If you own a property on the Charleston Coast, you’re already aware that the vacation rental market is competitive. With hundreds of stunning, beachfront properties across the barrier islands, travelers have endless possibilities when it comes to their next getaway.
Investment properties are a fantastic way to guarantee additional, disposable income, especially in Charleston, South Carolina. The biggest challenge, however, is making sure that the money coming in through your rental listing is paying off the costs of the mortgage, utilities, and upkeep of the property itself. The best way to guarantee the highest return on your investment is by improving your booking rate, making sure that your property is booked and busy through every season.
In this blog, we’ll break down all the best ways to improve your booking rate for your property, with proven strategies that’ll help you increase your occupancy, earn better reviews, and keep guests coming back each year.
Optimize Your Listing
Professional, High Quality Visuals
Photos are the first thing many guests see when looking for a vacation spot for their next getaway. High-quality photography not only gets a guest to click through, but it also should show them (accurately) what a property looks like, what is offered at the location, and additional amenities in the area.
Interactive floor plans or videos showcasing a property and its features is another great selling point for getting bookings. If a guest can truly envision themselves staying in a space, they’re more likely to follow through with a booking. Showing off properties' unique features, location, and local charm will bring guests in and impress them when they follow through with their stay – especially when the imagery online matches their experience on site.
AI-Optimized Copywriting
Second to high-quality property imagery is the property description that follows. In today’s era of rapid technological expansion, optimizing listing write-ups to be AI-optimized for Google’s AI interface is highly beneficial to getting bookings. The more you can share writing that can bring your home to the top of results when guests are researching, the better.
In your listing, make sure all property information is up to date, accurate, and enticing. Include unique selling points of your property front and center, using keywords regarding location, views, pool access, pet-friendliness, and more to bring in guests looking for their perfect stay. When listing your property with a management group or on your own, make sure to include all the accurate information so when individuals are looking for specifics in search queries across platforms, they can find you!
Revenue Management
Demand Management
Working with a team or a tool to monitor demand in the area can guarantee successful bookings through the highs and lows of the busy season and off-season. Charleston is a hub for local events, covering everything from local marathons to country music festivals, holidays and sporting events. The Charleston area brings in guests for every occasion, so optimizing your rental rates for the local demand is key to seeing bookings that are leagues ahead of the competition. Adapt ahead of time and reap the benefits.
Dynamic Pricing
During the off-season, reducing rates and nightly minimums can guarantee guests are booking for long weekends, short-term stays and filling gaps throughout the week. Increasing rates based on demand is key to off-season success, but reducing rates and offering discounts on long-term stays throughout the winter guarantees stable income, high occupancy rates and overall a higher quantity of happy guests. Flexible pricing offers the best results throughout the calendar year, so using a team or tool that can assist with these fluctuations can only improve your return on investment.
These insights into market demand also allows the ability to increase rates for high-demand events or time periods, as mentioned above. Making sure the property is competitively priced guarantees the home is matching its competition without losing money on the booking. Increased rates based on demand is a busy season strategy, but increasing for holidays and local events is key to seeing revenue upswings even during the slow season.
Guest Experiences
Five-Star Reviews
Guest experience is everything, and with happy guests come five-star reviews. The more high-quality reviews you receive, the higher your rankings on Airbnb and VRBO become. Properties with better reviews typically have higher occupancy rates and overall higher revenue due to trusting other guest recommendations, alongside allowing owners to offer higher nightly rates when their property is consistently booked and busy.
Along with that, guests who offer helpful feedback in their reviews allow for owners to address weak points in their property while simultaneously improving the guest experience.
Repeat Bookings
Offering a top-to-bottom fantastic experience can bring guests back time and again for additional stays year over year. Providing excellent cleanliness, a well-maintained home, and responsive communication builds trust between owners and guests and can truly connect a renter to a home they want to visit a second and third time. Even better, incentivize guests to rebook by offering a small return renter discount. Build trust, form a connection, and see more consistent bookings year over year!
Property Monitoring and Management
Metric Tracking
As mentioned earlier, keeping track of property metrics is key to seeing success with your investment. Monitoring analytics for each part of the booking process is key to understanding your property. Every detail including occupancy rate, average nightly rate, lead time, cancellation rates, cost per booking from advertising and beyond, tell a story. When reviewing your data, optimize accordingly.
Even better, dig into all those same metrics for the local market. Dig deep into what your neighbors and similar properties are listing for, what their occupancy rates are, and look into what can make your property stand out from the competition. See something you like about their listings? A/B test your imagery, listing copy, advertising and work to constantly be improving your property to beat out the local competition.
Strategic Marketing
Organic and Paid Advertising
Marketing is always a great additional lever to pull when it comes to improving your home’s visibility and booking rate. Looking to reach a new audience of potential customers? Organic and paid marketing endeavors can share your listing to new markets, targeting individuals who might be searching for a place to stay for their next vacation. If you’re sharing local knowledge and intriguing visuals promoting your property, the opportunity for growth and property awareness is high.
When guests are booking your stay, collect their information. Anyways, to retarget to your past guests via email, text messaging, and paid advertising can not only guarantee rebookings but help build the relationship between your guests and yourself! Create blog posts, local guidebooks online and in-house to build on the community relationship between your guests and the area. The more areas you manage to market your stay, the better shot you have at visibility, awareness, and getting more bookings into your home!
Manage Your Listing with Sweetgrass Properties
At the end of the day, managing an investment property and improving your booking rate year over year is a job in itself. Working with a professional team that can not only manage your home from the inside out, but also offer the industry and local knowledge needed to rock the market is a huge benefit to many investors.
Here at Sweetgrass Properties, we have a full-scale marketing team to work closely with your listing to optimize the copywriting, visuals and video marketing to improve its visibility SEO-side and across online forums like VRBO and AirBNB, along with Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We have a vast reservations team that works with guests through every part of the process, from initial booking to check-in, in-house experience through check-out. Whether there’s a question or a qualm, our team is here to help your guests have the five star experience they deserve.
And alongside our fabulous marketing and reservations teams, we also have a team dedicated to property optimization and revenue management, offering that hands-on knowledge when it comes to nightly rates, ways to optimize bookings, and advice on improving occupancy rates through every season.
Thinking of investing in Charleston, but looking for the right property management group to take care of your home? There are plenty of options around the Charleston region, but none as hands-on, accommodating or supportive as Sweetgrass Properties. Voted Best Vacation Rental Company by the Post & Courier for 2025, we go out of our way to support our owners with impeccable service, remarkable care, and endless support.
Want to see what all the buzz is about? If you’re ready to take the next step and want reliable support in how to make your home a high-income investment property, Sweetgrass Properties is here to help. Contact us today to learn more!