From holiday homes in Spain, vacation rental properties in Florida, beachside villas in Barbados, Antigua and Tobago, luxurious villas in Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca, beautiful apartments in Tenerife and Lanzarote, idyllic country cottages in England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales, rural holiday homes in France, Italy and Portugal, Cyprus or Turkey, not forgetting the picture perfect ski chalets in the French Alps, Italian Dolomites or Austrian Tyrol- people from all over the world have taken advantage of the increased economic prosperity over the last few decades to invest their hard earned savings in some form of bricks and mortar.

In addition to buying your holiday home for its likley future capital appreciation, I suspect that you are also very keen to generate income from your investment by means of letting our the property for a few weeks or even months each year.

To compete in what is a very crowded marketplace, you need to think and plan carefully as to how best to promote your property in such a way that you generate enough booking enquiries which will ultimately lead to rental income.

So here are some tips and ideas which I think you will find useful in ensuring that your property achieves and even surpasses your expectations in terms of generating rental income.

1.Know Your Break Even Point!

How much income do you need your property to generate each year to cover any mortgage, maintenance costs and local authority charges and taxes- not forgetting of course, the monies you may have to spend on advertising and promoting your investment property? How much does it really cost you to maintain your property each year. You need to include any mortage costs, maintenance costs, local authority or muncipal taxes and levies etc. Once you have calculated this figure you will then be able to calculate how much each week you need to charge our your holiday property for in order to at least break even and cover your costs. Knowing this may also allow you to be more flexible when it comes to setting the weekly rental price of your property. This is especially useful in a competitive market or during times when, quite simply, there are fewer people looking to rent holiday homes.

2. Set An Advertising Budget (And stick to it!)

Clearly it would be disappointing to find that despite your best efforts, you have actually spent so much money in promotional and advertising costs, that it has wiped out any potential profit from your total rental income. In the world of business, many companies would tend to set a marketing budget of anywhere between 5% & 10% of their total annual turnover. This would seem to make sense, and if you see your investment or holiday rental property as a business- which I suggest you should-then you can use this 5-10% figure as good guideline in helping you to set a sensible advertising budget.

3 Know Which Methods Are Working (Keep Records)

A marketing director of a well-known company was once alleged to have said that he believed about 50% of his marketing budget produced profitable returns. The problem was, he didn't know which 50%! This may sound funny, but alas, it is an easy trap to fall into and its cause is largely down to not keeping records or tracking exactly where each new business enquiry comes from.

This problem is so widespread amongst all businesses that it goes to explain somewhat, why many companies have now started to ask their potential and actual customers that most valuable of $64,000 questions- "Where did you learn about us?", or "Where did you find us?".

Some sage business guru once said "Turnover is vanity, but profit is sanity!". In other words your campaigns must be cost effective and generate more in ultimate rental income than the cost of the promotional activity itself. Its not enough for a particular campaign just to create potential booking enquiries, it is vital that as the property owners you know how much you have spent to create that rental enquiry?

4. Calculate How Much It Costs To Produce An Enquiry.

If you are going to be able to understand which of your advertising campaigns are more successful and produce the best results, it is vital that you have a mechanism for recording the results of your various marketing and promotional activities. This will allow to ditch those methods which have a very low return on your investment, conversely it will also allow you to focus more on those methods and areas where the majority of your enquiries and bookings are coming from.

5.Use The Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule!)

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s, Dr.Joseph M.Juran inaccurately attributed the 80/20 Rule to Pareto, calling it Pareto's Principle. While it may be misnamed, Pareto's Principle or Pareto's Law as it is sometimes called, can be a very effective tool to help you manage effectively.

Despite all of your various efforts at promoting your property, you will probably be amazed to calculate that most of your booking enquiries will come from one or two sources- this is what we mean by the 80/20 rule. Providing you are not like our unnamed hapless marketing manager referred to in point 3, then you should be able to use this valuable information to really focus on those activities which achieve the most profitable results.

Summary

So there you have it! Some tips and examples as to how you can leverage the rental income producing ability of your holiday home, whether it be a villa, townhouse, cottage, ski chalet or apartment.

In future articles I will be covering the issues of where best to advertise your property and how to ensure you are promoting your property in the most advantageous and effective way.