Marketing your Spanish vacation rental

Effective marketing of your Spanish vacation rental is the key to success if you’re embarking on a buy to let investment.

As with any business, the most desirable product in the world isn’t going to make money if people don’t get to hear about it. Many greenhorn investors, new to the Spanish holiday rental game, have been bewildered to find their property lying empty for most of the year whilst their neighbour’s identical property is booked solid, even in low season.

With a glut of holiday villas and apartments currently available in many coastal areas of Spain it’s vital that owners make sure their particular properties are highly visible to potential clients.

Marketing your holiday home in Spain

There are three main marketing techniques available to holiday home owners:

• Advertising in the print media
• Using a professional letting agency
• Advertising on the Internet

None of these techniques is necessarily more effective than the others – it all depends on your particular circumstances and the amount of time you’re prepared to invest in promoting your Spanish rental and handling lettings yourself. If you’re a busy person with a full time job and your Spanish rental property is a sideline to bring in some extra cash, your best option may be to hand the whole thing over to a letting agency.

Spanish rental property agencies

A local high street agent will visit the property, take photos, prepare an information sheet and advise you on appropriate rental fees. If you’ve bought the right kind of buy to let property in the right location (http://www.talk2sir.com/buying-spanish-property-to-let-guide.asp) most agents will offer a guaranteed income – usually from June to September. They’ll hold your keys, handle your clients, sort out payment and deposits and arrange weekly changeovers. An agent will also take responsibility for pool cleaning, gardening and general maintenance work if you don’t have your own property manager on the spot.

Advertising your Spanish rental in the papers

Advertising in the holiday sections of local and national newspapers, both in Spain and your native country, is one way to generate bookings without having to pay agents’ commissions. It’s also worth considering publicising your property in specialist magazines if you’re targeting particular groups such as golfers. The downside is that print media advertising is expensive and it reaches a limited target audience. And if you’re not living near the rental property yourself, you’ll need to employ at least one person or a team of people to handle all the tasks that an agent would normally deal with.

Advertising your Spanish rental on the internet

The third option – Internet marketing – has proved increasingly popular over the last decade which has seen an explosion in the number of on-line holiday rental web sites. If you go down this route it’s important to check out a number of different sites to see which one offers the best package to suit your needs.

Some sites work on a commission only basis but in most cases you pay a one off annual fee to promote your property with colour photos, a detailed description and full rental tariff. The better sites offer on-line availability charts so visitors can see at a glance when your property is already booked. Choose a site which has a high profile on the web for the key phrases relevant to your Spanish rental so you can be sure that your property is visible to a worldwide audience. All these services are major advantages which are simply not available in the print media.

Some Internet marketing companies offer a range of different packages to suit your needs. The more expensive packages incorporate many of the “hands-on” services you’d expect from a high street agent – meeting clients, cleaning, collecting rent and deposits etc.

Click here to view Talk 2 Sirs guaranteed rental packages

But if you’re only looking for Internet exposure, you can expect to pay a small annual fee which will be more than covered by the cost of a single booking.

Click here to see our investment guides to Spanish Property