How Live Chat Can Help Your Vacation Rental Website

When researching, planning, and booking their trips online in the digital age, travelers expect much more than ever before.

To stay ahead of the competition, there is an increasing need for travel industry providers to modernize their businesses. One of the ways they can accomplish this? Live chat is available.

Modern guest expects instant gratification in their personal life (via social media, WhatsApp, etc.) and in customer service.

It’s almost unthinkable for some travelers to pick up the phone and call another country when there’s an easier, faster way. Online live chat is a convenient and beneficial addition to your vacation rental website. It can assist in quickly resolving guest concerns and even motivating them to book!

Here are our top five reasons you need live chat on your website as a vacation rental owner. Hint: it can significantly increase rental bookings.

1. Live chat adds a personal touch.

Most travelers do not buy lodging on the spur of the moment. Before deciding on a vacation rental, guests will spend time comparing different options, reading reviews, and, most importantly, asking the owners questions.

Live chat enables real-time conversations with prospective guests to resolve their doubts and answer their questions immediately. It allows you to give your brand a voice and a human touch without needing costly phone calls or long email correspondence.

According to research, 83% of customers required live support while making an online purchase. Installing a live chat widget on your vacation rental website ensures you are available as the friendly face when guests need you the most.

2. It is appropriate for those on a tight budget

Live chat is quickly becoming the solution for travel providers, not only because of the convenience of responding to inquiries almost immediately but also because of its low cost. There are a growing number of free tools available, such as Tawk. Too, in addition to many online chat providers that only charge a few dollars per month.

When you don’t have to worry about the high costs of returning international phone calls, you can concentrate entirely on providing excellent customer service and managing guest expectations. You can also use vacation rental software to manage all guest communications in one place.

3. You can easily engage guests with proactive live chat.

Instead of waiting for guest inquiries to come to you, you can prompt them to contact you directly by including a chat widget on your website. The term “proactive live chat” refers to how the tool initiates a conversation with a website visitor or potential guest.

This is in contrast to reactive live chat, which users initiate by clicking an option to chat with an agent.

Proactive live chat can result in nearly four times the engagement. When a user is in a state of doubt or consideration, personalized targeting can help provide the answers they require quickly and, as a result, increase your bookings.

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4. It encourages guests to complete their reservations.

 

According to statistics, 38% of consumers have purchased as a result of a good live chat session, and live chat can reduce sales cart abandonment by up to 30%. These kinds of figures can significantly increase your bookings with little effort.

Potential guests may be more inclined to make a reservation if they receive prompt answers to their burning questions.

Furthermore, you can use live chat across your site’s pages for various purposes. For example, you can create one proactive message on your homepage that reminds visitors of current promotions and another that provides information on special nightly rates on your rates and availability page.

Receiving these messages at the most appropriate time (for example, looking for information) can also influence their decision-making.

5. You will remain one step ahead of your competitors.

 

Examine the websites of some of your competitors; what do they have in common? We believe they are not yet using live chat.

Only a few vacation rental owners are beginning to recognize the advantages of using technology such as live chat, giving you a significant advantage.

“While your competitors’ reservation teams are still working call-by-call and their front desk staff is slowly responding to emails from the day before, your team can be nimble with live chat and interact with more than one traveler at a time, in real-time,” Tambourine explained.

According to The Chat Shop, one major hotel chain saw a 34% increase in sales after implementing live chat. Furthermore, 42% of customers say live chat is their preferred method of receiving support, and 63% say they’ll return to a website that offers live chat.

Adding live chat to your website will increase your chances of making a good first impression on visitors.

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