Q: I receive many, many inquiries for my luxury property, but I have only received a contract from one renter.  Once my response is emailed, I never hear back from the person who inquired.  What am I doing wrong?

A: The best way to turn an inquiry into a booking is:

Reply immediately—preferably via phone and leave a message if you do not get a hold of them. Then follow it up with an email.

And yes your email should be a bit longer than “yes we have it open and here's our rate.”

It's best for you to write up an email including the following:

• Thanks for inquiring, etc.
• A recap of your vacation home (location, proximity to attractions, size of home, etc) to refresh their memory.
• A link to your listing, personal website, and/or photo album.
• An email signature with all of your contact information.

Then if you do not hear back from them within 3-7 days it's appropriate to call them again. With today's over zealous spam filtering, sometime your response will end up in their junk mail folders. Simply emailing might not be enough.

Keep in mind that it's especially important for you to make the renters feel comfortable renting from you. They need to feel they can trust you. And because you have a luxury property, which renters would be paying a significant amount of money for, it may take more massaging and more follow-up to make renters take the plunge.

And finally what you should know/realize is that every single inquiry will not turn into a booking. The average renter sends out 3-5 inquiries before booking a property. So given those numbers, it might take 3 to 5 inquiries to receive one booking.