Attracting corporate travellers can be no more popular than today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the leisure market was slack, what kept many vacation rental businesses afloat were business travellers. This period highlighted the significance of this market segment and convinced many vacation rental managers to target it. The location and position of a vacation rental, as well as its amenities, pretty much define whether it can be listed among corporate-friendly properties for business travellers. However, optimising your home and marketing efforts based on your target guests can practically increase the chance of your home getting more business bookings.
The Benefits Corporate-friendly Property for Business Travellers
Short-term lets and serviced apartments are the most cost-effective and preferred type of accommodation by many business travellers. All they need is quiet, more space, specific amenities, safety, privacy, comfort and basically, a home away from their own home. They need a place to give them the chance to focus on their work and take a rest after a long day of work.
On the other hand, corporate guests have many specific characteristics that vacationers lack, making them the most hoped-for group of guests for vacation rental managers.
Business travellers book mid-week stays and come at every time of the year, no matter its high or low season. Therefore, you can count on them to keep your house occupied during quieter seasons. The more corporate guests, the lower your vacancy rate.
Usually, they tend to travel to the same cities. So, they typically come back and make loyal repeat guests. Corporate contractors will also book your other properties in other locations.
Business travellers book ahead of time and for more extended periods. They are not much price-sensitive, and once they trust and make a bond with a host, they are not likely to shift to their competitors. As a result, they guarantee a steady income for rental managers.
Your rental can get highly profitable just if you keep in touch with your corporate guests and let them book directly.
What You Need to Do to Get Listed as a Property for Corporate guests
To turn a property into an Airbnb for business travellers, vacation rental managers must get to know the businesses and potential business bookers in their area more carefully and place a lot of weight on addressing their needs and challenges.
You don’t need to make tremendous changes to your vacation home or its features. All you got to do is present the facet of your rental that the people travelling for the business need to see.
1. Optimise Your Listing and Social Presence
To target corporate travellers optimising your online presence is of utmost priority. Make sure that your property is displayed correctly with as many quality photos, an appropriate title telling your property’s location and a detailed well-written description of your home’s features that has the ability to attract business travellers.
Optimise your vacation rental based on your prospective guests’ preferences and list it on OTAs and Channels most frequently used for searching properties for corporate guests.
Location
Corporate Guests are of different types. Depending on the job they perform, they need to be close to financial hubs, business parks, universities, hospitals, construction sites or media locations.
There is nothing you can do about the location of your rental. Actually, you must have thought about it earlier when you were buying the property. However, you still have a chance to place yourself among the corporate-friendly properties for business travellers by being more meticulous about the whereabouts of your property and using some marketing strategies to make up for this requirement.
Provide your target guests with a specific description of your neighbourhood and whatever it has to offer corporate guests. If you are located close to exhibition centres or any business districts or benchmarks, bear in mind to mention it in your listing’s description.
If you are located miles away from the closest industrial area or business trade shows and expos happening in your neighbourhood, focus on other features of your rental that might be appealing to corporate guests. You can highlight your free parking, the proximity of your vacation rental home to public transport facilities, or even offer them free transportation or an airport pickup.
Amenities
Study the corporate market and collect a list of their preferred amenities. Make a full list of your rental’s amenities and market them around your audience in various channels.
Know your property and its amenities very well. Know your neighbourhood and spot the local corporates to be able to offer them something they need. Focus on different amenities to present your vacation rental to business bookers.
Business travellers appreciate convenience as travelling itself builds up stress and exhaustion, let alone the pressure of working and attending back-to-back meetings. Therefore, it is essential to focus on the convenience and offer them whatever delivers it, whether it is high-quality bedding to collapse on after a lengthy day of work or free parking for business travellers coming from shorter distances.
Work usually doesn’t stop when the guests return home. So in the first instance, Wi-Fi is the most basic unquestionable premise when considering the amenities for properties for business travellers.
Besides, corporate-friendly properties for business travellers must be equipped with a desk and a comfortable workspace that they can use for catching up on their emails or preparing reports or presentations for their meetings.
That would be great if you could also offer a specific room or space they could use as their meeting place to invite a bunch of colleagues or clients over.
Daily cleaning, concierge, and laundry services are usually preferred by business travellers whose time is always tight.
Pay considerable attention to details. Offer a printer, fax, photocopier, a set of phone and laptop chargers or an instant coffee maker.
Provide a guidebook of top restaurants, grab and go counters and shopping centres in the neighbourhood, as well as the sightseeing and entertainment venues and opportunities to experience the local culture for the guests who like to stay a little more and add up some leisure to their business trip.
Offering discounts to local restaurants, parking, significant attractions, or sightseeing tours will also be welcomed by your business guests.
In addition, updating your outdated appliances from time to time and deep cleaning for guests who are coming to stay for a long time can make a big difference.
2. Simplify Processes
Travelling for work is arduous, and your guests are too worn out after a long day’s work or flight. They are short of resting time to wait for the keys or fill in lengthy check-in forms. Therefore, having a seamless check-in and check-out process and key handover is necessary for corporate-friendly properties for business travellers.
Let self-check-ins if possible to speed things up and give your guests some privacy from the very beginning of their stay. A mobile check in-app or a smart lock may also come to your help and save you from waking up in the middle of the night waiting for some guests to arrive.
They might also ask for early check-ins and late check-outs, so you need to handle it with a bit of flexibility.
Your cancellation and refund policies should also move towards flexibility. Although it might sound like a big risk, a more moderate cancellation policy pretty much helps you build long-lasting relationships with your business guests.
Make it easy for corporate travellers to book with you and provide them with detailed invoices.
Be more flexible with the pricing. You can encourage your corporate guests to stay longer at your property by offering good deals, more moderate rates and discounted packages, like lower weekend pricing. Price appropriately to attract more business bookers. It’s worth the risk!
3. Market Your Property as an Airbnb for Business Travellers
Building a solid marketing strategy for your Airbnb for business travellers lies at the foundation of making long-lasting relationships with your guests. Matching your amenities and services with corporate guests’ preferences and providing them with a shining guest experience can help you meet this goal to a great deal.
However, running competitive marketing campaigns and offering special business packages, discounts and loyalty programs can encourage the guests to return and boost your repeat bookings.
Send your past business guests pre-arrival, during-stay and post-departure emails and offer them business traveller promotions with leisure facilities they can’t reject.
Let them choose you over your competitors for an upcoming work trip.
They don’t have a great deal of time to spend researching and planning a trip. So it’s worth making their life easy and inspiring them with tips and suggestions on the local area.
Concluding remarks
Prioritising attracting corporate guests, initiated in the pandemic time and shed light on the value of this extensive group of travellers. So, vacation rental managers will focus on this industry segment to boost their occupancy rate and secure revenue streams more than ever.
The tips suggested here are not the best or the only solutions; but what we have gained through our long experience in the industry. Of course, you know your rental, its potentials, your neighbourhood and the businesses around you better than we do. Just focus more on your target market segment and understand what corporate-friendly properties for business travellers must have. Then, get creative and find your own ways to offer them what they need.
The extra mile you go and the added-value services you offer will always go a long way and can boost your short-term business’s income.
