If you are already a Smoobu user or are considering becoming one, then this article might be of interest. Our vacation rental software has more than one trick up its sleeve that will help you manage your rentals smoothly and efficiently. Keep reading and discover the Smoobu features that will boost your vacation rental business!
Offer a promotional code for your travelers
After receiving travelers at your vacation home for a weekend, week, or longer period, why not offer them a promotional code to thank them and build their loyalty?
This way you will show that you genuinely appreciate your guests and can create a long-term connection with them. At the same time, this allows you to fill your calendar with bookings from one season to the next or from one year to the next.
With Smoobu, you can create promotional codes for your potential guests. For example, you can offer WELCOMEBACK5 or WELCOMEBACK10 with a discount of 5 and 10% respectively on the next reservation.
You can also define the validity period of the code: 6 months, 1 year etc. You can indicate that it is valid only on your Smoobu website for direct bookings or on the external web page where you have implemented the Smoobu Booking System.
By developing an effective promotional strategy, you can be sure to:
- Increase direct bookings
- Increase your occupancy rate
- Increase your revenue because your bookings will be commission-free
Bonus idea: check your statistics in Smoobu every quarterly or year by year and keep an eye on your direct booking rate. Your goal should be to increase it!
Take advantage of automated 360° communication
Whether with travelers, your teams or internal departments, communication can quickly become redundant and time-consuming. You may already be using our automated messaging feature to ensure smooth communication with guests from booking to departure. But did you know that you can go well beyond that with this feature?
You can use Smoobu’s automated messages to communicate with:
- Your guests.
- The owners of the vacation rentals you manage. If you are a rental agency or a host, you can automate messages to the property owner as soon as you receive a new reservation for their vacation home.
- Your cleaning staff. You can send an automatic message after each new booking so that your staff is informed. You can also send a cleaning checklist with a procedure to follow.
If they don’t have full access to your booking calendar, sending automatic emails is a good solution.
Another solution to communicate with travelers and your professional teams: SMS / Text Messages.
Smoobu is partnered with SMS Factor. This partnership allows seamless integration between our two services. As a result, you can convert your automatic emails into SMSs / Text Messages. This way, your guests or team will be promptly informed even if the e-mail fails to reach them for some reason.
A text message is advantageous because information is received more easily, as e-mails can often get lost in the shuffle.
Personalize your Guest Guide
The Guest Guide is a useful, practical and interactive solution to provide your guests with information. You can enter as much essential info as you like: check-in/check-out, house rules, your favorite addresses, etc. This way, your guests will have easy access to all the information they need before and during their stay, all available from a single URL.
Additionally, did you know that you can take advantage of the HTML function of the Guest Guide? With HTML, you can add a series of interactive elements such as:
- A Whatsapp button to contact you directly.
- Your Instagram account.
- Your Youtube videos.
- Your personalized video messages.
- A 3D map of your vacation rental.
- And much more.
Clearly, you might think that adding these interactive elements to your digital guide requires programming knowledge. And yes, some basic skills might be useful to you. However, even if you are a beginner at coding, if you are willing to spend some time and do some research, you can easily find HTML codes online that you can copy and paste into your website. In addition, you can ask ChatGPT for help.
To take it a step further: soon you will find an article dedicated to Smoobu’s Guest Guide customization options.
Manage your vacation rentals with Smoobu
If you haven’t yet subscribed to our professional plan, what are you waiting for? We offer a 14-day free trial to test our vacation rental management platform and to experiment with the 3 tips suggested in this article.
