Are you wondering why you're not getting any bookings for your holiday apartment or holiday house? Admittedly, there is no general formula for attracting more guests to your holiday home. The most important factor is, of course, the basic demand for stays in the region where your holiday home is located – and you can't change that yourself. But there are definitely a few basics you should keep in mind to convince as many potential guests as possible to stay at your accommodation. In this guide, we'll show you how you can increase the visibility and attractiveness of your accommodation with targeted measures, thereby reaching significantly more guests and ultimately receiving more bookings for your holiday home or holiday apartment!
Tip 1: Let your guests decide when they want to take their holiday
This may sound excessive at first glance, but there is a simple idea behind it: travel interests vary, and the more of them you cover, the more potential guests you will attract. This starts with the travel periods that can be booked with you. Most guests nowadays are looking for very flexible travel dates. Therefore, check the following for your holiday home: How flexible are you with arrival and departure days? Is there a minimum rental period – and is it really necessary?
If you only allow the typical rental period from Saturday to Saturday or specify a minimum rental period of one week, you are cutting yourself off from a large number of potential guests and will be excluded from many search results on the sales channels from the outset. With maximum flexibility in terms of travel dates, on the other hand, you appeal to all guests and are displayed much more often. We therefore recommend that you allow arrivals on any day of the week and reduce the minimum rental period to a maximum of three nights – this pays off especially in the low season.
Tip 2: Ensure broad distribution across as many booking platforms as possible
To attract more guests to your holiday home, it is crucial to have a broad presence on different booking platforms. Each portal reaches different target groups and invests in different advertising campaigns: some specialise in family trips, others appeal more to couples or luxury holidaymakers. The travel budget of the target groups that the respective platforms mainly address also varies greatly. In addition, holiday homes are listed differently in the search results depending on the portal (more on this in the next section) and benefit from varying visitor numbers – sometimes demand is higher on one website, sometimes on another. If you make your holiday home visible on as many channels as possible, you increase the chance of being found by exactly the guests who are right for your property.
Tip 3: Your holiday home must appeal not only to guests, but also to search algorithms
First impressions count – and that goes for the digital world too. Most guests book online, so it's crucial to present your holiday home perfectly on the most important booking channels. The better your presentation, the higher it will appear in the search results of the affiliated portals.
All large, high-reach booking portals for holiday homes work with specific search algorithms, which are usually set to display holiday homes with a higher booking probability further up the list. Conversely, holiday homes with a lower booking probability are displayed further down the list – sometimes so far down that hardly any potential guests ever see them.
It is not possible to say exactly which factors the portals prioritise for their sorting, as their algorithms remain opaque in many details and are regularly adjusted. Nevertheless, practice clearly shows that certain criteria almost always play a central role in achieving a good ranking in the search results. These include in particular:
- Direct bookability of the holiday home
- Complete description with sufficient text length
- High-quality photos in sufficient quantity
- Fully maintained equipment features, ideally including the most popular features
- Clear, transparent price structure with no hidden costs
This will make your online presentation a well-rounded affair – for guests and algorithms alike.
Below, we explain in more detail why the above criteria are particularly relevant and what you can do to achieve more booking success.
1. Direct bookability activated
If you want to attract more guests to your holiday home, direct bookability is a must. Nowadays, guests expect an uncomplicated and immediately binding booking – without long waiting times or reconfirmations. With direct bookability activated, you meet these expectations and increase your chances of getting more bookings.
Directly bookable holiday homes are considered particularly reliable by booking portals, as confirmed reservations cannot be cancelled. This significantly improves your ranking; your holiday home will be displayed more often and booked more quickly. On many important sales channels, direct bookability is even a prerequisite for being listed at all.
Of course, it is important for direct bookability that your calendar is always up to date so that there are no double bookings if you work with several portals. You can easily synchronise your different calendars with iCal, for example. You can find an iCal tutorial here. Or you can work exclusively with atraveo by e-domizil. Here, you only have to maintain your holiday home in one place and you will still be present on all major booking portals – without any extra work.
2. Complete and comprehensive description
A detailed and well-structured description text helps potential guests to get an accurate picture of what you have to offer. It also plays a decisive role in the visibility of your holiday home in the search results of booking portals. Search algorithms prefer comprehensive, relevant content – the better your description text, the greater your reach.
Our recommendations:
Write at least 500 words: Detailed descriptions provide more information and are rated better by search engines.Make sure your text has a clear structure: Highlight the most important advantages and special features of your holiday home so that guests can quickly see what to expect.
- Think carefully in advance about the target group you want to address (you can find more information on this in our article) and tailor your text to them.
- In the atraveo owner area, we use AI to automatically generate an optimal description text for you – individually tailored to your holiday home and ready to use immediately.
You can find detailed tips for your property description in our article The perfect description for your holiday home.
3. High-quality photos: Your booking magnet
Very good property photos are one of the deciding factors when it comes to bookings, because as the saying goes: ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. As a general rule, the better your photos, the more bookings your holiday home will receive.
Our recommendations:
- At least 30 photos for a holiday home, 20 for a holiday apartment
- High resolution and good lighting
- No dark or blurry pictures, no graphics or other distracting elements (many portals penalise this in their rankings or even block the holiday homes in question!
- No photos that are older than 5 years
- Show both indoor and outdoor areas, the surroundings and special details
You can find a tutorial for taking perfect property photos, including a video, here: How to photograph your holiday home correctly.
4. Equipment that impresses
When choosing a holiday home, guests don't just look at the location and price – the facilities are also important. So make sure you enter all the equipment features correctly and comprehensively in the owner area. This information is not only interesting for potential guests; search algorithms also reward comprehensive information about a holiday home with better visibility.
Incidentally, the most popular search criterion on almost all portals is internet or WiFi. You should therefore ensure that your guests have WiFi in your holiday home and that you have entered this information correctly in your property details.
The following should be standard:
- Free, fast Wi-Fi
- Modern, well-maintained furniture – no outdated or worn items
- Target group-oriented furnishings (e.g. family-friendly, pet-friendly, barrier-free)
5. Pricing: realistic & transparent
Direct bookability, great text, perfect photos, free WiFi and other fantastic features – nothing can go wrong, right? A very common mistake that either causes your holiday home to tumble down the results list or leads to guests not booking in the end: prices that are too high or unclear.
How to optimise your pricing structure:
- Compare similar holiday homes in your area and base your pricing on market values.
- Avoid additional costs on site as far as possible and include everything in the final price. Guests want to know what to expect at a glance, and the search algorithms will thank you for it too.
- If possible, try to avoid consumption-based additional costs (e.g. electricity and water). Such costs are difficult to calculate and deter many guests – and some booking portals have difficulty displaying them correctly, which can limit your visibility.
