With its world heritage-listed wilderness, the Blue Mountains west of Sydney is one of Australia’s most iconic tourist destinations, attracting visitors from all over the world.
With the advent of Airbnb driving interest in holiday homes as an alternative to traditional accommodation, demand for private rentals has increased dramatically over the past fives years. But it has also resulted in an explosion of rentals coming onto the market, meaning increased competition for owners of short-term rentals.
One such rental, Omaroo Megalong Valley – which had historically outperformed its competitors, began to see a decrease in occupancy as the holiday home market became more crowded. Compounding the problem, it also saw a decrease in yield as a greater share of its bookings came from Airbnb and Stayz, which charge a commission for bookings made on their platforms.
The owners were keen drive more direct bookings through their own website – no easy task considering this meant competing with global platforms for the top position in search rankings… with a limited budget.
Re-building the website from the ground up, we focused on the user experience, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and automation in order to overcome theses challenges and meet its goals.
The website now delivers more than 30% of Omaroo’s total bookings – triple the share of direct bookings prior to the rebuild. And overall occupancy rates have surged to 85% year round, outperforming its competitors.
The focus on automation not only improved the user experience, but resulted in increased yield due to greater efficiency in booking management and guest communications.
Check out Omaroo Megalong Valley’s website.