You could fix your utilization problem with just some small adjustments!
I spend several hours every week doing 1-on-1 coaching calls/conversations with new and aspiring hosts, and active hosts who are struggling.
One of the things we almost always discuss is the importance of managing your trip preferences for maximum booking activity and profitability in peak seasons and slow seasons. We almost always end up making adjustments. And very often they will reach out to me within a few days, or a week or so, to tell me that bookings have improved. Here’s what we discuss.
Instant Booking:
During your busy peak season I recommend turning OFF instant booking, screening your trip requests, and choosing the ones with the best guests and highest earnings.
During the slow season, when you're struggling, turning instant booking back on will help you pick up additional trips. There is added risk, but you have to balance risk with reward.
Advance Notice:
Many times I speak with people who have an advance notice requirement or 6, or 12, or 24 hours. The longer your advance notice, the more trips you miss. Set your advance notice to as short a time period as you can manage.
Trip Buffer:
This is where a lot of folks get tripped up. Turo requires a minimum of 3 hours between trips. But I often talk to people who set this at a much higher requirement, which stacks down time ON TOP OF the advance notice requirement.
For instance, if you have advance notice at 6 hours, and trip buffer at 6 hours, you've potentially taken your vehicle out of search results for up to 12 hours every day. People aren't seeing your vehicle. Leave it at 3 hours!
Minimum Trip Length:
During your peak busy season, you'll do okay with a minimum trip length of 2 days or more (don't go too high). During your slow season when you're struggling, you should consider allowing one day trips.
Some things to remember about one-day trips: First, they will help fill your calendar, and often, one-day trips end up being multi-day trips with people who extend into additional days. A lot of folks live day-to-day financially and can only book one day at a time. Second, if you are in a business hub with year-round business travelers, by not allowing one-day trips, you could be missing business people flying into town for one day for work, and these will be good guests, possibly allowing you to even raise your rates a bit during the weekdays. Business visitors will pay more than locals. Third, it's important to remember that one-day trips can be more problematic with bad guests, but again, during the slow season is when you need to balance risk and reward.
Requiring Longer Weekend Trips:
This makes perfect sense during your peak busy season. But during the slow season when you're struggling, you'll pick up additional bookings without this requirement.
Allowing Long-Term Trips:
Toggling this on, and allowing long-term trips, is alway a good way to enjoy more passive income from your vehicle, as long as it's a vehicle that you don't need for personal use. My longest trip was 10 months! Talk about passive income!
Last-Minute Price Boost:
I love this feature and I think it was a very smart move by Turo to give this to us. Use it wisely.
During peak season, set it to 10%. During the slow season, try to keep it at 5%, but you may need to reduce it to 0% if your'e really struggling with bookings.
Active management is the key!
Turo is not a "set it and forget it" business. You have to be diligent about making sure your business is optimized for booking activity and profitability every month, all year long, and this requires analyzing and making adjustments from season to season.
I hope this was helpful!