How do I advertise my holiday home in Spain? This is the first question you should ask yourself if you own a property in Spain. If you choose the services of a professional agency to look after your holiday home, they will take care of the advertisement for you. If, on the other hand, you are willing to look after it yourself, here’s some important marketing tips.
To understand how it is all connected, let’s take a trip back in time. Back in 2007, industry giant Airbnb was founded. What was unique at the time about Airbnb is that they charged a set commission per booking, similar to the hotel industry. At the time, there were two other major portals on the market, namely Homeaway and Holiday Lettings, which charged an annual fee for the advertisement of properties on their site. In 2010, Tripadvisor decided to join the holiday rental industry, and in the process, purchased Holiday Lettings; at that point in time, Tripadvisor also charged a commission per reservation.
In 2015, it was the turn of Booking.com to join the holiday rental industry; that same year Expedia Group bought Homeaway. From that point on, the industry changed for good. Nowadays, there are three major OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) on the market: Booking.com, Expedia and Tripadvisor, aside from Airbnb. The four giants who shape the holiday rental market now all charge a commission per reservation.
Back in the days, one would pay an annual advertising fee of between 250-350 € for a property, while now, one pays somewhere between 15-17% per reservation. This huge difference financially cripples professional agents and private homeowners alike around the world.
It is to be noted that these large companies also have several subsidiaries under their umbrella that you may have heard of:
Booking.com owns:
Kayak.com, Priceline.com, Agoda.com and Rentalcars.com
Expedia Group owns:
Hotels.com, Homeaway.com (now called VRBO), Trivago.com and Carrentals.com
Tripadvisor owns:
Holidaylettings.co.uk, Flipkey.com, Niumba.com and Viator.com
Airbnb owns:
Luxuryretreats.com
By advertising your property with any of these four large companies, you also automatically advertise with their subsidiary portals, which means that your holiday home is covered in terms of advertising. In the case of Luxury Retreats though, the advertisement is not automatic.
If you want to go the extra mile, you can also advertise on the portal Spain Holiday. Before 2015, said portal functioned extremely well. They ran purely on advertising and generated almost 20% of our reservations. But once the “big players” joined the industry, Spain Holiday only ended up generating 2.5% of our total bookings. I expect that percentage to become even more insignificant in the coming years. Note that Spain Holiday offers two different advertising models: a set annual fee or a pay-per-booking commission, which by the way is more expensive than all of the above by 18.15%. Personally, I would recommend using their commission model as you only pay when they actually generate a reservation for you.
There are numerous other portals where you can advertise, but in my opinion, it is a waste of time. Instead, use your resources on these four portals. It is important to set your ad up with quality images and a detailed, personalised description of your home. When it comes to pricing, I would highly recommend you to add the commission that these portals charge you on top of your base rate.
If you can create a personalised web page for your holiday home, it is even better. This will allow you to create and link your own page on Facebook and also create a profile on Instagram. It takes some extra work but it is well worth the effort. Advertising is not free and therefore we often end up paying a huge, absurd commission to the above portals. I hope you find my tips useful and feel free to let me know if you have other ideas on How do I advertise my holiday home in Spain?
