OTA Dependence in Vacation Rentals: What’s Really Stalling the Direct Booking Movement In early October I spent a week at VRMA in Nashville, and if you sat in the same sessions I did you heard the direct booking movement get declared stalled from three directions at once. A data company put up a slide showing […]
The Vacation Rental Email Automation Playbook: Every Email from Booking to Rebooking Most vacation rental operators send two emails: a confirmation and a door code. Everything after checkout goes quiet, and the guest who loved your place books somewhere else next year because nobody reminded them you exist. I’ve called email the only channel nobody […]
The Vacation Rental Direct Booking Strategy That Took a Property to 93% Direct Take your last twelve months of OTA revenue and multiply it by 0.15. Look at that number. For most operators, it’s the largest marketing expense they have, and the only one that buys them nothing they keep. No guest contact. No relationship. […]
The 70-20-10 Rule for Hospitality Social Media And How to Build a Week of Content Without Guessing I used to think the fix for a vibrant vacation rental social media strategy was more. Post more, post better, post at the “right” time. I tried all of it over a decade in hospitality marketing before I […]
What Frustrates Travelers Most About Booking Vacation Rentals Online? If I had to answer this question with one short answer: hidden fees. In a May 2026 survey of more than 1,000 US travelers, 61% named hidden or unexpected fees as their top booking frustration, far ahead of anything else (Fullstory). Close behind for vacation rentals specifically, […]
Why Guests Abandon Vacation Rental Bookings and How to Win Them Back Roughly eight out of ten people who start a travel booking online never finish it. For a vacation rental, that means most of the guests who liked your photos enough to pick dates and click “Book” are walking away, and many of them […]