Hostaway, the company which provides comprehensive vacation rental management software for ambitious property managers, has discovered a significant increase in direct bookings in the market over the previous three years after conducting a study of its booking data.
According to them, direct bookings have seen a considerable increase since 2020, despite the fact that other trends have normalised to levels prior to the Covid outbreak. Direct bookings on Hostaway’s platform climbed from an average of 7.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 13.5 percent by 2020 and 16.8 percent by 2022, according to the company. Between January and December 2021, the value of direct bookings completed through the Hostaway platform more than doubled in value.
“In general, consumer behaviors take a long time to change, but our data is showing that this is not the case with direct bookings right now. Guests are booking directly with property managers and this trend is accelerating”; says Marcus Rader, CEO & Co-Founder of Hostaway. The proportion of these in the vacation rental industry had been gradually on the rise before Covid, but it’s since had fantastic upwards growth, despite the robust cancellation policies of big OTAs at a time when travel was very uncertain.
“We see this trend as coming from the property operators. They have become far savvier with their marketing strategies and software. This has in turn been attracting more value-driven and experience-driven guests who are happy to shop around for the best vacation rental. Once they’ve had a positive experience booking directly, they’ll continue to do so again. For this reason, we don’t expect direct bookings to drop below pre-pandemic levels.”
