WAYS

TO OPTIMIZE
YOUR HOMEAWAY
LISTING
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INTRO

There is no denying that HomeAway is one of the world’s best-known vacation rental
booking platforms. Founded in 2006, HomeAway now boasts an epic two million
unique places to stay across 190 countries.

For owners, the rise of home-sharing sites like HomeAway means that anyone can
list their property and become a host in a matter of minutes. At the same time, for
travelers, researching, shortlisting and booking a vacation rental is now easier than ever
before.

As a result, competition is rife between owners looking to stand out from the crowd
and achieve bookings. When you’re up against hundreds of your rival neighbors, your
listings have to do the hard work for you.

If you’re wondering what you can do to optimize your HomeAway listing – we’re here to
help. We’ve put together this useful guide to outline the top nine ways you can improve
your listing and increase booking conversion!
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1. ACCEPT ONLINE BOOKINGS AND PAYMENTS

Not only do travelers prefer listings that accept online bookings (over 90% want to be
able to pay online), but HomeAway has actually set up its pricing strategy to reflect
this and cater to this need. Owners on annual subscriptions can pay $399 in fees to
have online booking enabled and to show up higher in search results, otherwise the
price increases to $549 without.

So if you don’t want to be penalized by guests and HomeAway themselves, you’d

better start accepting online bookings and payments for your rental!

2. RESPOND TO ALL INQUIRIES – IMMEDIATELY

While responding within 24 hours is proven to positively impact your HomeAway
listing quality score, modern travelers have come to expect instant or near-immediate
responses to their inquiries. That’s why it’s more important than ever to provide your
potential guests with the best customer service possible – even more relevant if you’re
in an oversaturated rental market.

Don’t forget that your response score takes into account response rate as well as time.
This is calculated from finding the percentage of responses you’ve sent to your last 10
inquirers or bookings.

3. COMPLETE YOUR HOST PROFILE

When guests have a toss up decision between two similar properties, it’s likely
they’ll choose the more stand-out host. Don’t lose out on bookings because your
competition have bothered to add details to their profile!

Make sure you upload a clear, smiling photo of yourself, write an interesting owner
biography and do everything you can to persuade curious guests to book your
property over another.

4. MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR PROPERTY LISTING

Your HomeAway listing is your main opportunity to grab lookers’ attention and convert
them into bookings – so you’ll need to make it as complete as possible. Upload up
to 24 of your most well-staged, recent and high-quality photos to truly show off your
property. HomeAway recommends keeping the files large for best results – e.g. 3840 x
2160 pixels.

Also, ensure you have a catchy headline and carefully written listing descriptions to
appeal to more potential guests.
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5. AVOID CANCELING BOOKINGS

Canceling bookings is a big red flag for HomeAway and can hurt your ranking as a
result, so be careful to this with caution. If you are worried it might be a scam booking
or spam inquiry, you can mark it as spam in your HomeAway inbox without suffering
the consequences of canceling.

6. GATHER GREAT REVIEWS

On HomeAway, reviews are as important (if not even more important) than anywhere
else on the web. Reading recent good reviews can be a fantastic persuasion tool for
potential guests who are unsure which property to go for.

HomeAway listing quality considers two factors for your review quality score: the
number of reviews and their age. To get the best score in this category, you need at
least 12 reviews (and don’t stop when you hit that number!). The newer the reviews, the
better – so make this a focus and remind each guest that stays with you.

7. KEEP CALENDARS UP - TO - DATE

An accurate, constantly updated calendar is key for obtaining new bookings as it lets
travelers know if your property is available (or not) during their selected dates. What’s
more, HomeAway may remove listings from search results if you don’t update your
calendar in 60 days.

If you have multiple listings, such as across HomeAway and your own vacation rental
website, you can always recruit the help of a channel manager to help keep calendars
and availability updated across all external listings.

8. VERIFY YOUR LOCATION

Accurate location information is essential for optimizing your HomeAway listing. All
you need to do is provide HomeAway with a valid address for your property. While
your exact address won’t ever show up on your listing, this information will help
travelers orientate themselves with map search results when thinking about booking
your property.

9. ACTIVATE QUOTABLE RATES

Enabling quotable rates on your HomeAway listing will help your property to show
up in searches related to your area or rate. Quotable rates give more flexibility to
travelers, providing them with instant quotes related to their booking dates – without
the need to contact you directly.