Vacation rental owners are always looking for opportunities to get more bookings, increase their occupancy rate and make more money. One of the best ways to do this is to make sure your listing is available on all of the popular travel booking websites – Airbnb, HomeAway, VRBO, Expedia, Booking.com, Flipkey and many more.
Our team at Tokeet has spent the past 5 years working with vacation rental owners to help them get more bookings, but we keep seeing them make the same mistake. Too many vacation rental owners list their property on only Airbnb.
Airbnb is the biggest player in the vacation rental industry and deserves a lot of your attention. However, ignoring the other booking channels is a huge mistake. It will lead to more vacant nights and lost revenue opportunities.
As you can see, direct bookings and platforms other than Airbnb continue to make up the majority of bookings:
The reason why many vacation rental owners choose to focus on only Airbnb while ignoring other booking channels is because it’s a lot of work. Constantly keeping every channel updated with your latest availability and pricing is quite the headache. Fortunately, savvy vacation rental owners have discovered how a channel manager can automate all of this work for them.
A channel manager is one of the most powerful tools for vacation rental owners. It allows you to list your property across all the major websites like Airbnb, Expedia, Booking.com, HomeAway and every other platform you can think of. Your availability and pricing is synced across all of these channels so that you can sleep easy knowing that everything is up to date.
We’ve been privileged at Tokeet to work with over 7,000 Airbnb hosts and vacation rental owners to build the best channel manager. They all seem to ask us the same two questions:
How can a channel manager help my listings?
Is it easy to use?
A channel manager will make a big difference in taking your vacation rental business to the next level for these four reasons:
- Your Occupancy Rate Will Increase
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By listing your rentals across every booking channel you reach a greater number of potential guests. Even though Airbnb is the industry king, you would be surprised at how many bookings occur from the other channels. We’ve had several users report that their bookings grew by over 20% once they started using Tokeet to list across multiple new channels.
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A vacant night is revenue that is lost forever. A channel manager puts your listing in front of every possible traveler to make sure that your property is booked as often as possible.
- Say Goodbye to Stress
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It’s a lot of work to manually list your property on every site and keep up with all of the calendars, messages and prices. A channel manager does this all for you. Whenever someone books your listing on any site, Tokeet will automatically update all of the other sites with the new availability for the unit.
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Imagine having 3 vacation rentals each listed on 8 different websites. The number of manual changes you would have to make to keep your calendar up to date would soon get out of hand. No vacation rental owner wants that added stress, so Tokeet takes care of this work for you.
- No More Double Booking
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One of the biggest fears of vacation rental hosts is that you’ll get double booked. Having to cancel on a guest is never fun and it can lead to bad reviews that hurt your listing.
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Offering your property on multiple sites increases the risk of double booking, especially if you are manually updating your listing. For example, it’s easy to forget to update your availability on Expedia right after someone booked on Airbnb.
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Tokeet’s instant synchronization makes sure that all channels are automatically updated within seconds of a booking. You’ll never risk having to disappoint a guest because the property has been double booked.
- Optimize Your Rental Rates Like a Pro
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Channel managers can help you find the right price for your listing. Tokeet’s dynamic rates feature automatically increases your price on all channels as your occupancy increases (or vice versa). Simply set an introductory rate, then as bookings come in see your rates adjust to maximize revenue.
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The best part about channel managers like Tokeet is how simple they are to use. Most Airbnb hosts are able to get up and running within minutes.
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Tokeet is designed for companies and individuals alike. Whether you have 1 listing or 50, Tokeet can help you manage your listings easily and effectively. The Entry Plan is filled with everything you need and no unnecessary extras. It’s perfect for someone who manages one rental. For those who manage 2-10 rentals, we have the Owner Plan which also includes a simple to use website builder. For people with over 10 rentals, we have a range of premium offerings to suit your needs.
We encourage you to try our channel manager and see the impact it can have on increasing your revenue on your vacation rentals. Try us now for 15 days Free (no credit card required).
