As a holiday home owner, you want as many people as possible to discover your accommodation and make a booking. Holiday home advertising is the key. But where do you start? And what different areas do you need to cover? Read on for our complete guide to advertising your holiday home to get the best results.
Creating your listing
It’s easy to imagine that a gorgeous holiday cottage basically sells itself. But actually, creating just the right listing is essential to show off your home’s best features.
Your first step when you’re crafting your holiday home advertising is to know your audience:
- Is your home best suited to big family trips?
- Hen or stag parties?
- Weddings?
- Corporate retreats?
Each audience will be looking for different amenities and a different atmosphere in your home, so you’ll need to choose what you emphasise based on that.
Here are some key areas to consider…
Evocative descriptions
When you’re writing about your holiday cottage, you want to make sure you create a description that lets your audience clearly imagine what your home is like. Try to evoke the five senses and capture the feeling of what your guests can do.
For example, rather than saying you have a large fireplace, say that your guests can cosy up by a roaring log fire. Rather than just saying that the home includes a disco room, say that hen do attendees can dance the night away under a glitterball in their own disco room.
Clear lists of features
Although being evocative is great, facts are equally important. You’ll want to clearly provide a list of features and capabilities of your home, making sure that no perk or amenity is left out.
In addition to listing the basics, like how many bedrooms are available, try to think of all the concrete details that a guest might want to know as they plan a trip:
- How many people can sit around the dining table or fit in the hot tub?
- How many minutes’ walk away is the beach?
- How many cars can park at your home
- And how many dogs are allowed, if any?
- Is there a toy box for children?
It goes without saying that you’ll want to be sure to clearly mention all the great features that guests look for, like a swimming pool, a cinema room or a home gym. These can be major selling points and should be strongly emphasised.
Great photography
Although great descriptions can persuade your audience that your home is right for them, a great photo is what grabs their attention first. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to invest in professional photography to ensure your home puts its best foot forward.
Remember that photographing homes isn’t at all the same skill as photographing people. At kate & tom’s, for instance, we use Nicholas Yarsley, who specialises in interiors and great shots of outdoor features like gardens and swimming pools.
Naturally, it’s best to dress your home before the photos so that they give your audience a strong sense of the great experiences they can have in your home. Again, you’ll want to know your audience so that you have relevant photos – such as snaps of a games room for stag parties.
You might also want to consider recording a video walkthrough or a virtual reality tour of your home, to really give your prospective guests the feeling of trying out your home.
Information on things to do nearby
Lastly, consider making your guests’ lives easier by doing some legwork for them – providing information about what fun things they can do nearby and how far away each activity is. If they’re comparing your home to another property that has no details about nearby attractions, yours will be far more appealing.
Listing your holiday home
There are lots of different sites you can use to host your holiday home listing. Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo are some of the top ones.
However, as always, you’ll want to consider your audience. If you’re advertising to a particular niche of guests, then you might want a site that specifically targets that niche. For example, kate & tom’s specialises in luxury holiday homes for large groups. If that’s your audience, you’ve got a far better chance of filling your booking calendar with kate & tom’s because they’re already drawing in holiday planners looking for what you have to offer.
Social media advertising
We all know how powerful social media can be in bringing attention to your brand. It’s definitely not an avenue you should ignore when you’re advertising your holiday home. However, cultivating a social media following can also be a lot of work. As with your holiday home’s listing, it’s best to ensure that all the photos on your social media are attractive and polished looking. For this reason, it might be easier to rely on a site that already has an established social media following.
Let kate & tom’s do it all for you
In summary, there’s a lot to think about when you’re working on your holiday home advertising, and your choices can make a huge difference in the success of your home.
That’s why kate & tom’s does it all for you. We know just what your listing needs to look like in order to draw in your happy guests. We’ll take care of advertising, and we have a social media following of over 40 thousand, with over 1.2 million website visits per year. In other words, if you’re a holiday house owner, you can rely on us from start to finish.
Got questions about how it works when you join kate & tom’s? We’ve got answers – just send us a message at [email protected].
