Determining Your Target Audience

When it come to determining which target group to market your short term rental to, a few things come into play. Your location will be the primary factor. If you’re located in a downtown business district, you’re not likely to have big families with multiple kids. The space itself will be a close second. If you’ve got a mountain cabin with 8 bedrooms, you’re going to expect large groups of various composition. The local STR regulations may come into play as some have a cap on the number of guests allowed. Streamlining your operation may be a factor for some. There is value in simplicity, and not marketing toward specific market groups can allow you to streamline your operation.

There are some generally accepted stereotypes when it comes to location. Beach towns are going to skew towards families and college-age groups. Mountain areas will be more couples and families. Downtown cities are generally single travelers and small groups. While there are always exceptions, these are trends that generally hold true and can aid in the decision making process. Every location will have its own niche, even from neighborhood to neighborhood you will see differences in trends. For example: there is a beach town that sees almost exclusively families with pets while 5 miles down the road, the next beach town over sees an even split between groups of young people and families. Just a 5 mile difference has a drastically different consumer base.

To determine what market group you want to target, you must first discover what the current consumer base is. From there, you can decide which of the current groups that are active in your area you want to target. There are a few ways to determine which groups are in your area. One is to do the research yourself. Go through current listings in your area, catalog the bed/bath/number of guests/nightly rate, and visit the area in person. Get a feel for what is nearby and who is frequenting these places. Are you seeing young professionals out on a Wednesday night going for drinks, or does everything close by 9 pm and have a kids menu? A quick way to gather data is through Airdna. It takes the guesswork out, and provides you with the data of Airbnbs in the area without having to spend hours compiling info from listings yourself. Airdna is a service that you must pay for, but as with any service, you must determine if the cost is worth the time it saves you. For myself, my first listing was in the town I lived in, so the cost of Airdna was not worth it considering I had a very good feel for the area already, and I had the time to research Airbnb myself.

After doing the research, I concluded that the biggest market group for the area was families with pets. Large groups, some with children and some without, made up the next biggest group followed by couples with pets. With this information, we made the decision to market towards families with children and pets. This was the largest customer base, and while catering towards children and pets added complication, this complication was worth it to broaden the pool of potential customers. Our historical data for that location has over 50% of guests with pets, so we would automatically restrict our customer base by 50% by excluding pets. This data reinforces our decision to allow pets. While it is easy to reflect at the data and say we made the right decision, it is more difficult to read the data beforehand and be confident in the decisions. This was a fairly straightforward decision, as a 50% decrease in customer base is significant, but what if it had only been 10%? Would we have made the same decision? Probably not. What about at 25%? Possibly. Everyone has a different risk threshold, and you will have to determine if the risk is worth the potential reward. In addition to allowing pets and kids, we very consciously marketed towards kids. The data was not as overwhelmingly in the favor of kids as it was with pets, but we chose to market to families to discourage the large groups of younger adults. As that made up the second biggest marketing group, but came with an increased risk of noise complaints and parties, we adopted the strategy of marketing to families with children to discourage this group. This was a risk that we felt was not worth the potential reward.

Now that we had determined our specific marketing target, we had to determine ways to actually market the property towards them. The property had 2 bedrooms, so we dedicated one as the master and the other as a kid’s room. We accomplished this by having a queen bed in the master and a bunk bed in the secondary room. Nothing screams kids more than a bunk bed. We also provide amenities geared towards kids: pack n’ play, high chair, infants’ plates & cups & utensils, children’s books, black out curtains, and some toys. We made sure all of these items were visible in our listing pictures. There was so much demand for pets, that we didn’t need to market beyond allowing pets in the listing. However, we included amenities that make hosting pets easier for ourselves: fully fenced yard, outside hose, couch cover, dog towels, and doggy bags.

To market towards single travelers, you can provide extra toiletries like disposable toothbrush, razor, etc. Make sure you have a dedicated desk space, fast internet, and contactless late check in. To market to larger groups, having a fully stocked kitchen with more than just bare essentials both for both utensils & pantry, a recreational room with a pool table, or a pool are a good way to get bookings. This group is really the only group that readily accepts multiple beds in a single room, or lofted areas with beds. A great way to market to couples is to have an outdoor sitting area and stage it with two wine glasses or coffee mugs in your listing pictures. This is especially effective if you have a good view or a nice sunset in the background. These are just a few examples of how to use the myriad of furnishings and amenities in your listing to market towards your target group.

Selecting your target audience to market towards will help restrict some of the options when it comes to furnishing and stocking you STR. It can also help you select an appropriate property if you haven’t selected one yet. If you know your audience, you will know how to cater to their needs. And that is the base of any product, fulfilling a need. So go forth and fulfill the need in your area!