How to get a maximum of bookings for a luxury villa?

The questions of all times for Holiday Villa business owners: how to get more bookings for your luxury villa? Find our 6 main sources of bookings for luxury villas with a unique brand.

With the booking websites (or OTA) such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda, etc holiday rentals became something casual. More and more tourists wish to stay in luxury private properties instead of hotels. This new way of travelling created a demand for holiday luxury properties.

With the demand and market oversaturation came the need to be different, or to search for special ways to be noticed for example a unique branding strategy.

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At FAMEsolutely we believe the best way to get a maximum profit from your luxury villa is to manage it as an independent hospitality brand because in this way you will maximize your direct bookings.

Check our previous article about: How to know if your luxury holiday property needs a brand?

FAMEsolutely is specialized in Luxury Villa branding and marketing, we are happy to share with your our expertise in blog posts. But we also offer our services, don't hesitate to contact us, and let's chat about how we can make your property Absolutely Famous.

Find here the 6 main sources of bookings for a Luxury Villa with a unique brand:

No1

Unique branded website

A good website is important for a luxury brand, it should reflect the brand identity and be easy to use for customers, the team, and the partner rental agencies. The website should have a booking engine or calendar. Check our article about the 8 Pillars of a successful property website

The main function: Reflects the brand, works as a booking engine

Branding: Yes

Brings: Direct Bookings

Guest contacts: Yes

Gets traffic from SEO, Social media, Advertisements, and Google search by name (because found in OTAs or Agencies)

Monthly support: Yes (New blog posts, Update of rates & info, Newsletters)

No2

Social media

Does anyone remember the world without social media?

Social media for a luxury property is a key source of direct booking, and it helps the brand to straighten the connection with its audience. Social Media support and Digital marketing are one of our main services, check the page about Social Media, Digital Marketing or check our last Digital product: 400 Caption templates + workbook if you want to learn how to do it on your own. We always provide social media support to our full marketing solution clients.

The main function: Reflects the brand, helps to connect with the audience, enforces the brand image

Brings: Direct bookings & send customers to the website

Guest contacts: Yes

Gets traffic from: Following the algorithms, branding, and social media strategy

Monthly support: Yes (Strategy, Analytics, New posts, Engagement, Update info etc)

No3

OTA (Booking websites like Airbnb or Booking.com)

Booking websites are the first thing that came to mind when you want to find guests for your property. There are many OTAs, the best is to be present in all of them, even if just a few will bring you most of the bookings. If you have less than 4 villas, it's possible to manage it manually, but for more use a CRM, like Cloudbeds (BTW, We have a special Cloudbeds code for you with -50$ discount: Here)

The main function: Shows the facilities

Branding: Yes in copywriting (Property brand) + Property branding inside the villa + OTA brand

Brings: bookings for a % or fixed fee + Send traffic to the website and social media, if customers Google search the Brand name

Guest contacts: Not always, the property staff needs to ask guests directly when they are at the villa

Gets traffic from (how the property got found?) The property brand' OTA strategy and OTA Algorithms

Monthly support: Yes (Answer to messages, Rates, and offers UPD) + Needs additional traffic from social media to maximize results

No4

Collaboration with holiday rental & travel agencies

The market is full of Holiday rental agencies, who will be happy to bring your bookings for a %. Check our article where we compare Property management companies with Unique brands, and how they work, here: Property Marketing: What is really a Luxury Villa Brand?.

For our Full marketing solution clients, we constantly search for new agencies and share info about each villa to our database of agencies (If you are an agency don't hesitate to work with us: Contact form for agencies). Usually, after the villa is launched and the branding starts to give its results, the new agencies will on their own contact the villa.

The main function: Shows the facilities

Branding: No (Property brand) + Property branding only inside the villa + Agency brand

Brings: Bookings for a %

Guest contacts: No, the property staff needs to ask guests directly when they are at the villa

Gets traffic from (how the property got found?) The Agency strategy + Human factor (involved when the agency is locating the property on a special page of their website, and when the agency is creating an offer for a potential guest)

Monthly support: Yes (Answer to requests and messages, UPD rates & discounts, Newsletter) + Monthly additions of new agencies

No5

Returning guests & their friends and/or family

Villas without a brand, know only this kind of "direct bookings", but for a branded villa this is just one of the ways to get direct bookings.

This source of bookings will work, if your rates and service are on the right level and if you got the contacts of your guests or provided them your contacts while they stay at the villa (if they didn't come from your website or social media)

Brings: Direct Bookings

Guest contacts: Yes

Gets traffic (how the property got found?) from Human factor, satisfaction from the stay, if the Brand strategy reflects the service and sets up trust

Monthly support: No

Yearly support: Yes

Additional: Social Media, Newsletters make them more engaged with the brand

No6

Paid Advertisements (Social Media, Google, Publications)

Paid advertisements* are an easy way to get fast visibility, but for that, they should be set up in the right way, by an experienced specialist. It's better to first create your brand, set up your service, and then start with Ads. As if you will advertise a low-quality website with no information and proper brand voice, and social media accounts without a structure, or which don't reflect your brand - then you will just have many clicks but no bookings.

The main function: Depends on the AD settings, usually: brings traffic to the website, visibility to a social media account, engagement to a social media post/account, creates brand recognition

Branding: Yes

Brings: Direct Bookings, Traffic to the website

Guest contacts: Yes

Gets traffic from AD budget (+strategy) & AD Algorithms

Monthly support: No

*Optional, as if the Brand is strong, and the other booking channels are used wisely - it is enough to fill up a property with bookings. Anyway, an additional advertisement is always a great idea.

Conclusion

It is easy to get bookings for a luxury property if you have a strategy and plan, as well as an understanding of how it works for each social media, digital marketing, rates, website, copywriting, and rental agency work, and you are good with strategic thinking and planning, also understand how do work the OTAs.

To manage a villa as a brand you need at least one full-time staff dedicated only to it, or you can outsource it with FAMEsolutely, we have many years of experience with villas in Koh Samui, Thailand.

We also offer the service of Launching the villa, with which we create the brand and connect all the booking channels, and then provide the owner with all the information and training to support the villa brand on their own. See our article: Luxury Villa Launch: How long does it take?

Need help with your Luxury Villa Banding? Hurry-up! We work with a limited number of clients at a time.