Vacation Rentals as an industry was popular even in 1800s, and the idea has been around since the mid-1600s. It started with King Louis XIV who wanted his hunting lodge to be extended into a palace. This became a vacation hub, where dignitaries came in to soak up their holidays here later in the years.

With the advent of telegraphs, communication between the vacation renters and the homeowners increased multi-fold since then and have been having a significant impact. Much of the advertising took place through newspapers. The introduction of the internet has a game-changer.

At the end of 2018, advertising has become pivotal to be heard above all the noise in the digital space, similar vacation rentals brands. We are going to explore some of the brands that put out the most number of unique ads in the past one year.

HOME TO GO

HomeToGo is a marketplace of vacation rentals. They help the renters compare the prices across the platform and then guide them to their partner’s website to book the home. This has a two-sided impact, vacation renters get a space to advertise their own spaces, and when HomeToGo connects them, they get a commission.

In the vacation rental advertising space, HomeToGo has the most number of unique ads – a whopping 34,680 unique ads in the last one year while spending $1.3 Million dollars. Their ad campaign in this past one year features Chris Noth – in their video ads. These are however a fraction of their advertising.

Their image ads are predominantly as shown below, where a call to action pops up distinctly prompting the renter to compare homes at HomeToGo.com

They focus majorly on text ads or Text/Image ads with a thrust on Google Search Partners. With snippets of interesting ads pop up based on the renter’s search, age, location and a few more demographics. It is not surprising to note that 97% of their advertisements are programmatic ads, while the majority of them are focused on desktop advertising.

HomeToGo has published the most number of unique ads in the month of July and April, taking into account not just the holidays but the onset of summer and the vacation homes been book would be much higher than around the year.

AIRBNB

Airbnb has been the gamechanger and the trendsetter in this industry. Their ad campaigns have been unique bringing in different perspectives, their creatives are more thoughtful than most advertisers (not just vacation rentals).

Their Superbowl ad campaign took everyone by awe! Their ads spoke about inclusion in the society, which trended with #weaccept and quickly become popular. Their creatives since have been inclusive, showing diversity in the picture ads as well.

Airbnb also markets to those who have extra rooms/apartments/villas to get them to register on their platform and make most their unused space.

They increased their ad spends towards the end of October 2018. this increase in ad spends was to promote their new strategy of exploring the experiences through Airbnb and making the guests feel like a local. Since the ‘experience’ of the Airbnb started getting a thrust, more creatives have been created, to promote the ‘live like a local’ experience even more than before. They have had their Call to Action stand out distinctly in their brand colour, which grabs attention easily. These varied live like a local experience including dining, experiences, etc

With the holiday season around the corner, and the new interest to promote their ads, their unique ads per day have increased many folds. It is interesting to note that much of their unique creatives are targeted for the desktop, especially when they are sprucing up their app to make savvy.

Much of their advertising happens through the guests, and influencers, which has a greater impact while reaching out to the larger audience as they take comfort to hear from the guests who previously visited these spaces and decide based on the experiences shared.

HOLIDAY HOMES

Holiday Homes is a marketplace that features places that are listed across the other vacation rental portals, including flights, and Hotel Reservations. Their total ad spend is less than $1 Million, their unique ad count in the past year is at a whopping 8,278 which is basically 13% of the unique ads put out by the top 5 vacation rentals.

Their strategy is very similar to HomeToGo where other vacation rental clients get to put their property for the guests to choose from, and their advertisements cater to the larger section of the vacation rentals as well. Holiday Homes is a listing of places and have no say over the property listings. However, they provide the space to compare easily and make most of their savings.

Their ad spends are all targeted at programmatic ads which helps them identify the potential guests much easier by tailor making the ads to read to their needs. These ads are published to their wide targeted audience through Google Ad Search.

In the last one year, May and July 2018 had seen most number of unique ads. The advertisements helped them convert much of the summer vacation homes when the country would take holidays and the vacation rentals would be most useful. However, the trends are changing from seeking these places for a holiday to making them more intrinsic to travel, business and other social meetings.

VACATION DIFFERENTLY

A one-stop vacation rental which gives all information to plan your dream travel. Not only are vacation homes listed, but there are also other quirky articles, insights and details that help the guests plan their perfect vacation at a vacation location.

Vacation Differently focuses completely on Native Ads, which makes their content a mix of Text/Image, and this is largely catered to their wide audience base through OutBrain. This works well with their quirky inputs which can be easily advertised as bytes of information on the web.

Their native ads use images which does not scream of their brand but catches their audience by interesting articles headlines, and images which often designed to look like news articles or a blog, and finally leading them to the website and give them the information. This has seen better conversion, and many of the brands recently take up this form of advertising.

They largely concentrate on mobile ads, with a sudden dip in July where no creatives were launched. Vacation Differently are more or less consistent during the year, with the recent dip in the unique ads that are online per day.

VRBO

Vacation Rental by Owner (VRBO) is a family of vacation rentals in the US. It has been in existence since the pre-internet era, and it was founded in 1995. It was purchased by Home Away network in 2006 and has been a part of the family ever since.

Similar to Airbnb, VRBO look to provide a good run for these trend-setters. They provide a complete spectrum of vacation homes, be it a villa, apartments, room, condos and more.

Much of the content put out by VRBO are videos, and the rest being Test ads that are propagated through programmatic advertisements.

A very small quantum of their ads are published as images with each the CTAs highlighted in orange to attract the attention of the potential clients. However, unlike Airbnb, the entire home needs to be booked un VRBO to stay and use the space. This is a huge limiting factor when it comes to potential clients.

VRBO in the last year has put out 4485 unique ads through the year, which is currently sees a significant increase in the current times, ahead of the holiday season, where the initial days of December already saw the peak number of ads.

To give a rough picture of how much of unique content our most creative insurance advertisers create on a daily basis, the below graph would be able to do some justice.

Data Source | adbeat.com