Increase your booking conversion rate

In our first year at Your.Rentals, we’ve grown bookings significantly in each month - however, in some periods we have experienced higher than necessary rates of declined requests and cancelled bookings.   We have a target to keep cancellations below the industry average of 8% because this means that our relationships with sales channels grows stronger, and your listings get preferred placement in their search results. That is good for everyone.
 

The impact of cancelling a booking  

When a property manager using Your.Rentals cancels a booking, it has far-reaching consequences.

1. It impacts the guest - they have paid for a booking, and it can take several days for them to receive their refund. They also need to find replacement accommodation - their time has been wasted and they are financially inconvenienced.
2. It impacts the Sales Channel - their reputation suffers when bookings are cancelled, and their support team needs to spend the ime to help their customer find alternative accommodation.
3. It impacts Your.Rentals - for each cancelled booking, we pay the bank/credit card fees to accept and then refund the payment, we pay a penalty fee to the Sales channel (and sometimes the difference between the original booking cost and replacement booking cost), our support team spends time helping the guest find replacement accommodation.
4. It impacts you - the property manager who cancelled who will pay a penalty fee for the cancellation. In fact, the penalty fee in many cases does not cover Your.Rentals costs for the cancelled booking.
5. It impacts every other property manager in Your.Rentals because cancellations reduce our rating in Sales channels - leading to lower search positioning.

As you can see, cancellations have a wide-ranging impact on everyone in the Your.Rentals community, which is why our team takes it so seriously. Our team has a part in ensuring that this issue does not have a negative impact on our community. We’ve been doing a lot of research into understanding why bookings are cancelled and developed a model for predicting when a booking will be cancelled.

So how can you avoid cancellations?  

The top two reasons for cancellations (by a long way) are “dates already booked” and “rates are not correct”. This is why we implemented the following policies during 2017:

• Calendars must be updated either via iCal sync or manually every 14 days (even if you have no new bookings).
• Seasonal rates must be set at least 12 months in advance (or calendars closed where you haven’t finalised future rates).

Listings which do not adhere to these policy rules will be paused until the issue is resolved. We know that these policies are strict, and sometimes well-intentioned property managers are caught out - this is unfortunate for those who are using our platform correctly.  If your listing has been paused and you don’t feel it should have been, please contact our support team who will assist you. We have also introduced new features to make it easier to ensure your availability and rates are correct:

• Email alerts if your calendar has not been updated.
• Email alerts if your seasonal rates have not been set for the next 12 months.
• Nightly rates in your calendar - your rates for each day are shown in your calendar.
• Close calendar - allowing you to close the calendar when you haven’t set your future rates.
• Listing Preview - allowing you to see your listing as a guest would, check availability and rates, and check your payout amounts.
• View Listing in sales channels - as a final check, you can view your listing in supported sales channels and double check that your rates and availability show as you expected.

With your help, we can easily maintain our target of less than 8% cancelled bookings. Would you like to know more? Contact our fantastic support team to help get your rates and availability correct. If you’d like to know more specifics about our research, you’re welcome to leave your question or comments below.
- Christina Martens Business Project Manager

- a post from Your.Rentals Business Project Manager, Christina Martens

Every property manager would like to increase the conversion rate of enquiries and requests to confirmed bookings (and we’d like to help you).

There are a lot of improvements you can make in how you deal with requests, your response times and your style of communicating with guests that can enhance your booking conversion rate.

However, as a business analyst crunching the data at Your.Rentals, I can tell you a simple truth: the first step to increasing your booking conversion rate is to reduce the number of booking requests you decline or confirmed bookings that you need to cancel.

In our first year at Your.Rentals, we’ve grown bookings significantly in each month - however, in some periods we have experienced higher than necessary rates of declined requests and cancelled bookings.  

We have a target to keep cancellations below the industry average of 8% because this means that our relationships with sales channels grows stronger, and your listings get preferred placement in their search results. That is good for everyone.

The impact of cancelling a booking  

When a property manager using Your.Rentals cancels an already confirmed booking, it has far-reaching consequences.

1. It impacts the guest - they have paid for a booking, and it can take several days for them to receive their refund. They also need to find replacement accommodation - their time has been wasted and they are financially inconvenienced.
2. It impacts the Sales Channel - their reputation suffers when bookings are cancelled, and their support team needs to spend the ime to help their customer find alternative accommodation.
3. It impacts Your.Rentals - for each cancelled booking, we pay the bank/credit card fees to accept and then refund the payment, we pay a penalty fee to the Sales channel (and sometimes the difference between the original booking cost and replacement booking cost), our support team spends time helping the guest find replacement accommodation.
4. It impacts you - the property manager who cancelled who will pay a penalty fee for the cancellation. In fact, the penalty fee in many cases does not cover Your.Rentals costs for the cancelled booking.
5. It impacts every other property manager in Your.Rentals because cancellations reduce our rating in Sales channels - leading to lower search positioning.

As you can see, cancellations have a wide-ranging impact on everyone in the Your.Rentals community, which is why our team takes it so seriously.

Our team has a part in ensuring that this issue does not have a negative impact on our community. We’ve been doing a lot of research into understanding why bookings are cancelled and developed a model for predicting when a booking will be cancelled.

So how can you avoid cancellations?  

The top two reasons for cancellations (by a long way) are “dates already booked” and “rates are not correct”.

This is why we implemented the following policies during 2017:

• Calendars must be updated either via iCal sync or manually every 14 days (even if you have no new bookings).
• Seasonal rates must be set at least 12 months in advance (or calendars closed where you haven’t finalised future rates).

Listings which do not adhere to these policy rules will be paused until the issue is resolved.

We know that these policies are strict, and sometimes well-intentioned property managers are caught out - this is unfortunate for those who are using our platform correctly.  If your listing has been paused and you don’t feel it should have been, please contact our support team who will assist you.

We have also introduced new features to make it easier to ensure your availability and rates are correct:

• Email alerts if your calendar has not been updated.
• Email alerts if your seasonal rates have not been set for the next 12 months.
• Nightly rates in your calendar - your rates for each day are shown in your calendar.
• Close calendar - allowing you to close the calendar when you haven’t set your future rates.
• Listing Preview - allowing you to see your listing as a guest would, check availability and rates, and check your payout amounts.
• View Listing in sales channels - as a final check, you can view your listing in supported sales channels and double check that your rates and availability show as you expected.

With your help, we can easily maintain our target of less than 8% cancelled bookings.

Would you like to know more? Contact our fantastic support team to help get your rates and availability correct.

If you’d like to know more specifics about our research, you’re welcome to leave your question or comments below.

 

Christina Martens
Business Project Manager