top 10 best Location features
The essential features of a rental site
Owners of accommodation, whether flats, houses or seasonal homes, whether they are offered in short-term rental or long-term, all need key features for their rental website. The aim is clear: to ensure an optimum occupancy rate and fill their properties throughout the year. Here are a few essential features to help you achieve this.
In France, cities such as Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille alone account for almost 19 % of rental searches (according to the locservice.fr). Tenants are above all looking for the best value for money and are increasingly turning to private-to-private websitesto avoid agency fees.
Faced with these developments, having a specialised rental website has become a must. A site equipped with a online booking engine and optimised for natural search engine optimisation (SEO) will both increase your visibility on the web and generate more sales. direct bookingswithout going through intermediaries.
A high-performance rental site must incorporate a number of essential functions: a simple, secure booking engine, an intuitive booking management interface and an effective customer follow-up system. These tools enable owners to save time while improving the quality of their management.
Many flat and house owners have already adopted this type of digital solution, and the results are clear: greater visibility, more direct bookings and optimised management of their rentals.
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The top 10 best features for rental sites.
Top 10 booking site features
A booking engine
The booking engine is the essential tool for all those involved in the hotel and restaurant industry. It is a module grafted onto your site that allows you to show your visitors the availability and price of your rooms. It will also provide your customers with access to book directly on your site without going through the OTAs. The booking engine is a door which, once crossed by the visitor, transforms him into a customer. It's the best way today to increase direct bookings and improve the customer experience. For more information, take a look at our articles Comparison of the best booking engines & Booking engine for hotels and accommodation.
Top 10 booking site features
A multilingual site
With no less than 324 million overnight stays in tourist establishments In 2021 in France, expect a lot of foreign visitors. To make sure you don't miss out on any bookings, your holiday rental website must be in at least 2 languages. French, of course, and English to make it easier for foreigners to understand. If you are used to having a large number of customers from a certain country, don't hesitate to add their language to your site to improve their experience and build loyalty.
Hotel Web Design is the web agency 100% dedicated to the hotel industryWe can help you with all aspects of digital communication for your accommodation: booking websites, natural referencing specialising in the hotel industry, Google Ads referencing and Google Hotel Ads, social networking campaigns, graphic charters and logos for hotels.
Make an appointment today for free advice on how to optimise the digital management of your accommodation.
Top 10 booking site features
Centralisation of bookings
OTAs have become essential tools for all players in the world of tourism. And platforms such as Booking, Expedia and Air BnB are multiplying all the time. To cope with this influx and manage it as effectively as possible, there are channel managers that enable you to centralise, synchronise and manage your bookings in a single place. I invite you to find out more about the different channel managers in our article Comparison of the best channel managers
Top 10 booking site features
Automatic emailing
Emailing is a good way of building customer loyalty and reminding them of good times on holiday. By sending special offers, newsletters or thank-you notes, you can personalise the customer experience. In the tourism and travel sector on average the email open rate is 23.60% and the click rate is 1.39%. This ranks it 10th out of 20 sectors for click-through rate. This means that, compared with other sectors, customers are more likely to interact with the emails they receive when it comes to tourism and travel. So email automation will help you reach as many people as possible and save you time.
Hotel Web Design is a Google partner with the Google Hotelsincluding our customers enjoy every day: information about your accommodation, availability and prices is sent continuously to the search engine, which displays booking links free from Google search, directly to your booking page. These free links represent around 15% of additional commission-free bookings for our customers in 2022! Read our article on free booking links from Google
Top 10 booking site features
Activate free Google booking links
Google is now offering free booking links which appear directly in travellers' search results via Google Hotel. Thanks to our partnership with Google, your establishment can be displayed as a priority in this area, with a link that redirects directly to the booking engine of your official website.
This feature is a major advantage: it gives your future customers one-click access to your rates and availability, without having to use a third-party platform. Result: you increase your direct bookingsYou reduce the commissions paid to OTAs (Booking, Expedia, etc.) and retain control over the customer relationship from the very first contact.
Top 10 booking site features
Online payment
Whether via Stripe, PayPal and the main French banksOnline payment solutions allow your customers to pay directly from your website. booking engine100 % securely. Thanks to these tools, you can define your own conditions: for example, require a deposit of 30 % of the total cost of the stay at the time of booking.
Online payment also allows you to recover thebank imprint of the customer in order to pre-authorise or automatically debit the card at the end of the stay in the event of additional charges (mini-bar, catering, activities, etc.).
Top 10 booking site features
Synchronising bookings
This is undoubtedly one of the most essential features of your booking site. A powerful booking engine must be able to synchronise all bookings from the various platforms (Booking, Expedia, Airbnb, etc.) directly with your website in real time. Without this synchronisation, you run the risk of experiencing double bookings For example, a customer books a room on your site but this availability is not immediately blocked on the OTAs. Thanks to a integrated channel managerThis allows you to guarantee the actual availability of your accommodation. This enables you to guarantee the actual availability of your accommodation, avoid planning errors and improve the customer experience by offering a smooth and reliable booking process.
Top 10 booking site features
Sale of additional products / upsell
Breakfast, activities, personalised services or special options: the extras are an essential feature that must be integrated into the booking process. They are a strategic lever for increase your sales and enrich the customer experience.
Offering these additional services will enable you to sell your products more effectively. Yield ManagementThis will maximise both the occupancy rate and the profitability of your establishment.
By offering the possibility of booking these services online (e.g. breakfast basket, bike hire, massage, excursions), you facilitate internal management while giving customers a tailor-made experience that enhances their stay.
Top 10 booking site features
Invoice in 1 click
Business customers are a significant part of the tourism sector, they represent 20% of total tourism. Business trips, conferences and professional events very often mean that companies have to travel to other countries. For their accommodation, some opt for short-term rentals. But business means invoicing, and writing an invoice by hand without forgetting a comma can be easy, or stressful. If you don't want to make any more mistakes, you can use the booking engine on your website to generate breaks in just one click, which is a real time-saver.
Top 10 booking site features
Integrated personalisation and promotions
The possibility of offering targeted promotions (promo codes, last-minute offers, discounts for long stays) or supplementary benefits (breakfast, bike hire, transfers, spa, etc.) directly at the time of booking is a powerful lever for increasing your revenue. These options also enhance the customer experience by personalising their stay according to their wishes.
Business customers are a significant part of the tourism sector, they represent 20% of total tourism. Business trips, conferences and professional events very often mean that companies have to travel to other countries. For their accommodation, some opt for short-term rentals. But business means invoicing, and writing an invoice by hand without forgetting a comma can be easy, or stressful. If you don't want to make any more mistakes, you can use the booking engine on your website to generate breaks in just one click, which is a real time-saver.
Top 10 booking site features
Responsive and secure website
A booking site must be suitable for all media computer, tablet or smartphone. More than 60 % of online bookings are now made on mobile phones, so it's essential to offer smooth, intuitive browsing, whatever the device used.
Security is also essential. Your site must have a SSL certificate (HTTPS) and comply with banking and personal data protection standards (RGPD, PCI DSS). This reassures your customers and helps them complete their online bookings.
Business customers are a significant part of the tourism sector, they represent 20% of total tourism. Business trips, conferences and professional events very often mean that companies have to travel to other countries. For their accommodation, some opt for short-term rentals. But business means invoicing, and writing an invoice by hand without forgetting a comma can be easy, or stressful. If you don't want to make any more mistakes, you can use the booking engine on your website to generate breaks in just one click, which is a real time-saver.
Benefit from the expertise of an agency specialising in reservation sites
Discover the Azur Loft Design
Booking / reservation website
–
Direct booking for your accommodation
- Bespoke booking/conversion site delivered turnkey, with training on the administration interface on delivery
- Adapted logo and graphic charter. Possibility of using your existing elements
- Specific referencing for holiday lets
- Integration of reservations module internal
- or integration of an external booking engine (Reservit, D-EDGE, MisterbookingRoomcloud, etc)
- Integration of specific HTML elements (review portals, customer reviews, weather, press, pop-ups, direct chat, etc.)
- Secure SSL / HTTPS
- Multilingual website & booking engine
- Simple, intuitive user interface
- High-availability hosting and domain name
- Delivery usually within 30 days
