Gone are the days of generic hotel suites and basic motel rooms. Guests expect the personal touch, even if they’re just stopping over at your property for the night.
But personalizing every stay may seem impossible as your schedule fills up. Juggling multiple properties or managing a property around your regular job doesn’t leave you with a lot of time to learn about guest preferences or tailor the experience.
The key is finding the right strategy. Our guide shows you how to deliver a personalized experience at scale using a combination of market research, software, and resource management. See how to deliver what guests need without overwhelming them or creating an unsustainable workload for yourself.
The strategic value of personalization for short-term rental businesses
Effective personalization isn’t about getting a bump in bookings. It’s a long-term vacation rental management strategy that sets you up for lasting success and enables your business to scale and grow.
Here are the main reasons why:
- Better guest satisfaction: Making your space feel like it’s made for guests helps them build a stronger connection. They’ll be more likely to leave positive reviews, refer others, and make repeat bookings.
- Higher occupancy rates: An exceptional guest experience converts one-time visitors into loyal guests. This makes it easier to make the most of the rooms available and fill your booking calendar.
- Reduced competition: Tailoring your business to specific guests allows you to stand out in the crowded short-term rental market. This gives you a competitive edge that’s difficult to achieve through pricing or amenities alone.
- Higher profitability: Personalized stays often justify higher prices for nightly rates or add-on services. Plus, this strategy is cost-effective compared to alternatives like renovating properties or adding more amenities.
- Sustainable growth: Personalization makes it easier to appeal to potential guests and build your customer base. Similarly, it helps you attract property owners to expand your portfolio.
6 strategies for personalization in short-term rentals
Creating a truly personalized experience for guests goes beyond the basics, like adding first names to emails or writing a welcome note. It’s about making the entire experience feel tailored to their needs and preferences.
But great personalization strategies don’t necessarily involve a lot of complexity or break the bank. The following ones only require a little investment, some setup, and a few guest experience tools to launch. Once in place, they should continue to bring significant returns.
Using guest data to gain in-depth insights
Data is the foundation of a great personalization strategy. When you have the right information, you can make decisions and implement strategies that appeal to your guests.
For Airbnb superhost Jennifer Saldana, everything starts with research. “I look at the short-term rentals with the highest ratings,” she says, “I can learn a lot from their guest reviews about what to improve or the type of communication they appreciate.”
Saldana also requested extensive feedback on her first ideas from her target market. “When building out my short-term rental, I relied a lot on my Instagram community. I posted on my stories asking people for their input. My friends were an amazing resource.”
After you’ve started taking bookings, your property management software (PMS) and listing platforms can also become a valuable source of data. Both collect information from guests when they make a reservation and store it in the system. Here are some examples of the useful data you can collect:
- Hometown and country
- Group size and type (solo, couple, family, etc.)
- Reason for the trip (vacation, work, event)
- Previous stays and reviews
If you send guests a brief pre-arrival form, you can keep a more detailed record of their usual needs and preferences.
Software like Hostfully is a big help here. Our analytics tool gives you a quick overview of your data so you can get general insights into your guests and make quick decisions. We also enable you to automatically schedule the pre-arrival form and collect guest details.
Automating personalization for scalability
Managing personalization for each stay is impossible even if you have a large team at your disposal and extensive resources to spare.
The Fancie’s PEC team says they rely on software to personalize at scale. “Between our PMS, dynamic pricing tool, and AI guest messaging, we have drastically reduced our workload, increased revenue, and improved the guest experience.”
Here are the key operations you should aim to use automation to personalize:
- Communication: Create a series of email templates for different phases of the guest stay and use their details to automatically populate them. You can also add triggers for various types of people, so someone staying mid-week would get a different welcome message than someone arriving on a Friday.
- Check-in: Send detailed check-in instructions based on your target audience’s needs and preferences. If you serve international travelers, for example, include directions from the airport in their language. Hostfully lets you create and customize a digital guidebook you can send to guests with all this information inside.
- Cleaning: Schedule cleaning when it’s convenient for guests. You can use automated messaging to ask whether they’d like a mid-stay clean and automatically add it to your cleaning team’s schedule.
- AI concierge: Allow an AI to answer common questions and give guests personalized recommendations during their stay. You can handle this through the unified inbox on PMS like Hostfully and devices on the property.
Don’t underestimate the impact of AI automation. The Fancie’s PEC team says that incorporating AI into their guest messaging had the single largest impact on their business. “We use a third-party software that we’ve connected to our PMS to automatically respond to guest questions and create a great feedback loop between the guest and ourselves. We have doubled our reviews on Google as a result of using the software, and it has really helped us with guest communication.
Explore Hostfully’s full range of AI and communication integrations.
Developing a consistent brand
Make sure all your personalization efforts are consistent across channels and properties. Consistency makes you seem more intentional and professional and builds trust with first-time guests.
Keeping the same tone of voice throughout all your communication can help you maintain consistency. Corporate housing might call for a formal style, whereas family getaways are more suited for a casual vibe. You should also maintain a similar tone on your direct booking website and in your guidebook.
For example, the CEO of SuperStays, Andrew Llewellyn, says, “We maintain a friendly, conversational tone in all guest communications. Our tone is less ‘hotel’ and more ‘local friend helping plan your trip’.”
Personalization may vary across your properties. For example, you might offer different amenities at your beachside cottage than at your mountain top lodge. However, it’s important to have some consistency to make your target audience clear and avoid making guests feel unwelcome. In this case, perhaps you could keep the same communication style across both vacation rentals.
Aligning personalization efforts with guest lifecycle stages
Personalization goes beyond making a good first impression. You must use it to shape the entire guest experience from the start of the booking process to the post-stay message.
Here’s an example of what a romantic coastal getaway for couples might involve:
- Pre-stay: Check if the trip is for a special occasion like a honeymoon or an anniversary, and give them a free upgrade if so.
- Arrival: Leave a welcome basket with a bottle of wine and chocolates.
- Mid-stay: Offer a spontaneous add-on like a couple’s picnic or spa day. You could offer a discount on the service to encourage them to agree.
- Departure: Surprise them the day before they leave with free late check-out so they can spend more of the day together.
- Follow-up: Thank them for their stay and ask if you can share their photos on social media. You can offer discounts for returning for their next romantic milestone.
Developing feedback loops to refine your strategy
Personalization isn’t something you’ll get exactly right from the start. Collecting guest feedback and acting on it can help you refine your approach.
Gather insights by reading guest reviews and sending brief surveys. If you choose to send these, keep them short and focused to ensure guests actually have the time to do them. You can always leave one open question to catch issues you might not have thought of.
Feedback can help you uncover where personalization works and where it doesn’t. For example, the Fancie’s PEC team found they needed to adjust some of their tech. “When we initially set up the AI we use as our ‘online concierge, ‘ we received feedback from guests to make it more clear that they are talking to a robot. We ended up creating a whole paragraph about it in our “before you arrive” instructions to let people know how we are set up and that we utilize AI to help with guest communication.”
They emphasise the importance of doing this even if it’s just to encourage communication. “There should always be a clearly defined feedback loop so guests feel welcomed to submit feedback.”
Prioritizing high-impact personalization touchpoints
A common pitfall in personalization is focusing on small details that add little value. Instead, focus on key touchpoints where communication truly matters. Check-in is especially important, as it sets the tone for the entire stay, so pay particular attention to how you accommodate your target audience here.
Here are a few ways to tailor check-ins for different types of guests:
- Older guests: Offer clear, step-by-step instructions with large text and avoid jargon. If stairs are involved, let them know in advance.
- International travelers: Include photos or icons in instructions rather than large amounts of text. Additionally, offer check-in info in multiple languages if possible.
- Families with kids: Mention nearby parking, stroller-friendly access, and where to find essentials like extra towels or snacks.
- Young couples or solo travelers: Highlight cool local spots to grab food or relax after a long trip.
- Digital nomads: Make sure the WiFi password is somewhere prominent in your guestbook and on your property so they can start work without any hassle.
Common pitfalls in short-term rental personalization
When creating a personalized experience, you must find a balance between doing too little and too much. Otherwise, you may find you run into the following challenges:
- Lack of market research: Research thoroughly and listen to what the data tells you. Otherwise, you may find your property isn’t as tailored to your target audience as you might think. For example, Marianne Perez-Fransius, CEO of Bébé Voyage, says, “Just because a property is listed as ‘family-friendly’ or ‘kids welcome,’ it doesn’t mean that they actually have their needs in mind. We have stayed in such places, and my curious toddler has found sharp knives in the bottom drawer or all the (toxic) cleaning products easily accessible under the sink.”
- Overpersonalization: If you go to the opposite extreme and make the experience too targeted, you risk alienating some of your guests. Aim to appeal to a wide range of people within a specific niche, such as hikers and nature enthusiasts, rather than just mushroom pickers.
- Extra work for guests: Making guests fill out long forms or answer an excessive number of questions will negatively impact their stay. Scotty Jones of Leaping Lamb Farm suggests keeping communication like this to a minimum, where possible. He says, “We don’t send out a lot of messages, and when we do, we offer the ability for the guest to ask us follow-up questions so the whole thing sounds more like a conversation.”
- Data privacy concerns: People have different comfort levels about sharing personal data. Some may be happy to tell you about themselves, while others may find small questions intrusive. Make it possible for guests to disclose information, but don’t be too insistent, and enable them to opt out in compliance with international data privacy regulations.
Make your rental properties feel like they’re made for guests
Personalization has become the norm, so hosts must find ways to research their guests and tailor the short-term rental experience to meet their expectations.
Managing personalization at scale is challenging. So, for hosts running multiple properties, Hostfully PMS can be a strategic asset that enables you to streamline many key processes. This allows you to automate communication and check-in and frees you up to look at more ways to adapt your business to guests.
While you might not get the balance right on your first try, keep looking at market data and listening to your visitors. You’ll quickly learn how to create a memorable experience that feels tailored to each guest.
Frequently asked questions about personalizing guest experiences
What is the role of technology in personalizing guest experiences?
Technology plays a major role in personalizing guest experiences. For example, a PMS like Hostfully can enable you to personalize emails and manage the property according to individual preferences with smart tech.
How can I ensure guest privacy while personalizing their experience?
Respecting guest privacy means only collecting essential information and explaining why you need it. You should also get consent before saving personal data and let them opt out if they’d prefer not to share.
What are some cost-effective ways to personalize guest experiences?
Some cost-effective ways to personalize the guest experience include customizing emails, giving local recommendations, and sending thank-you notes. Hostfully can help you manage all of this remotely through our automated messaging feature.
