Smashing your goals with Holiday Rental Software: Prevent cancellations
- Episode 12
Who's Talking?
- Kelly Odor
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Prevent cancellations with holiday rental software.
Episode Overview: In this episode of Smashing Your Goals with Holiday Rental Software, we tackle a common challenge in the rental industry—cancellations.
They disrupt your operations, affect your revenue, and create last-minute stress.
However, with the right holiday rental software, you can take steps to reduce cancellations, keeping your properties booked and your business thriving.
The important bits:
● [01:00] Intro
● [01:51] Impact of cancellations on your business.
● [02:10] Key reasons why guests cancel.
● [02:26] Six key solutions to prevent cancellations using holiday rental software.
● [09:50] Podcast Pointer - Owner Statements
Key Takeaways:
Understanding Cancellations: Learn why guests cancel, the avoidable reasons, and how cancellations can disrupt your business.
Enhancing Guest Experience: From booking to check-in, provide a positive experience that reassures guests they made the right choice.
Clear Cancellation Policies: Offer flexibility or strict policies using software tools to reduce last-minute cancellations.
Deposits & Communication: Use non-refundable deposits and automated communication to keep guests engaged and informed.
Analytics & Trends: Identify high-risk periods and cancellation patterns using data analytics to adjust strategies proactively.
Flexibility with Date Changes: Use software to accommodate guests who need to adjust their travel dates without losing revenue.
Podcast Pointer: Owner Statements: Today, we spotlight Owner Statements from Bookster—a tool designed to simplify financial reporting for property owners.
Get monthly reports on bookings, revenue, costs, and commissions automatically generated through the software. Discover how this tool can save days of manual work.
Next Episode Teaser: Next time, we’ll continue the theme of supporting your owners, focusing on how to address their specific needs and enhance your business relationships.
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Transcript
- How can holiday rental software help you to prevent cancellations? Well, cancellations are annoying.
Minute 1
- What are the pitfalls of doing it wrong and the steps you should follow? That's what we're going to discuss today on smashing your goals with holiday rental software.
But before we get started, I'd like to share with you an article to help.
If you're not using holiday rental software yet, or you're thinking of changing software for your holiday rental business on our website Bookster hq.com, you can view the article called Questions to Ask During a Holiday Rental Software Demo, or you can download it from here from the show notes.
But for now on with the show, hello there and welcome back to another episode where we help you smash your held rental goals.
Today we're diving into preventing cancellations.
Whether you are managing a single property or a portfolio of vacation rentals, cancellations can be a major headache, Minute 2
- but the good news is that with the right holiday rental software, you can significantly reduce the likelihoods of cancellations and keep your calendar full.
Before we dive into solutions, it's important to understand just how cancellations can affect your business.
Cancellations not only mean lost revenue, but it can also disrupt your operations.
It can increase your stress levels and it can leave your property vacant during peak seasons.
But why do guests cancel? Well, some reasons are unavoidable.
Personal emergencies, sudden change in travel plans or even just unpredictable events, however many cancellations are preventable, and that's where holiday rental software can come in today we'll cover six solutions in the order that you'll need them, starting with the guest experience, Minute 3
- cancellation policies, damage deposits, communication, internal processes, and analytics.
So first, let's talk about the guest experience.
A positive guest experience starts long before check-in, and it can greatly reduce the chances of cancellation.
With holiday rental software, you can enhance your guest experience all the way through that booking process by reassuring guests that they've made the right decision to stay with you.
A key element of creating confidence in your holiday rental service is guest reviews and holiday rental software can help you with this in a number of different ways by encouraging guests to leave reviews for you and then displaying those positive reviews on your website.
On the bottom of your emails and on the channels, you not only boost your properties appeal, but it provides that reassurance Minute 4
- that they've made the right choice, and knowing that others have had a great experience with you makes guests less likely to cancel their booking.
holiday rental software can help you in this way because it can provide some of the tools to attract, holiday rental reviews, and it can facilitate displaying those reviews on your website and also on the channels.
In today's fast-paced world, flexibility is highly valued by travelers, and we can see that in some of the research from the channels that shows guests are actively searching for properties with more flexible cancellation rules.
One of the main reasons guests cancel is because their plans change.
The holiday rental software can help you to present your cancellation terms, whether that's super strict, super flexible, or somewhere in between.
And these can be the terms that you have on your own website Minute 5
- and can be on the channels like Airbnb.
Now, some softwares can also help you by displaying that information to your guests after the booking.
So it's a place where they can refer to to double check what your cancellation policies are.
The next point I'd like to make is about collecting deposits.
By requesting non-refundable deposits, you can reduce the risk of guests canceling holiday rental software can help you with this setting up deposits to be collected at the time of booking and ensuring that they go into your bank account.
Now, one of the biggest factors in preventing cancellations is maintaining clear and consistent communication with your guests.
This is really time consuming and we see a lot when new clients come to us and they spend a lot of time manually replying and sending emails.
holiday rental software can help you to automate messages, and that ensures that your guests receive timely information from the moment they book to the moment that they check out. Minute 6
- And actually sometimes even later than that.
Automated messages can confirm bookings, remind guests of their upcoming stay, provide important details about the property and local attractions.
And this consistent communication can really help keep the booking the top of mind for guests and reduce the chance of a last minute cancellation.
For example, if you send a friendly reminder to your guests about their upcoming stay a week in advance, you give the guests an opportunity to address any of their concerns or potential issues.
Maybe they have a question about the check-in procedures or they want to know more about the amenities.
Addressing these concerns early can prevent them from second guessing their decision to stay with you.
But what if the guest needs to change? I mean, sometimes they just do.
They need to change it.
Now, working with your holiday rental software, in some circumstances, you could make an easy date change. Minute 7
- So although you're still creating a gap in your calendar, you're not losing the revenue and longer term revenue's important.
So that's a number of different tools that can provide your guest with peace of mind and provide you with the options to be able to either help the guest keep their existing booking or move to a new date and keep the revenue.
The final point I'd like to make is through a powerful tool that some holiday rental software offer, and that's data analytics.
Now, by analyzing past booking and cancellation patterns, software can help you identify potential risks and trends.
So for instance, if we were to take your bookings data and your cancellation data, we could have a look to see if there are any trends for certain properties.
Let's say you have a group of properties in your portfolio.
Do they all have the same level of cancellation rate Minute 8
- or are some properties more likely to receive a cancellation than other properties? Likewise, you could have a look to see whether the channels that you attract your bookings through have different cancellation rates.
So for example, does your website have the same level of cancellation as uh, let's say a channel Airbnb, for example? It may be that the size of the booking makes a difference.
Are couples more likely to cancel than some of the larger groups? It would be valuable to have a look and see when the booking is made.
So bookings made in January for example, are they more likely to cancel than bookings that are made in May? And although this feels like a lot of data to go through, this is gonna arm you with the information that you need to be able to adjust your strategies, whether that's tightening your cancellation policies during peak seasons, Minute 9
- or offering special incentives through certain channels, or perhaps looking at your communication strategy to identify why it is that certain groups of your guests are more likely to cancel than others.
So to wrap things up, preventing cancellations is more than just having a strict cancellation policy.
It's about creating an environment where guests feel confident and excited about their stay right from the moment that they book.
Holiday rental software is an invaluable tool in achieving this.
By improving your communication and enhancing the guest experience, offering flexible options, and using that data that you have, you can really minimize those cancellations that you receive and keep your holiday rental business thriving.
Let's take a moment here.
I'd like to remind you that if you'd like Minute 10
- to try out Bookster and the tools that we offer, you can register on Booksterhq.com for free and you can check out some of the great tools that will help you run your short let business.
Moving on back to the second part of the podcast.
This is podcast pointer.
Each session will look at one solution within Bookster that can help you to overcome a problem.
Today, Johnny from our sales team has selected owner statements.
Now, the goal of owner statements is simple to provide owners with the information on their bookings, their revenue, their costs, and the commission payable and all doing all this on a monthly basis.
We invested a lot of time in researching and developing the owner statements tool because creating financial owner statements is complex.
And the reason for this complexity is because our clients often work in very unique ways, Minute 11
- and this meant our owner statements tool needed to reflect the variety of ways that our clients work.
Now, the feedback we got after launching these statements was fantastic.
Clients contacted us to tell us how we'd save their company, literally days of manually collecting and calculating this data.
And now this information was all done automatically within bta.
We'll train you on how to set up your rules such as your commission level and how to add variables that might change each month, such as a one-off charge for maintenance or repairs.
Owners can log in to see their finalized statements or they can be sent externally via email.
So next time we'll continue on this theme of owners and we'll be looking at how to support your owners' needs.
So I hope you can join me then.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode Minute 12
- of Smashing Your Goals with holiday Rental software.
If you liked the episode or you know someone in the holiday rental industry that would enjoy it, please leave a review on pod chaser.com, apple Podcasts or wherever you download and listen to your podcast.
If you've got any questions, please do get in touch.
You can contact us on our Facebook page, which is Booksterhq, or you can contact us through our website and there's more information there.
And you can ask for a demo on how Bookster can help you at Booksterhq.com.
And remember, we believe that experiences matter.
So whenever you are choosing a software service, make sure you choose one that considers your needs and the needs of your team and your guests.
They can affect your revenue and they can add quite a lot of stress to running your business, creating last minute tasks to fill in those gaps.
But did you know that there are often tools built into holiday your rental software that can help you to prevent cancellations?
More Episodes of Smashing your goals with Holiday Rental Software
- Epsiode 13: Support owners 27th Sep 2024
- Epsiode 11: Attract bookings - Videos 11th Jul 2024
- Epsiode 10: Manage your business 20th Jun 2024
