea who was the company or booking agent that was responsible for preparing the villa rental logistics. If they thought about taking a future villa rental adventure and wanted to make the arrangements they would not even know who to contact. Every piece of pro-active follow-up was only directed to the individual that generated the original booking. This means the villa rental company was only recognizing 16% of its customers. The remaining 84% of its customers had no identity.

Understanding when your client books vs when they travel

We also discovered the data being collected only included the arrival and departure dates. This data is useful, however, the most important date to collect is the date the customer actually generated the reservation. Customers are creatures of habit. They start thinking about planning their vacations during certain months. This might be anywhere from 2-10 months prior to actually arriving at the villa. If you want to send out any type of promotional material to your clients it should be relevant and timely. If historical data shows you the guests make their bookings in November for travel in February then you want to reach out to them in September and October to trigger their minds to start making their plans. If you wait until December, January they most likely already made plans and you will have to wait another year. Capturing the booking dates is critical to improving conversion rates.

Years ago there were only a few destinations where short term rentals were available. Short term renters knew they had to make decisions tens months ahead of time or they might be out of luck. Today there are thousands and thousands of short term rentals available. The important data to collect and pay attention to are the inquiries generated versus the conversion rates. Generating lots of inquiries is not good if no conversions are generated. Important data to review is the cost per inquiry and cost per conversion by destination. In order to capture this data, every inquiry must be sourced. This data will shock you if you don’t manage it. Currently, we’re seeing conversion rates of less than 5%. This means the villa rental specialists that are paid on commission are not earning compensation for 95% of the work they might be doing.

This circle back as to the importance of capturing the contact information of all customers, not just the one generating the booking.