How to Avoid Double Bookings in Your Vacation Rental Business?

Every business has their good and bad days, and property owners are not immune to these circumstances. When it comes to bad days, one of the most dreaded situations in a vacation rental business is discovering that two people have booked the same listing for the same date. In other words, double booking. Asking yourself what to do in this type of situation is wrong on many points. Instead, ask yourself how to avoid double bookings. You’ll be surprised at how simple the solution is…

Simply – Don’t overbook yourself

A lot of times, and especially in the low season property owners dread guests canceling or not showing up at all, so they fall into the bad habit of overbooking their properties “just in case”. The consequences might be severe especially if you own just a few properties and have no possibility to relocate your guests.

Note that if you use a Central Reservation System, you will be easily able to shuffle your guests across available listings and spot any danger areas clearly before the “collision” happens.

Invest in a Channel Manager

Doing things manually if you have a business that relies mainly on the World Wide Web is a terrible idea. A Channel Manager improves your efficiency by distributing your availability and rates through various booking channels in real time.

As a property owner, you know all too well that you need to be listed on many booking portals such as Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Agoda, etc. You cannot afford to miss out on visibility because your competition never sleeps. The simple solution is having an automated system that does the updates for you in the background without your intervention.

Have a Central Reservation System

If a Channel Manager is a great help to distribute your availability across channels, how about direct bookings? You probably receive phone reservations, you have your recurring guests who prefer to book directly with you, and you most likely use a Booking Engine on your website and Facebook page.

You don’t just want to block your calendar but rather see all the reservation details nicely displayed in the calendar and the booking list. Fortunately, a Central Reservation System, such as Nuevah offers a complete solution to manage all your availability and bookings both direct and external.

Your Turn

Managing your vacation rental business is not as difficult as it sounds. Follow the recommendations we made above, and you will surely avoid double bookings keeping your online visibility intact!