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Many travelers start their search for a vacation rental with a specific date in mind. While browsing vacation rental websites like HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, and VacationRentals.com, these travelers look at the availability calendar to determine if your property is open for their dates.
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If your calendar is not up-to-date, a traveler might assume that:
- You're not an active owner or your property is no longer on the market.
- Your property is not booked at all, which could be interpreted that is has something wrong with it.
- You are going to try to bait and switch them into a different property.
An up-to-date calendar, on the other hand, shows the traveler that:
- You're a serious owner who updates your ad frequently.
- What they see is what they get as far as availability.
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I know what you're thinking: If calendars are so important, why do I get so many inquiries that say, “Are you available for XX dates and how much is it?”
The answer to that is two-fold:
1) First of all, blame your fellow vacation rental owners who do not keep their calendars up-to-date. The traveler likely has inquired in the past about a property that showed that it was available only to have the owner respond to his or her inquiry saying, “Sorry, I'm booked.” After this experience, the traveler becomes skeptical about the accuracy of every availability calendar on the listing sites and therefore asks the question, “Are you available?
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2) Secondly, most travelers send inquiries to multiple properties on one or more sites and often don't remember which home is which. To make the process easier, they typically send the same inquiry to each owner in order to receive uniform responses that are easy to compare.
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So, what are the benefits of keeping your calendar up-to-date?
The Bottom Line: Keep your calendar up-to date. It will aid travelers in their search and will ultimately result in more inquiries for your vacation rental.
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What advice to you have about rental leases and contracts for other owners?
"If renters call me on my cell phone when I'm away from my computer, I can tell them with confidence to simply check my calendar because I know it's always current." - John, Hot Springs, AK
"We include a comment on our Homeaway.com posting which indicates our calendar is updated each time we receive a security deposit." -Dee, Playa del Carmen, Mexico (HomeAway #136793)
"Besides the online calendar I keep an up to date written calendar that I take with me when I travel. This way I can always respond confidently about the availability of my house and I am not asking the renter to go out of their way to check the website calendar." -John, Green Turtle Cay, Abaco, Bahamas (HomeAway #175526, VRBO #175515)
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© Copyright HomeAway, Inc, 2008. U.090330.AF
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