More Bookings & Better Visibility

Booking.com is one of the most popular and essential holiday and vacation rental platforms. With millions of users visiting the website daily, property managers and vacation rental hosts must capitalize on the platform’s reach.

At Smoobu, we want to help you increase your occupancy rate. We have compiled some tips you can implement immediately to ensure a more significant impact on potential guests.

How to maximize Booking.com bookings

Several ways exist for hosts to improve their occupancy rate and generate more reservations in the short and long term. Leveraging data-driven insights is vital for crafting a more successful strategy.

Periodically reassessing and modifying your core strategies in response to significant business or local market changes can significantly boost your booking success.

Here are some other valuable insights and strategies you can implement immediately.

Use high-quality images and detailed descriptions

Emphasizing particular facilities and amenities in your property’s description can attract specific guest demographics, such as families or remote workers. Ensure your property page showcases the unique features that set your offerings apart so you grab the attention of first-time bookers and loyal bookers.

Personalizing welcome messages and providing thorough responses to guest inquiries fosters a more engaging experience, making guests feel valued and integral to your property’s success. Straightforward, informative content about your property helps manage expectations, resulting in better guest reviews and a higher likelihood of reservations.

Proactively responding to guest reviews, whether positive or negative, not only personalizes your response but also enhances prospective visitors’ perception of your property. This makes them feel that their feedback is essential to its success.

Booking.com Property Page Score

Booking.com’s Property Page Score is a tool that measures how complete and appealing your listing is to potential guests. Achieving a high score ensures your property showcases relevant information—such as photos, amenities, and local details—that travelers find essential when making a reservation.

Listings with a perfect score can receive up to 18% more reservations by setting accurate guest expectations, which leads to better reviews and repeat stays. Regularly updating your property page helps maximize its appeal and boosts your competitive edge.

Customer reviews and ratings

Booking.com only allows guests to submit reviews after their stay, guaranteeing that all feedback originates from verified experiences. The goal is to aid potential bookers in making informed choices.

Effective guest communication, precise expectation management, and engaging with positive or negative reviews personalize your response and enhance prospective visitors’ perceptions of your property.

Numerous travelers search, underscoring the importance of maintaining high ratings to improve visibility and drive occupancy rates on the platform. This makes you feel the urgency and importance of your property’s reputation.

Consider asking guests to leave reviews and automating the process to gather more reviews, build trust, and establish a strong reputation.

Improve your visibility

It can be challenging to rank highly amongst competitors and gain visibility on such a vast platform. But it’s not all about the number of competitors; Booking.com‘s algorithm is the key player here.

This algorithm is a set of rules or processes that Booking.com uses to determine the visibility of properties on its platform. Understanding how it works and what factors it analyses will help you build your visibility strategy and empower you to make informed decisions about your property’s visibility.

Offer flexible bookings

Flexible bookings are a big draw for most travelers, as circumstances can change suddenly. Having a flexible rate gives travelers more peace of mind. This flexibility also benefits you (the host), giving you more room to maneuver during a cancellation or unforeseen event.

In addition to an increase in the number of guests preferring flexible reservations, there is also a preference for more extended stays or combining different stays within the same trip. Therefore, enabling these two options gives you a better chance of reaching more potential travelers and appearing in more searches on the platform.

Mobile rates and Genius discounts

Almost everyone uses their smartphones to conduct all kinds of searches, and the same is true for Booking.com. In a push to increase mobile reservations, Booking.com allows hosts to create special offers for guests who book through the Booking.com App or with their mobile phones.

These mobile rates are strongly highlighted to mobile bookers when making a potential reservation. The same applies to loyal and returning users who can become Genius members with special rates and discounts. More on that program here.

How to enable discounts and offers

Special offers, promotions, and discounts are always welcome and a fantastic way to attract potential guests. Throughout the year, we see more and more dates for possible promotions and discounts, such as Black Friday, and the vacation rental industry is getting in on the act, too.

You can offer exclusive promotions and deals for new and returning guests to get extra visibility and book early.

• Log in to the Booking.com user Extranet.
• Go to the “Promotions” tab.
• You can choose an offer template or customize it to your liking. Then click on “Configure offer”.

Update your listing

Adapting your property description and images to match the season is one small step to keep up with the changing seasons. Another is updating photos if your property undergoes renovations. Finally, modifying your amenities over time is always a good idea if you buy new appliances, add new features that travelers may want, or have a new local recommendation.

We have an entire article on how you can best optimize your listings.

Extend your availability calendar.

The more dates you have available to book, the more likely you will attract customers, even in the long term. Extending your availability calendar means opening up your property to more potential guests, increasing your chances of securing bookings.

What is Booking.com’s ‘Visibility Booster‘

The Booking.com Visibility Booster is a powerful tool that enhances your property’s position in search results to align with traveler demand, making it more appealing to bookers.

Targeting specific regions and optimizing visibility during key booking times, such as holidays or low seasons, drives traffic and boosts reservations. This strategic feature helps properties stay competitive, maximize their appeal to bookers, and secure future reservations, ensuring consistent performance when visibility matters most.

Activating the Visibility Booster

To activate the Visibility Booster, log into your extranet, navigate to the Boost performance section, and select Visibility Booster.

You can select specific check-in dates to enhance your visibility, strategically targeting times of low occupancy or significant events that require attracting more guests. Choosing a target country also enables you to reach bookers from specific regions, especially during local holidays or events.

You can also customize the commission rate using a slider; once you’ve made your selections, you can confirm the changes by clicking the Apply new commission rate button.

Overview of the Preferred Partner Program

The Preferred Program aims to boost property visibility and attract more guests by providing targeted benefits to participating partners. It offers tailored performance insights that empower property owners to comprehend their metrics and enhance their listings effectively.

Enrolling in the Preferred Program can increase revenue by utilizing tools that optimize availability and strategically showcase deals. This program offers features that enable property owners to implement promotions seamlessly and access analytics that shed light on travel trends.

Becoming part of the Preferred Program allows property partners to attain higher rankings and enhanced exposure in booking.com search results.

Preferred Partner Program vs Visibility Booster

The Visibility Booster and Preferred Partner Program offer distinct strategies to enhance your property’s visibility on Booking.com.

The Preferred Partner Program is a long-term strategy that offers sustained visibility boosts and higher search result placement. A distinctive thumbs-up icon marks it. While the Visibility Booster provides immediate adaptability, the Preferred Partner Program focuses on consistent, ongoing benefits for properties meeting specific criteria.

Both tools empower hosts to manage bookings and strategically stand out in competitive markets.

Utilizing technology to improve occupancy rates and visibility

Smoobu.com streamlines vacation rental management by updating calendars and enabling dynamic pricing adjustments to match market demand. Its integration with Booking.com allows you to manage availability efficiently, while promotional features help attract more guests and boost visibility.

Smoobu ensures you can focus on running a more efficient business and maximizing occupancy rates by automating key tasks like guest communication and offering tools to customize policies.

14-day free trial