Renters visit about 4 vacation rental sites before choosing a Vacation Rental

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Data from Flipkey indicates that the average renter will visit about 4 different vacation rental sites and inquire about 7 different vacation rental properties before choosing a vacation rental.

According to Flipkey, the breakdown is as follows:

12% visit just one vacation rental site
39% visit 2-3 vacation rental sites
28% visit 4-5 vacation rental sites
8% visit 6-9 vacation rental sites
12% visit 10 or more vacation rental sites

Apart from the fact that 12% visit more than 10 vacation rental sites, I was not very surprised with these findings. In my own experience,  I certainly want to check out more the vacation rental listings on more than one site. I am likely to look at a couple of the bigger sites, such as Homeaway or VRBO, plus also a couple of regional/specialist sites (e.g. Rentalia or Spain-Holiday for Spain).

I suspect in practice, many renters just google appropriate search terms such as "vacation rentals spain" and then use that to find vacation rental sites to explore.

I was a little more surprised at the fact that renters enquire about only 7 vacation rental properties on average. Given that many of the vacation rental sites have the facility to create "favorites" and make it easy to send the same enquiry to multiple owners, I expected that the average number of renter enquiries would be more than 7.

So, what are the implications of these findings  for vacation rental owners?

Well, firstly, it re-enforces the need to be listed on multiple vacation rental by owner sites. (You should check out either COHR or All Holiday Rentals to find a list of potential sites.)

Secondly, if you are getting bookings from more than 1 enquiry in 7 , then you are probably doing a good job of converting enquiries into bookings. If not, then maybe you need to examine ways to improve your conversions.