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Availability calendars are a feature that renters and owners often differ on. Renters want to know if a property is available at a certain time before communicating with the owner. Owners often worry about putting up a calendar because then they may get fewer leads, and hence may miss a chance to sell the prospective renter on renting the property at a different time.
The renter's take
Imagine you are a renter and you want to book a property. You start searching on the website and you find properties you really like. Many of these properties do not have calendars so you have to contact them simply to find out if they are available. This makes searching for vacation properties on the web less attractive and more of a chore.
The complaint we hear the most from prospective renters is "why does this property not have a calendar".
The owner's side
Often owners are reluctant to have a calendar for a few reasons:
- It may reduce the chances of being contacted by a prospective renter, and therefore reduce the chances of selling that prospect on another time if the time they want is already booked
- it may indicate when the property is empty and hence increase the chances of vandalism and/or theft
- it is hard to keep all the calendars up to date
The first two reasons are valid in part, but have to be weighed against (a) the reluctance of some renters to contact owners just to find out availability and (b) the time spent dealing with the emails that simply ask if a property is available at a certain time.
Another complaint we hear at ovrentals.com is from owners who say that they have too many emails to deal with. In addition we also hear that one thing that upsets owners is when renters contact a number of properties at the same time causing each owner to spend time responding when only one will get the business. This is more likely to happen when renters have to send "are you available" emails, rather than seeing availability on the web.
The final reason can be discounted if a "common" calendar is used, like the one on offer at rentors.org. This calendar can be plugged into many vacation rental sites and therefore when it is updated, the updates show up on all vacation rental sites.
The bottom line
While there are some valid concerns about the inclusion of a calendar on a vacation rental property, if the only problem is keeping the calendars up to date then we suggest you select a central calendar provider that you can use on all the sites that market your vacation rental.
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