What Marketing Strategies Have Helped You Increase Occupancy Rates for Your STRs?

[Joy Daniels]

I manage short-term rentals in the Sarasota area, and I'm always looking for innovative ways to boost occupancy rates year-round.

From your experience, what marketing strategies have had the biggest impact on keeping your properties booked? Whether it's optimizing listings on OTAs, leveraging social media, running targeted ads, or using dynamic pricing tools—I'd love to hear what’s working for you.

Some strategies I’ve been exploring include: Enhancing property listings with professional experience photography and compelling descriptions, leveraging Instagram and Facebook ads to attract more direct bookings, and utilizing email marketing to engage past guests.

What’s been a game-changer for your vacation rental business? I am looking forward to your insights and suggestions!

[James R.]

I've been a "Superhost", whatever that means for 12 years on Airbnb.  

I've been meeting all of my goals by being very active with my listings.  I guess that you could call me a 'professional host'.  

The "Set it and forget it" mentality, I think, will limit your listing big time.

I do all of the pricing across multiple listings.  I change or rearrange photos weekly.  I listen to all of the Webinars that Airbnb invites me to.  Airbnb claims that setting up a "photo tour" on your listing will increase bookings by 6 percent, for example.  

The algorithm has a setting that when you change anything on your listing, you move up higher in the ranking.  So, get busy on your listings.  Pictures are great, but don't make them unrealistic or you will get "listing was not accurate" in your review.

I was 50/50 Airbnb/VRBO, then Airbnb inquiries came like wildfire, like Airbnb knew that I was engaging with VRBO.  I took the Airbnb bookings and now I'm around 80/20 Airbnb/VRBO.

Based on a recent bad experience that I had with Airbnb (it's a separate thread out here), I called VRBO and asked them how I can get more booking requests from VRBO.  They could not be more excited to help. 

Even calling Airbnb or VRBO CS and telling them that you just looked for your listing and could not find it, will boost your algorithm ranking somehow.  How do I know?  I don't know exactly for sure, but after I call Airbnb CS and have them search for my listing, I get a booking request in the next day or two.  So, it's just my supposition.  

I work from home and my hours are very flexible, so I can do all these "busy" activities on my listings.  They yield results, but I understand a lot of other people have jobs where they cannot spend so much time on their listings.  Long-winded post, but I hope that this helps others.