Ten Reasons Your Vehicle Isn't Booked

You didn’t get that vehicle and list it on Turo just to watch it sit in your driveway or lot collecting bird droppings.

You thought that beauty was going to be out on the road 25 to 30 days a month making you money. But it isn’t, and the payments and insurance premiums keep coming. Why isn’t this working?

Here are some of the top reasons you may not be seeing the booking activity you expected.

Your settings are creating barriers to booking.

There are a number of settings, such as instant booking, trip buffers, advance notice, minimum trip length, availability, etc. that will either help or hurt you. If your vehicle isn’t being booked, check your settings to make sure you aren’t taking your vehicle out of search results, or turning away potential guests.

Your pricing is causing the algorithm to drop you in search ranking.

There is a pricing strategy that will cause you to show higher in search results. If your price is too low, or too high compared to Turo’s recommended pricing, this will affect where your vehicle lands in search.

Your photos suck.

Yeah I’m being frank because so many vehicle listings have such crappy photos. There are hundreds of thousands of vehicles on Turo. Your photos need to make people stop scrolling, look at your listing, and book. Treat this like a professional photo shoot.

Your vehicle description is meh.

Once people have stopped scrolling, because of your photos, your description needs to hook them and make them want your vehicle. Take the time to write compelling copy for your listing describing the driving experience with your vehicle.

Your vehicle description is scary.

A lot of hosts use their description to list all of the rules, and punishments for breaking the rules, often in all caps with lots of intimidating emojis. Stop that crap. Your description needs to be friendly, welcoming, and make the potential guest feel good about booking with you.

Your market may be a new/emerging market for Turo.

The inventory is small and there’s no Turo brand awareness among the locals. This is a market where you’ll need to do some of your own marketing.

Your market may just be too small.

If you live in a very small town, with no other rental car companies, no tourism or business draw, and are far from a major city, you likely aren’t going to see strong business potential here.

Your market may be a massive, over-saturated market.

Your vehicle is lost amongst thousands of others and if you aren’t optimizing your settings, photos, descriptions, ratings, and reviews to stand out it’s going to be tough to be profitable here.

You may have chosen the wrong vehicle for your market.

This is so important. Every city has its own unique demand pattern and if you chose a vehicle just because someone in another city says theirs does great, there a chance you’ve made a mistake for your city.

It could just be the slow season.

We operate in a 52-week business cycle with peak seasons, slow seasons, and what are called “shoulder” seasons where booking is up and down and unpredictable. You could just be in the slow season.

If your vehicle is under-performing to the point it’s causing you anxiety and financial strain, it may be time to take a deep dive into what’s going on, see if we can identify the specific problems, and develop and action plan to get you on track or offload the vehicle in the right way.