With it’s massive global reach, Booking.com is a popular platform for Hotel, B&B and apartment owners alike. The popularity of the platform can also be a hindrance as high exposure undoubtedly leads to high competition. Here at Flamingo Short Lets, we’re experts in helping our clients boost their rankings on platforms such as Booking.com, so let’s take a look at the ways you can get the most visibility from your online listing….
A Sky-High Property Page Score
When prepping your listing ready to go out to potential guests, providing the most information is crucial for two key reasons. Firstly, you want to give your punters the best showing of your listing, allowing them to get a full picture of what they can expect when spending the night at your establishment.
Secondly, Booking.com use the Property Page Score as part of their complex ranking algorithm. It’s a simple rule, the more information you provide, the higher your Property Page Score for your Booking.com listing. Within the platform’s Extranet, a handy checklist of items to consider can be found under the ‘Property’ tab – allowing you to easily tick off all the component parts of your ideal listing.
When building your listing, we recommend researching your direct competition to ensure your USP’s are front and centre so that your next guests can see exactly what sets you apart!
Make Yourself Available
Another way to boost your visibility on Booking.com is to up your availability. As with the page score – making yourself more available on the platform brings dual benefits. More availability gives your listing more chance of being booked with the more dates you put on also giving you extra brownie points towards Booking.com’s visibility algorithm.
Booking.com allow you to set your availability up to 16 months ahead of time, so by being the early bird you really can catch the worm! But don’t just take our word for it, the video below comes from Booking.com themselves where they discuss how greater availability equals greater success!
At Flamingo we have seen how getting bookings for your listings can often be a numbers game – making yourself as available as possible is a great tip so long as you can meet that demand!
Show Off With Stunning Photography
When it comes to the Online Travel Agency market, a picture really does speak a thousand words. With mobile technology super common in today’s society, anyone can get some good quality snaps of their property, ready to upload to their listing. But a quick picture from your iPhone really isn’t enough, it’s time to get the professionals in to ensure your listing really stands out.
At Flamingo Short Lets, stunning interior design and professional photography are just two of the services we specialise in to help you set your listing apart. Our expert teams know exactly how to get the right angles to ensure your property stands out above the competition.
When deciding which areas are best to show off within your listing, Booking.com have a great Photography Guide on the numbers and types of snaps to get onto your listing. We recommend using the photographs to show off the best bits of your listing as well as the facilities your target market will most appreciate. Targeting family guests? Use your photos to show off the sleeping arrangements and bathroom facilities.
As we’ve seen in all our other steps, the more content you provide the better you will fare with Booking.com’s algorithm – the more high quality photographs you can add to your listing, the more chance you have of boosting your visibility.
Ratings are Goldust
When customers come to your listing, the content and the photographs are essential parts of your advertisement but often the most powerful part is the ratings. When a guests goes to book, the experiences of others are the biggest makeweight between a yes and a no.
All reviews on Booking.com have to come from certified guests, combining all subjective opinions to give you an average overall score. When it comes to maximising your review, it is important to ensure the contents of your listing are accurate to set the customer’s expectations exactly right.
Consistent, strong reviews are a major contributing factor to Booking.com’s visibility algorithm with those positive comments working in your favour to secure more bookings once the visitors are on your listing.
Ensure the Price is Right
When guests are looking to book their next big night away, many factors contribute to the eventual buying decision but ultimately, it often comes down to budget. All of your hard work with the steps above, can be undone simply because your listing is just too expensive.
There are a number of different pricing strategies to maximise your exposure on Online Travel Agencies, our top tip is to be competitive within your market. When starting out, price a little lower to attract those on a tighter budget. As your positive reviews start rolling in, your justified in raising your price to market value and beyond!
If you’re still stuck with getting your price just right, Booking.com have a feature called RateIntelligence that can help you out. Using a range of data sources, RateIntelligence lets you see the average pricing for your area whilst notifying you of any local, upcoming events. Most Online Travel Agencies offer a pricing engine such as RateIntelligence, we advise that you proceed with caution. Ensure that no matter which price you set for your listing, it is still a worthwhile venture for you and your business.
When it comes to ranking, your price is going to determine where you crop up, especially if the user adds a filter. If they’re searching ‘Low to High’ for example, having your property just below market value will mean you crop up near the top. As a general rule, stay competitive to boost your points with the ranking algorithm – allowing the other factors in this guide to do the rest of the hard work!