What You Need to Know to Master Google Vacation Rentals

Apr 19th, 2024

Google Vacation Rentals is one of the biggest and newest players in the short-term rental industry. They have the power to boost your click-through rate and conversions, but how does this platform work in conjunction with a direct booking website and OTAs?

You might just find that this is a powerful tool to help you gain traction in a competitive industry. Here’s what you need to know about Google Vacation Rentals and how you can be listed on the metasearch engine.

About Google Vacation Rentals

Since May 2021, Google Vacation Rentals (GVR) has been competing with the likes of Airbnb and Vrbo by helping people find places to stay while on vacation. GVR uses the powerful search capabilities of Google to act as a robust aggregator for the vacation rental industry. This is known as a metasearch engine.

Chances are that you’re already familiar with the concept behind the Google Vacation Rentals platform. Think of Orbitz which consolidates the lowest-priced flights and rental cars from various sources across the internet. GVR does the same thing with vacation rentals.

One thing to note is that bookings are not made through Google. Instead, it redirects the guest back to your booking website or OTAs where you’re listed. Redirecting this traffic is a fantastic way for a direct booking website to gain more traction with prospective guests.

The best part? At this time, Google Vacation Rentals doesn’t charge any commissions for successful bookings. This may change in the future, but at least for now, the service is free.

That said, you may not be entirely free from charges. A channel manager, OTA, or other service acting as a middleman or conduit to Google may still charge you commissions or fees on each of the bookings you secure.

In any case, GVR is excellent for rental managers who want to focus on growing their direct bookings. If you run a vacation or short-term rental business and you’re looking to scale, you should aim to have 60-70% of your business through direct bookings. It’s a great short-term rental strategy to boost income, reach more people, and specialize in a niche audience. Not to mention, you gain more control over the business side of things with both your bookings and your finances.

How to Be Listed on Google Vacation Rentals

While you might be intrigued by the prospect of being listed on Google Vacation Rentals, it isn’t as easy as simply creating a listing. Instead, your listing is picked up by Google’s crawler if your rental is listed on their partner OTAs or channel managers. If you want to be featured on GVR, you may want to consider listing your property on short-term rental sites.

Another option is to list your short-term rental with a large property management company or one of Google’s vacation rental partners. You can also make a request directly to Google for a more direct integration, provided your website meets the requirements.

5 Tips for Success on Google Vacation Rentals

Since you can’t directly create or edit a listing on Google Vacation Rentals, you might be wondering how much control you even have over the success of your GVR listings. The good news is that Google pulls information from other sources, so as long as you follow listing best practices elsewhere, you won’t need to do anything special here. Just make sure you put your best foot forward where you’re listed on other sites!

These practices can help you improve click-through rates and determine how high Google places you in the search results:

1. Always List Accurate Pricing

Google values accuracy above all else. If they find that your listings aren’t up to date with the latest price, they may deprioritize the listing. Make sure that your pricing always accurately reflects current discounts, promotions, and fees.

For simplicity, you may want to tie in a channel manager to ensure that your listings are consistent and accurate across all channels. A channel manager is a third-party service provider that makes it quick and easy to update pricing across all platforms. When you have one dashboard where you can easily manage everything, it’s much easier to keep Google happy.

2. Include All Relevant Attributes

Make sure your listings reflect all the amenities and services available at your properties. Google’s search and filters are one of the most powerful features of the platform, so you want to make sure your properties show up in all applicable search results. Google wants to be able to show your STR to the people who are looking for properties just like yours.

Remember, though, Google’s emphasis on accuracy. Exaggerating or misrepresenting property amenities may help you appear in more searches in the short term, but it will also lead to unhappy clients and Google penalization as the system catches on.

3. Compelling Imagery

First impressions matter, so be sure to provide quality images that look attractive even as small thumbnails. Instead of providing just a single picture, give enough imagery for a great first impression of your property and nearby area. Oftentimes, this means investing in quality professional real estate photography.

At the same time, make sure the images are still accurate and fairly represent your property. Heavily edited photos or image sets that conveniently avoid depicting obvious shortfalls of the property might lead to more upfront bookings at the cost of problems down the road.

Accurate imagery helps reduce chargebacks when guests arrive. Clear communication and pictures can decrease the likelihood of not-as-described chargebacks.

4. Have a High-Quality Direct Booking Website

Since Google Vacation Rentals redirects people to your direct booking website to complete their booking, you’ll want to make sure that your website is set up to capture as many potential guests as possible!

This means a high-quality direct booking website that’s easy to navigate and interact with. For example, it should have enhanced search and filter capabilities and the ability for guests to easily book and pay online. You may even consider adding floor plans, virtual tours, and chat tools to help convert guests.

Plug-and-play websites may be easier to set up in the short term, but we strongly recommend investing in a custom-built website tailored for the vacation and short-term rental industry. To kickstart your research into finding an experienced website development partner, explore our list of partners.

Your direct booking website can be a powerhouse of your marketing and distribution plan, enabling you to earn higher profit margins and take increased control over your bookings. Plus, when people stay and enjoy their experience, they’re more likely to return to your site for future vacation rentals. It’s worth your while to make your website as attractive and high-converting as possible!

5. Ask Guests to Leave a Review

Google cares deeply about the user experience, which means they want to see positive reviews for your short-term rental. Accruing a healthy collection of positive Google reviews may help improve the status of your listing on Google Vacation Rentals, so prioritize asking your guests for feedback after their stay with you.

You can also display these reviews on your direct booking website, which offers social proof to potential guests and helps your website convert.

Get Help from Ascent

One of the reasons Google Vacation Rentals can be so powerful for rental managers is the way it supports your direct booking strategy. If you’re set up as the merchant of record for your own direct bookings, you can take greater control over your brand, money, and reputation.

If you need a payment processor for your direct booking website, Ascent is here to help you get the services you need at the lowest possible cost. With over 20 years of experience with vacation rental payment processing, we understand the operational complexities of the industry and can offer the services and features your business needs to scale.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist you with payment processing for your direct booking website!