The Most Important Statistics for Vacation Rental Hosts

Picture this: you have been renting out your vacation rental for some time and now you want to enhance the performance of your short-term rental business.

There is one tool that will go a long way to helping you do this: vacation rental statistics. Occupancy rate, revenue, cancellations, are just some of the numbers that would be useful to know. However, even with these numbers in hand, how can you use them to enhance the performance of your vacation rental? Read on and it found out!

How statistics can help you optimize your vacation rental business

Key performance indicators (KPIs) play a central role in the vacation rental business. All the statistics for your vacation rental help you, as an owner, host, landlord or property manager, analyze the occupancy rate for your accommodations. You can use property management reports to identify patterns and use them to make smarter decisions in order to increase the revenue and turnover.

You can also find out which days your accommodations are most booked on and use those findings to better target your marketing and advertising efforts. Or you can compare seasonal occupancy rates, look at the difference between summer and winter and adjust your prices accordingly. Maybe the competition perhaps cheaper in the off-season? You can counterbalance this with special offers. These are just a few examples of the information vacation rental statistics can give you!

The most important KPIs and statistics for vacation rental hosts

1. Number of bookings

   The most important number in the analysis of your vacation rental is the number of reservations. With this data you can figure out at which time of the year your accommodation has higher demand, and then adjust your prices accordingly. If you have several vacation rental properties and only one of them is frequently booked, you can think about the reasons behind this and adjust accordingly.

2. Revenue / Turnover

   When you start regularly checking the data in your property management software, you will get a good overview of your monthly income. This is not only important for your financial success, but also for your tax return.

3. Distribution by booking portals

   If you offer your rental on several booking portals like Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo, you should regularly check which platform your accommodation is most successful on. For example, if most of your guests book via Airbnb, then you can optimize your listing(s) there to achieve even more bookings. However, if a platform brings only a few bookings, you should look closely at your listings on that platform. Think to yourself, what can you do to make them the best possible?

4. Cancellation rate

   The cancellation rate is a very important KPI for your business. You can check whether cancellations follow a pattern and try to counteract this. You can also consider charging higher cancellation fees so that your bookings are more stable so you can plan better.

5. Average length of stay

   If you regularly evaluate your bookings, you will see how long your guests stay on average. If you prefer longer stays, you can consider offering a discount after a minimum length of stay (ex. a week).

6. Booking time

   Once you know what time your guests book most often, you can tailor your marketing efforts accordingly. For example, if you notice that bookings often arrive on Sunday afternoons, you can adjust your online ads and prices accordingly.

7. Monitor the success of promotions or discounts

   If you monitor the number of bookings after certain promotions you run, you can measure their success. For example, if you place an online advertisement and achieve more bookings in the following days than before, you can use the reports to evaluate whether the advertisement was financially worthwhile for you.

8. Target Market

   For your success as a vacation rental host it is crucial that you know your target market exactly and align your accommodation to their needs. For example, if you find that your apartment is mainly booked by couples, you should make different adjustments than if you were targeting families or business travelers.

Smoobu’s intelligent statistics

With Smoobu’s reporting tool you can easily compare bookings, create reports, and improve your rental business.

In your dashboard you can see revenue, bookings, cancellations, sorted by portals or accommodation. With these smart statistics, you can make better business decisions and optimize your strategy.

Break down booking data

In the reporting tool you can sort the data, compare bookings, and create reports for your records or your tax return. You can download these reports as a PDF, Excel or CSV documents.

In Smoobu you can break down the booking data by:

• Revenue
• Bookings
• Cancellations
• Occupancy rates
• Data
• Objects
• Booking portals
• Nights

Share account with family, co-workers, or tax accountant

If you manage your vacation rental with others, like your partner, family, employees, or agencies, you can share your Smoobu account with them. Depending on their responsibilities, you can grant different levels of access.

For example, your business partner has can read and write in your Smoobu account, but you can have your cleaning team as read only. If necessary, you can also give your tax consultant access to the required data.

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