How do you achieve the highest return from renting vacation homes during peak times?

Small mistakes during seasons and peak times can cause your guests to be lost and wipe out your reputation, but they are also an irreplaceable opportunity to receive the highest ratings and achieve the best return on vacation home booking platforms.

Competition among guesthouse managers increases during seasons. In this article, we will present some tips and ideas to increase your profits and improve guest satisfaction during peak times.

What are the peak times for booking vacation homes?

Peak times differ according to the nature of the guesthouse, its location, and the activities that are held nearby.

For example: For vacation homes adjacent to “Boulevard Hall” in the Kingdom, peak times are during “Riyadh Season” which is held every year (usually in October).

Of course, you must be prepared all the time, but it is better to be cautious of peak times to ensure you outperform competitors and double your revenues without bad experiences for guests.

How do you achieve the highest return from short-term rental homes during peak times?

Communicate with your previous customers before peak times

Review the list of previous guests and contact them via email or short text messages (SMS) to invite them to spend the holiday or season at your homes, and do not forget to:

• Offer them a special discount because they are previous guests.

• Personalize your message as much as possible (mention the guests’ name, last hosting date.. etc.) to get the best results.

• Use email marketing tools such as Hudhud (suitable for Arabic) or MailChimp.

Make sure of the list of cleaning and maintenance tasks for guesthouses

Nothing destroys guest satisfaction more than low cleanliness, plumbing problems, or electrical appliance malfunctions, which is a difficult problem especially during seasons because the time is usually short between a guest’s departure and receiving another.

Therefore, we advise you to prepare a list of the highest-priority tasks for cleaning and maintenance. It is better to rely on employees or contract with a specialized company during peak times.

Avoid booking conflicts during seasons

The problem of conflicting bookings (Double Booking) is common among short-term rental managers, especially beginners. The Booking platform found that 25% of property managers suffer from this problem during their first year on the platform.

Booking conflicts occur when more than one guest — on the same day — books the same home listed across more than one platform (such as Airbnb and Booking), which leads to a bad rating of your services, and you may have to bear a financial penalty.

The solution is easy:

Link your bookings on all platforms together and monitor them from a single control panel easily using real estate channel management systems. This ensures that bookings are synchronized across all platforms: if a unit is booked on the Expedia platform, for example, the same unit listed on Agoda will appear as booked automatically.

Automate operational processes for guesthouses during peak times

Get rid of repetitive tasks that consume your time and money with innovative solutions that grow your business, especially during seasons and holidays. Here are some examples:

• Welcome your guests with an automatic message that includes answers to the most important questions (such as the Wi‑Fi password).

• Use smart locks to increase security and facilitate check-in and check-out without the need for your presence.

• Do not waste your time between Microsoft (Excel) or Google (Sheets) spreadsheets. Rely on an accounting tool to track expenses and revenues automatically so you can make decisions quickly and confidently.