The Secret is Out!
Written by Richard W J Brown - The Property Voice
Sponsored Post
Massive accommodation-booking platform, Booking.com, is taking on AirBnB, GumTree and Spareroom.com by raising their awareness in the short-let home room rental market. They are already a major player in the rental market for rooms and entire properties generally, in what is sometimes called Serviced Accommodation. So, what does this enhanced presence into the home room rental market mean for property owners? Let’s take a look…
An attractive proposition
For both home or investment property owners, the possibility of short-term room lettings is attractive. For the homeowner, letting out a room is a great way to make some money from your own home, turning dead space into income and a costly-asset into a partial investment. Very short-term lets, say for a night or a week, allow you to earn extra cash on your own terms while keeping a spare room available for friends and family. You can easily block dates that the room will be occupied by your friends and family, but welcome paying guests at other times.
There are also some great tax-breaks for homeowners renting a room at home too. The first £7,500 of rental income from renting a room at home is currently tax-free. Imagine, if you are a higher-rate taxpayer and had to go out to work to generate that sort of income, it would be equivalent to a £15,000 a year pay-rise! Take the extra rental income in your pocket, or my favourite tip would be to set it aside towards the deposit in another investment property to turn the income into a long-term repeat-income generating asset instead. It also allows you to get started in property investment, literally without leaving home.
For investment property owners, if a you are looking to sell a property in your portfolio but it’s proving difficult, or a buy to let property is not performing quite as you would like, then you might want to try letting rooms on a more short-term basis instead.
Creating a Booking.com profile is very simple and allows you to set your own ‘house rules’. I’ve always found Booking.com to be brilliant at helping owners to maximise their earnings and build their short-term rental business. They seem to offer more dynamic business development support than merely a static property listing service.
Enormous reach
If you want maximum exposure and occupancy rates for your room, then it makes sense to sign up your property with several online booking platforms. I was happy to hear that Booking.com now welcomes room rental profiles, because the platform is simply huge. Not only does Booking.com list something like 840,000 holiday rentals and 27m rooms, but the company has been going for 20 years. If you want to rent out a room or create a Serviced Accommodation property, you really do need to be listed on Booking.com. From my personal experience, the vast majority of our Serviced Accommodation bookings come from Booking.com. They have enormous, global reach. We’ve had guests from all over the world stay with us through Booking.com. By listing your property on Booking.com you can increase visibility and so also earnings massively.
A trusted name
Listing your property on Booking.com means that your property benefits from the brand’s reputation as a trusted and credible platform. With 15,500 staff worldwide supporting guests and owners in multiple languages, you will have all the help you need to run a successful short-term rental business. Helpfully, when prospective guests search online for accommodation in your area, your property is likely to pop up in an advert on many of the biggest search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo!.
The personal touch
More and more people are embracing the idea of staying in someone else’s home, rather than a traditional hotel, when they need to travel. It’s a great way to truly get under the skin of a place for the guest and as a host, the thought of being an ambassador for your country or region brings a warm feeling to many. Friendships can be struck and I have been invited to stay with former guests of mine if I ever travel to their country. As you know, I am all about the bottom line, but this is without doubt a significant fringe benefit.
Easy does it!
If you have been considering moving into the short-term room rentals sector, or if you already operate in it, you need to list your property on Booking.com, either alone or alongside your other platforms. Quite simply, it’s the biggest accommodation marketplace in the world, as I have found out through personal experience. It’s free to list your property, really easy to use the system and you can run your room rental empire on the go from your phone using Booking.com’s intuitive Pulse app. Take lots of well-lit, welcoming photos of your room and the wider property on your smartphone and get earning! You could be maximising your property earnings within a couple of days, so what are you waiting for?
Click join.booking.com to sign up now.
Note: we do not benefit from your sign-up in any way.
#ad #bookingyeah