Our industry partners at Streamline joined us for a recent webinar where we discuss how to leverage your property management software (PMS) system for best practices on your direct booking website. This conversation opened the door to encouraging our vacation rental management clients to do a little spring cleaning and tidying up on their website and within certain sections of their PMS.
Bluetent has a strong integration with Streamline that spans many years. This powerful connection allows us to pull information from a trusted partner platform in order to provide our users with accurate information for the best marketing and direct booking websites in the industry.
In addition to a wide selection of digital marketing services, we provide cloud and customized websites for Streamline clients and others. Your traveler-centric direct booking website from Bluetent is your cash register. Cha-ching!! This is the place where guests can not only get the best prices and customer services, but they can come back to again and again for information or rebooking. Your organic rankings will thank you for investing in a technically sound and optimized website, including information pieces and listings that are pulled from your property management software.
ARE YOU A VRM CLIENT AND WANT TO OPTIMIZE YOUR VRM PLATFORM FOR YOUR DIRECT BOOKING WEBSITE?
BEST PRACTICES FOR USING YOUR PMS TO CREATE OPPORTUNITIES
Want to create more opportunities to optimize your organic search engine rankings (SEO)? Check out how Streamline clients can easily and efficiently do just that and which features to focus on.
Optimal property titles – Are you using property titles that are catchy and easy to remember? You can even easily optimize your property titles! They are labeled “Web Home Name” and are an SEO element within the Streamline system. The “Home Name” field would be for a numerical assignment for internal and accounting use. LEVERAGE THAT SEO!!
Keyword dense property descriptions – Do you have any property descriptions that could use some work? When you have described the property in detail, it generates interest. This description should be updated regularly to avoid outdated information. The description is the place where guests can begin to picture themselves and their family in the vacation rental. You are detailing for them how they can use the property to have the best vacation ever. This is the place where you get to showcase the property and include keyword dense content for search engines.
Image quality and order of images – Have you ever heard that a picture speaks a thousand words? This is 100% true for the vacation industry. Photos need to be high resolution and professional quality. To optimize your listing, you will want to name the photos instead of allowing them to have a generic numerical name (Ex: sea-breeze-exterior.png vs. IMG_001.png). You will also want to fill the Alt Text field to include what the picture is about and keywords. Be sure to place the BEST photo at the beginning of the gallery or carousel. This is typically a full exterior shot. No one wants to see the bathroom photo first!
Amenities – clean and organized lists – Sweep the cobwebs off your amenities list. Check for duplicate attributes, typos, and extra characters. Be sure that you are consistent with your amenity naming convention. You could even use icons for easy at-a-glance information.
Taxonomy page creation – Are you familiar with taxonomy pages? Sure, you are!! These are category pages that are created by grouping together specific attributes. Oceanfront, pet-friendly, and private pool pages are all examples of taxonomy pages. These are typically high-ranking and high-performing pages. They provide great links for social media, email campaigns, and paid advertisements. ANY amenity or attributes listed for a unit in Streamline can be pulled into a taxonomy page. What a great way to generate interest and a buzz around a group of vacation rentals!
Availability calendar – What happens if a guest wants to know what properties are available during their preferred stay dates? That is where the Bluetent Availability Calendar comes in! The information on this calendar is pulled in directly from your software and gives an at-a-glance view of available properties based on the guest’s arrival and departure dates. This is a great tool to promote on your website and other marketing channels.
Email integrations & opportunities – Do you have a well-crafted email marketing strategy that leverages your PMS system? The Reservation Integration Tool gives a multitude of information from your past guests that you can pull from to effectively and efficiently engage in target marketing and to build segmented lists. Information and details can be pulled from Streamline about past guests (large home, oceanfront, pet-friendly, out of state, etc.) and used by Bluetent to build very specific drip campaigns, top stay-cycle emails, eNewslettes, vacation anniversary emails, and single-focused campaigns. There are so many opportunities to stay in front of your guests!
The team at Bluetent would love the opportunity to discuss how they can help you leverage the information, tools, and features in your PMS to effectively market and remarket your vacation rental business.
CHALLENGE: Contact Bluetent and ask them how many different ways they could leverage your “pet-friendly” property information on your behalf.