Every tourism dollar is hard won these days with cost-conscious consumers – pressured by the high cost of living – carefully prosecuting the true value of all purchases, including short breaks and holidays.
The good news is that people are still travelling in regional Australia – but doing it differently, typically booking later and for fewer nights, according to short-term rental property managers Jess and Kye Andersen from Echuca Holiday Homes.
Jess says booking lead times for the Murray River border towns of Echuca (Victoria) and Moama (NSW) during January, a peak booking month, this year shrank to 14 or 15 days compared with the standard 45 to 60 day lead times for the post-Christmas holiday period.
“People are making their decisions last minute, we’ve never had so many people asking for a deal, it’s every call,” says Jess.
“They don’t want to commit, they want to know that they afford it. They’re also staying for less time or booking a bigger house, dragging another family in makes it more cost-effective.
“You see it come across in all different ways. People still trying to get away but want to get the most out of it that they can.”
She says this is a major reason Echuca Holiday Homes has focused on generating direct bookings through its website.
“We sit at about 65 per cent direct bookings compared with the industry average of around 25 per cent – we don’t want our bookings to go through the OTAs,” says Jess.
“The guests pay less because there are no booking fees and we prefer that our Australian dollars don’t go overseas.”
Kye says direct bookings and an intuitive user interface were significant factors in Echuca Holiday Homes switching to the Guesty Property Management System last year.
“Because we have such a focus on direct bookings, it was really important to us that we went with a system that’s easy for guests to use and as feature rich as the OTAs,” he says.
“We wanted it to be as easy for guests to go ‘we’re just going to book through them’ not ‘their system is too hard, I’m just going to go with Airbnb’.
“Guesty has really worked for us in that regard.”
When the couple started Echuca Holiday Homes nine years ago, they aspired to establish a trusted brand, “where no matter which home our guests booked, they knew they could rely on our brand, they could rely on us,” explains Jess.
Attention to detail and customer service are central to the busines, which employs 12 staff and, unlike many property managers, keeps the cleaning inhouse to better manage quality control.
“We’re very hands on with our management,” says Kye. We like to treat our guests and our homeowners the way we would like to be treated,” he says.
“We have a great passion for maintenance and management of property and are very, very proud of the product we present. And we like to provide a good experience to our guests.”
Most of their business comes from Melbourne, a two or three hour drive away, and they now have more 50 properties evenly split between Echuca and Moama on either side of the river.
Kye says the imposition of 7.5 per cent tax on short-term rental revenue in Victoria from January 1 has complicated matters and made properties in the state more expensive than NSW.
“We’re in a unique position – we manage about 25 properties on each side of the river so we’re subject to different laws in each state and the new short stay levy in Victoria is certainly challenging.”
Looking ahead, Kye says they would like to take on more local properties but have no immediate plans to expand beyond Echuca and Moama.
“Sticking to our ethos, I want to be able to see and touch and feel each one of my holiday homes,” he says.
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