How to Stay in Touch With Your Vacation Rental Guests
In this post: we look at the value of keeping in touch with your guests, long after they stayed at your property. We also look at how you can create a culture of communicating via online platforms to stay in touch with your customers. So, let’s begin!
The necessity for communication
We all know the old adage of ‘a customer retained is a customer gained’. This holds incredibly true in the modern age of capitalist consumerism. Today’s market is immersed in paying attention to prospects (and customers).
The moment we (as businesses) show that we care, consumers love it and they might even come back to your vacation rental. However, there is a thin line between showing that you care and bombarding consumers with unnecessary content each day or week.
The art of communication
The idea of communication is to achieve three things;
- The why: to ensure that your consumers remember you and your brand
- The how: to deliver some kind of value via your communication
- The what: collect guest data such as name, email, phone and especially anniversary and birth dates (this way you can personalize your communication when needed)
Vacation rental experiences are very intimate for consumers and they wish to cherish it for as long as possible. As a business, you need to find out certain experiences which can become ‘shareable’ with your guests weeks or months after they visited your property. The idea is to create a sense of want or need in the content you share with them as the months roll on. Here are some ideas:
Photographs and videos: nothing kindles our inner fire than clicking and sharing photos or videos with our loved ones. Enable this by arranging a free photography session for guests at your property. It need not be more than 10 photos or some video clips.
Who doesn’t love free stuff ey? Share the photos with your guests via email or Facebook Messenger (ask them to follow you in return). The beauty lies when you post these pictures on your social pages and ask guests to comment, share, and like them. This boosts your property’s social currency.
Food: if you serve great food and wine, then ask for photographs to be taken of guests while they dine. Offer them a free beverage in return. By doing this, you get another set of pictures which can be shared with guests (see, this is how you keep in touch with them). And post these pictures online and tag your guests (this is how you increase your brand awareness).
Recreate the experience: if your property is picturesque with a lovely view from the balcony, take pictures of such views and share them with guests. This recreates the magic of living in that beautiful room or villa for guests. When they look at these pictures and recall the good memories, they will love you for it.
Communication platforms
No matter the platform, we need to show caution while sharing content. Though the idea is to share value driven content to communicate with guests, we might end up over doing it. We do not want your guests to block you or put you aside as spam.
Utilize platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and even email to communicate at the right moments. We need not share pictures and thank you messages every week, you can make it rare yet often by sending a gentle message once a month. Or on special holidays or occasions. Do it, but don’t over do it. Treat your customers like family, keep it touch, but don’t over crowd their lives.
