Building A #BookDirect Strategy For Vacation Rentals
Like many vacation rental operators, Nat and Tyann Marcink of Branson Family Retreats has made generating more direct bookings a top priority for her business. Having already built a great direct booking website, the question was how to send more high-quality traffic to the site to actually drive new bookings.
Operating near Branson, Missouri, emailing past guests to rebook directly has been one of Tyann’s most successful tactics for generating more direct bookings. However, collecting high-quality emails from guests has never been easy. When guests book through OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) like Airbnb and Vrbo, their emails are not provided to rental companies for marketing. In addition, no one, including the OTAs, has marketing emails for the other non-booking guests staying in the vacation rental unit.
When Tyann heard about StayFi, she knew it was the solution she needed for collecting guest emails. Every guest, including the non-booking guests, would need to log into the WiFi through a custom-branded splash page, just like at a hotel or airport. She also loved that StayFi would introduce her brand to every guest and reduce or eliminate guest calls about WiFi issues.
Tyann and Nat loved their StayFi experience so much, they wanted to share it and create videos of how easy it was to set up at Branson Family Retreats.
Setting Up StayFi
Creating Splash Pages For Branson Family Retreats
When you create a StayFi Account, the first step is to make the splash page guests will use to log into the WiFi. You can create as many splash pages as you’d like, meaning that you can have different splash pages for each property you operate. Tyann decided to create unique splash pages for each of her Branson Family Retreats homes.
Integrating With Touch Stay Digital Guidebook
Tyann also uses Touch Stay to provide easy-to-use digital guidebooks for each of her properties. She wanted to make sure that every guest would have access to her homes’ guidebooks through StayFi. When creating each home’s StayFi splash page, Tyann included that home’s Touch Stay guidebook as the redirect URL. This means that every guest, after logging into the WiFi, will be forwarded to the correct guidebook.
If you want to try Touch Stay, email info@touchstay.com and mention StayFi for a free 14-day trial.
Integrating With Mailchimp
For email marketing, Tyann uses Mailchimp to market her vacation rental properties. One great feature of Mailchimp is email marketing automation. With this tool, Tyann automatically emails all of her guests right when they log into WiFi for the first time. Then she schedules a series of follow up emails that will be sent to every guest. Read our article on email automation here and access five free Mailchimp templates.
Tyann set up her StayFi-Mailchimp integration so that every guest record is imported with the name of the property. This way, Tyann can segment her email marketing based on what specific home the guest stayed in before.
Installing StayFi Access Points
Tyann filmed Nat both installing the wired StayFi access point and a wireless StayFi repeater. The device is the same for both set-ups, however the repeater is just plugged into power.
Installing Wired StayFi Access Point
Installing StayFi Wireless Repeater Access Point
Conclusion
Hopefully, Tyann and Branson Family Retreats has helped show how easy it is to set up and start collecting guest emails with StayFi. StayFi makes it easy to try by not charging any monthly fees for your first Access Point. You can sign up for StayFi here.
