Do you want to know what availability was most searched for on your calendars in the past seven days? We have taken a look at the top 100 dates and durations checked by guests looking to book self-catering accommodation¹, and the results are in.
Nine of the top 10 searches were for short breaks. What’s more, eight of those were for start dates within the following fortnight. The first full week break searched for comes in at number 10, for a 7-night break over Christmas. Here are a few ways to take those clicks to the next stage, and turn the browsers into bookers.
Be flexible
Being strict with your start date and not allowing short breaks means you are missing out on potential bookings.
The table below shows that of the top 20 dates checked:
- 84% were for short breaks and just 16% were for a full week
- everyone searching for a 2 or 3-night stay wanted a Friday start
- everyone searching for a 4-night break wanted a Monday start
Significantly, even of those that clicked on seven nights less than a quarter wanted their booking to start on a Saturday. Over half wanted a week break that started on a Monday, with just over a quarter choosing a Friday.
If you find you have late availability in the next fortnight, making just a couple of tweaks will help you attract the last-minute bookers to fill that gap.
With SuperControl, an easy way to do this is to set your property to enable short breaks. You can select your pricing preference (daily prices or fixed prices for a number of nights), arrival and departure days, and then select how many Days prior to always allow short breaks (ie make it 14 if you have availability to fill in the next two weeks). NB: you must have short break pricing set up in your account for this setting to work.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to make this a permanent change if you don’t want to. The benefit of using a flexible booking system is that you can log in and make changes as and when you need to.
Instead of setting a minimum stay of, say, 3 nights it is best to set your pricing up to allow a minimum stay of 1 night, even if you charge for 3. You may be pleasantly surprised by how much people are willing to pay for shorter stays. Unless it’s not possible for you on the operational side, let the guest be the one to decide if it’s too costly for them.
Be dynamic
You already know the seasonal trends that affect supply and demand in your area – these are the basics used to determine year-round pricing. During popular periods when everyone wants to book, you can afford to increase your prices; similarly, out of season when demand is low you need to be more competitive. To be truly dynamic, going one step further with your pricing and reacting quickly to any changes in the market is even better.
Where you have last-minute availability, it’s important that you do all you can to draw attention to it to get it filled. Make the most of SuperControl by utilising some of the pricing features it provides.
- Add a special offer page to your website and link to it from your homepage (see the Tralee Bay example below). You might want to set up 3 nights for the price of 2. It’s good to show what the price was before the offer to reinforce the value.
- Send a voucher to previous guests eg 10% off this weekend. In SuperControl, you can filter your database by booking duration, so you could target guests who have booked short breaks at this time of year with you before. Vouchers are a good way to reward guest loyalty so you could make them available only to guests who have stayed twice before for example.
- Set up a late availability discount. You can then be sure to be as competitive as possible when you find yourself with late availability to fill.
This is all great material for your blog if you have one (see the Broomhill Manor example below). Remember to post your special offers and booking incentives on all of your social media pages too. This is valuable fresh content that will keep your channels current.
Be profitable
These are good tools and best used by those who know their operating costs. If you know how much it costs you to open your property you can protect your margins by using the all-important ‘Minimum price’ setting in the Edit Property form in SuperControl.
Stay up-to-date
Marketing websites like EmbraceScotland and Premier Cottages have a dedicated area for last-minute availability or special offers. The data we’ve provided on the search volumes for last-minute breaks emphasises how important these pages are. So make sure that your availability and pricing are up-to-date on your listings, and take advantage of any opportunities to get your property seen.
You can save time with our Channel manager; once you have set up the link from SuperControl to the marketing channels that you use, information is cross-updated automatically. Not only does this make your life easier, it should reduce the risk of errors being made too.
Know your market
A little bit of inside knowledge can go a long way. This is valuable information. If you know what dates visitors are looking for and when, you can use some savvy tools to secure even more bookings.
What we see time and time again is that last-minute bookings are always the most searched for, and it’s short breaks that last-minute bookers are looking for. So if you have availability for a couple of nights some time in the next two weeks some clever pricing and positioning will help you to increase your occupancy by getting bookings from the last-minute demand.
