Booking.com is one of the world’s most popular booking channels, and around 100 million guests use the site to book trips every month.
If you aren’t listing your properties on Booking.com, you’re missing your chance to reach this huge audience.
There are plenty more reasons why Booking.com is such a popular channel.
In this article, we’ll talk about the benefits of listing your properties on Booking.com, and explain how to make your listings more successful on this highly competitive site.
With Rentals United, you can connect to 50+ mainstream and specialist channels, optimise your listings with AI-powered recommendations, and manage all your bookings in one place. Book a demo today.
Why Booking.com is a must-have channel for property managers
Booking.com can be a highly profitable channel for property managers.
Let’s run through some of the top reasons to include Booking in your channel mix.
Exposure to millions of travellers
Listing your properties on Booking.com gives you exposure to a massive global audience that won’t want to miss out on.
Booking.com has:
- 100 million monthly active users
- 28 million listings, including 6.6 million homes, apartments, and other vacation rental properties
- 155,000 destinations around the world
Since 2010, an incredible 4.5 billion guests have booked stays through Booking.com, and the channel plays a key role in the ongoing success of the vacation rental industry.
Safety and customer service
Safety is a major concern for property managers, as you want your guests, your property, and your business to be protected from unforeseeable events.
Booking.com prioritises safety for both guests and hosts, and the platform has an in-depth security process including identity verification and fraud checks.
You can reach out to Booking.com’s Partner Service Team to report any problems like guest misconduct. In the event of a natural disaster or severe security event, Booking will contact you to assess the impact on your business and check whether you are still able to welcome guests.
Read more about Booking.com’s safety policies and advice here.
Commitment to sustainability
In Booking.com’s Climate Action Plan, the company makes a commitment to help the travel industry become more sustainable.
Efforts to promote sustainability include setting carbon-reducing targets and providing travellers with more options for sustainable trips and activities. Booking.com now offers more sustainable travel experiences on the platform and educates customers about sustainable choices in travel.
Rentals United’s Preferred Connectivity Partner status
Rentals United is one of Booking.com’s top-tier Premier Connectivity Partners.
This means that our customers who list on Booking.com get access to a range of benefits, such as:
- Even better channel connections and 2-way sync with bookings and content
- Priority customer service and technical support
- Access to new and exclusive features to increase conversions and boost listing performance
5 tips for success on Booking.com
Once you’ve listed your properties on Booking.com, you’re faced with a new challenge:
How can you make your property stand out and get booked on such a competitive channel?
Follow our 5 tips to boost your listing performance and increase your profits from Booking.com.
1. Improve your listing quality
The first thing you can do to get more bookings and revenue from Booking.com is to improve your listings.
Your listing should have plenty of high-quality photos, all your amenities completed, plus a good description, bio, and plenty of excellent reviews.
Rentals United customers can easily improve listing quality using the AI recommendations in our data platform, Elevate. For each listing, you’ll get personalised recommendations telling you exactly what to do to improve your listing performance. Elevate also analyses your reviews to discover the most urgent problems you need to fix.
When your listings are fully optimised with all amenities listed, you’ll rank higher, appear in more searches, and have a better chance of converting guests.
2. Offer more availability
Too many unbookable dates on your calendar reduce the chance of your properties appearing in searches. Try to minimise the dates blocked off on your calendar for homeowners or property maintenance, and provide availability at least a year into the future.
You can also adjust your minimum stay. If you need to attract more bookings, reduce your minimum stay so you don’t miss out on shorter bookings that can fill gaps in your calendar.
3. Join exclusive programs
Booking.com has special programs that help you perform better in search rankings and convert more guests.
If you qualify for Booking.com’s Genius Programme, you can get special tagging, ranking boosts, and better visibility overall in search results.
Joining the Genius Programme can increase bookings by 29% and revenue by 24%, on average. The next level up is the Preferred Partner Program, which can give you up to 65% more page views and 40% more bookings.
To qualify for these programs you have to meet certain criteria, which you can discover here.
4. Use rate plans and discounts
In Booking.com’s Opportunities and Promotions you can track your data, get performance insights and create promotional rates based on different criteria.
You can tailor your promotions according to the kind of guests booking your property. Here are some promotions you can add to your properties:
- Mobile rates — A discount exclusively for bookings made on mobile devices. Over half (59%) of Booking.com reservations come from a mobile device, so adding a Mobile Rate helps your properties to stand out in search results and increase bookings from mobile devices by up to 28% on average.
- Country rates — Offer a discount to potential guests in particular countries you want to target. This can help you attract guests from specific countries (fast-growing markets, or ones that have low cancellations rates, for example) and be competitive within your region.
- LOS (Length Of Stay) discount — Provide weekly or monthly discounts on longer stays to incentivize guests to book more nights.
- Early-bird discount — A discount for guests who book and pay well in advance.
- Last-minute discount — Reduce rates close to check-in date to secure last-minute stays.
5. Try the Visibility Booster
Whenever you need an extra boost to get more views and conversions you can turn on Booking.com’s Visibility Booster.
In exchange for a small increase in your rate of commission, you can bump your listing higher up in search rankings. You can use this tool during difficult periods of low demand or when you need more bookings to fill gaps after cancellations.
The Visibility Booster is a flexible tool and you can turn it off when you no longer need it.
List on Booking.com and get your properties in front of millions of travellers
Booking.com is a must-have channel for all property managers. It’s constantly ranked among the top 4 most popular OTAs, attracting millions of guests and property managers across the globe.
Through Rentals United, you can list your properties on a diverse range of channels, from mainstream sites like Booking.com to specialist channels where you can attract niche audiences.
You can manage all your listings seamlessly in one place, and access a wide range of vacation rental tools to run your business efficiently and boost your revenue.