The vacation rental industry is faced with challenges of lack of organization, overload of tasks, keeping track of travel regulations, and providing timely customer assistance. These are some of the many challenges small, medium, or large businesses engaged in the vacation rental industry. In addition, such businesses are constrained by the need to ensure customer satisfaction every minute, every hour, and every day of the week.
Topping the list of challenges is the ability to provide a consistent and exceptional customer experience. In research conducted in 2018, Temkin Group proved that companies that prioritized customer experience as a priority earned more than $1 billion yearly.
This is because when on vacation, travelers might have lots of questions. For example, currency exchange rates, places to visit, customized amenities, events, geopolitical situations, etc. – all of these questions need to be answered. Although one might contend that an FAQ section on the business website would suffice, a personalized experience creates confidence in customers.
That’s why hiring a virtual assistant for vacation rental is the best strategy to provide timely, friendly, and important guidance for travelers. The following are some of the many reasons why vacation rental owners prefer hiring virtual assistants.
Table of Contents
Reason 1: Full-time or part-time support
Hiring a virtual assistant offers vacation rental businesses the flexibility of keeping full-time or on-demand or part-time virtual assistants. This approach is cost-effective and helps the business hire a variety of virtual assistance depending on the travel season.
Reason 2: Cost savings on support
Support expenses are drastically reduced. Virtual assistants provide end-to-end support. It reduces support calls to customer service representatives of third-party service providers, travel insurance providers, hotels, travel advisories, etc.
Reason 3: All tasks performed with precision and quality
Virtual assistants can provide administrative, online concierge, ticketing, booking, assistance, sales, marketing, tele calling, and several other services. A virtual assistant can perform all such tasks with precision and quality.
Reason 4: Increased customer satisfaction, trust, and confidence
The presence of a virtual assistance team creates trust and confidence in customers who are vacationing at the vacation rental. They are likely to make repeat visits. There is a possibility of more word-of-mouth marketing.
Now that you know the reasons for hiring a virtual assistant for your business, let’s look into the tasks virtual assistants for vacation rentals can do.
What are the services that a virtual assistant can provide a vacation rental business?
Virtual assistants are stakeholders of the vacation rental business. They help in all aspects of the business. A team of virtual assistants can be hired for a range of activities. The activities could range from administrative ones to finance and accounting, sales and marketing, advertising and promotions, customer experience, and even IT and infrastructure management.
Financial management
A virtual assistant can collect funds, payments, and taxes from customers, suppliers, and vendors on behalf of the company. In addition, bookkeeping accounts management and the virtual assistant can take up several other finance and cash-flow-related services.
Research
They can assist in research on the latest trends in the vacation rental business. The research data can be used to provide inputs to the business to implement improvement activities. The research data can also sell vacation rental properties to new, prospective, and existing clientele.
Customer experience strategy
A virtual assistant for vacation rental properties can create customer experience strategies to increase customer satisfaction and sales. In addition, vacation rental business owners can use virtual assistant services to organize workflows in the organization. They can also help in creating and implementing business plans and measuring customer success.
How can hiring a virtual assistant increase customer experience for vacation rental business customers?
Online Concierge Service
A virtual assistant for a vacation rental can greet guests, answer their queries, respond to their needs, and be their virtual travel companion throughout their stay at the rental property. One might think that a virtual assistant is more like a customer support executive. Although there are overlaps between the two roles, there are wide differences.
Online 360 degrees customer support
A customer support executive has a limited set of responsibilities – not a good idea when considering the benefits of a virtual assistant for vacation rental properties. Most of these responsibilities are limited to answering a limited set of questions. Any further question is relayed to the respective department. Depending on the nature of the business, the department can respond immediately, or the response might be delayed.
Customer expectations and experience support
A virtual assistant for vacation rental houses will virtually attend to all aspects of guests. This includes their recreational needs, food, laundry, entertainment, accommodation, email, travel, payments, health, and even personal concerns. By representing the business in this capacity, a virtual assistant instills confidence in the customers. They do not feel distant or alienated from the vacation rental business company. On the contrary, they feel that the company is always beside them and keen on providing them a good experience.
Conclusion
The reasons for hiring a virtual assistant for the vacation rental business are strong. But only a few virtual assistant service provider companies can provide a holistic range of services. Fortunately, these rare firms such as Vgrow Virtual Assistant Services have helped many companies revitalize their businesses into windfall profits. Hire virtual assistants from Vgrow. Visit our website or contact us via email. Our executives will be happy to help you book one.
Click on the ‘Like’ tab, drop a comment, and feel free to share it across.