As we wrap up the first quarter of the year, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on our overall performance and address the varied outcomes experienced by individual properties within our portfolio. Overall, I’m pleased to report that our vacation rental business continues to outperform the market, showcasing our strong pricing strategies and exceptional reputation in the market, despite these ongoing challenges. While REVPAR is no longer at the levels of COVID stays in 2022, we are still strongly outperforming the market.
While our overall performance is strong, it’s essential to acknowledge that each property within our portfolio has shown a range of results, influenced by various factors. Some properties have thrived, exceeding expectations and demonstrating exceptional occupancy rates and ADR, yielding a strong REVPAR. Others, however, are facing challenges, experiencing fluctuations in demand and/or encountering other hurdles. These various outcomes can be attributed to a variety of factors, including time on market, location, property amenities, marketing efforts, guest reviews, cancellation policies, and economic trends.
As vacation rental owners and property managers, it’s essential for us to analyze and understand the underlying reasons behind these disparities in performance. Our team is working hard to identify both the individual challenges for the underperforming properties AND the secrets to success of those doing well in this market. By identifying both the strengths and weaknesses of each property, we can target strategies to optimize their performance and enhance overall profitability.
During a consultation with our VRBO Account Manager, they presented overall data on our account documenting our successes and shortfalls. They noted, that of 162 property management companies they have along 30A, we are OUTSTANDING in conversion rate (actually ranked 5 out of 162). This means that once a prospective guest finds us, they’re impressed with our reviews and their conversations with us, and they typically book with us. Where we are struggling, is with our rankings on their listing sites. There are two primary factors causing this ranking drop:
- Quantity of Reviews – while the ones we have are excellent, our competitors have more. We need to increase the quantity of 5 star reviews on our site. We are working to follow up more closely with departing guests to encourage more reviews directly on our website, because those will automatically transfer to ALL of our listing sites and boost our performance. This will help our ranking in all locations. Never underestimate the power of a 5-star review. We’ve started this process as of last week, and are already seeing more 5 star reviews come through.
- Cancellation Policy – Guests are looking for free cancellations, and properties with those cancellation policies are being ranked higher. When guests start filtering with those cancellation policies, we don’t even appear in their lists. This is something we are still discussing internally. To allow guests to book a reservation with no risk puts all of the risk on the owners and property managers. Should a guest cancel, especially at the last minute, the dates may remain empty, and we will incur all of the merchant processing fees, since those fees are non-refundable to us. Last year those fees totaled approximately $8,000+, but were all billed to the guests. On the flip side, with more exposure, we may book more reservations at higher rates. It’s a risk assessment. I would love to know each owner’s opinion on this. If you would like to try it with your property, we can discuss how to do it on an individual property level.
In addition to the VRBO recommendation above, which will also help us on ALL listing sites, we’re adding all properties to the VISIT PANAMA CITY BEACH website. We tested it with a few properties last year with mixed results, but decided to add all properties in March 2024 for additional exposure. We’re also continuing to weigh the pros and cons of other listing sites for exposure to our target markets.
In January, you may have noticed that we dramatically increased the frequency of our blog posting, which helps to improve our google rankings and drive traffic to our PremiumBeachCondos.com website. We are pushing the blog posts out to subscribers as well as multiple facebook pages, and the results have been strong. We’re working our way up in the organic search results which will help our exposure as well. We’re starting to see bookings some through those channels as well.
Looking ahead, as we enter the second quarter of the year, we will remain vigilant and adaptive in our approach. We are deep diving info more aggressive pricing strategies as well, with more eyes on the daily reviews. While uncertainties still exist, our commitment to delivering exceptional guest experiences and optimizing property performance will continue to be our top priority.
As always, if you want to discuss a specific property with us, just give us a call! We are working to post your individual graphs to your special reports section this week.
Thank you for your dedication and faith in our vacation rental business. Together, we will navigate through the current challenges and work to maximize your property’s REVPAR.
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