How guests search and book holiday rentals

At Rental Tonic we love it when companies share data and statistics that help owners and agents improve their holiday rental business and their communication with clients and guests: How clients book, who they are, where they find you, where they go and what they like and expect from a holiday rental. All this ‘big data’ helps you understand a client, the best places to reach that client and how to communicate with them in the future.

Analyzing data from your holiday rental client contacts and bookings takes time and effort, but understanding a guest’s preferences is most effective way of increasing first-time and repeat bookings.

The information you harvest can be used to personalise guest communication, target niche audiences, make your business more efficient, create parallel revenue streams and overall improve the guest experience. Statistics show that personalised guest promotion is up to nine times more effective than generic promotion.

We’ll be focusing on how to collect data and personalise your holiday rental marketing in the next article. Until then, we wanted to introduce you to some general statistics from a survey carried out by Tripping.com and published by Vacation Rental expert Matt Landau.

The statistics cover the age and gender demographics of clients who booked holiday rentals through Tripping.com, together with the mobile device they prefer to search and book on.

Scroll down if you want to go directly to view the visual infographic.

You choose dear…

According to Tripping.com, women are the decision makers when it comes to choosing and booking holiday rental accommodation, with a majority of 61%. This is no surprise as global travel statistics generally show a higher purchase rate by females and women tend to drive all types of on and offline purchases, as they control the household expenditure.

55+ market still strong

In terms of age group, the 55 plus market still books more holiday rentals than any other, with 43% of total bookings. However, the increase in Millennial bookings, 18-34 age group, is an interesting one. Influenced by Airbnb and other peer-to-peer booking platforms, social searching, interaction and reviews; the Millennial generation are now choosing holiday rentals for both short breaks (long weekend trips) and holidays.

Mobile demand

Nowadays we want everything on demand and that includes booking a holiday. Online consumers, especially Millennials, will search across multiple devices at once, to plan and book their holiday. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website you won’t engage clients searching on their tablet or smartphone and, importantly, you may be penalised by Google, who now expect every website to be mobile-friendly.

The report from Tripping.com shows that 63% of guests still book their holiday rental on a desktop computer, but what are the most popular mobile devices used to book travel? Not surprisingly, Apple rules the roost, with the top two devices the iPad and iPhone.

Check out the infographic below for the full results of the survey. And look out for our next article on Rental Tonic, in which we discuss how to harvest client data and profile your guests for more personalised promotion.

Image credit: 

Advice Button by Donnell King