Download our guide to read about the 10 Tactics to Drive Direct Bookings and Take Power Back from OTAs
Online travel agencies (OTAs) are the dominant force in the vacation rental industry. Many liken the situation to a David versus Goliath scene: where the OTA giants have power and all of the independent vacation rental management companies are fighting to survive.
The picture is not so bleak. The major players – like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, etc – are simply channels for VRMs to create interest, demand, and bookings on their properties. Generating reservations is the core goal and these tools help you achieve it.
But there are some major drawbacks to relying heavily on OTAs, which has created a global dialogue about taking back some of the traffic and control from these aggregators and onto your own website to generate revenue.
Over the last couple of years, many many articles have surfaced around the topic of driving more direct bookings – plus speaker sessions at trade shows, video tips, and even entire companies and stand-alone conferences.
- What are the benefits and the pains of using OTAs as a primary booking channel?
- What control do you lose of your customer journey by driving bookings outside of your own website?
- What are the tips, tricks, practices, and tactics you can use to start transferring more of your reservations to your website as direct bookings and take power back from OTAs?
At Jarvis ML we are vocal supporters of “controlling your destiny”. Not only by paying fewer fees to major OTAs when guests pick your listing, but importantly by enabling a long term vision of self-sustaining business growth.
We want to help you take control. Control how you will create brand loyalty repeatedly; control a database of customers that you can call your own (and not just customers of Airbnb); control and own the sales and marketing funnel for your business for many years to come.
Our guide breaks down the 10 tactics that VRMs can use to position themselves to succeed in generating more of their revenue from direct website bookings, and ultimately use OTAs for only as much as is necessary.
