With tourism in full recovery, luxury vacation home rentals have skyrocketed this 2022 in Lanzarote. “This year we have not only reached pre-pandemic figures, we are breaking records”, explains Carla Van Heel, founder and general manager of one of the companies specialized in this sector on the island.
In her case, she has 30 villas in the main tourist areas of the island, with prices that can reach up to 700 euros per night, and she already has practically all of them reserved for the rest of the year.
"We have noticed that the quality of the client has increased a lot, since the most luxurious villas have been the first to be rented, both in the period of the pandemic and now", explains the founder of BuenaVilla.
Like this one, many other companies have emerged in Lanzarote in recent years, to attract clients who are looking for "something special", offering them things like privacy, swimming pools with good views and even welcome packages.
In Carla Van Heel's opinion, the increase in competition has not been a problem, because there is still “a very high demand” in terms of luxury villas. "There are more reservation requests than villas for rent on the island”, she says, attributing part of the current boom to the pandemic. “I think this is because the upper-middle class that was used to traveling far on vacation has had to look for closer options due to the restrictions, so luxury villas have become one of the favorite choices,” she points out.
Luxury villas as an escape route
With the arrival of the state of alarm, vacation homes were an escape route for those people who wanted to stay outside their usual residence.
“We were very lucky compared to hotels, since people wanted to have privacy and avoid crossing paths with other people, something that we could offer”, says Carla. “While many companies had to close during the pandemic, we had clients who rented the villas to spend the confinement here,” she recalls.
In addition, she states that people are already starting to book well in advance, although they still have some last-minute reservations.
“In 2020 and 2021, people always booked at the last minute, between one and two months in advance, perhaps because there was a bit of fear of cancellations and restrictions,” she explains. “For this reason, we have been adapting to that profile, improving the reservation conditions, in terms of cancellation fees and deadlines, so that the client can have greater flexibility."
As for the client profile, this has varied depending on the restrictions, since in 2020 they started being mainly local, but with the passing of the months and the lifting of mobility limitations, they became national and international.
“6 months or 1 year ago the clients were mostly Spanish, but now they only represent between 20 and 25% of the total”, clarifies Carla Van Heel. “The majority are foreigners, mainly British since they opened borders, although we work with many nationalities”.
Repeating clients
As a promotional tool, today most tourist accommodation companies advertise on portals such as Booking, Airbnb and even tour operators to increase their reach and thus get more reservations.
However, repeat customers predominate - which in the case of Buenavilla was estimated at 70% of reservations after confinement and is now at 35% - which makes it difficult to find luxury accommodation available in Lanzarote.
With this unprecedented boom, many companies like this one are now considering raising the prices of their accommodations, since they have villas that barely have two weeks free in the entire remainder of the year.
“We have never seen such a level of reservations in a year”, adds Van Heel, who insists that it is a sector that still has a lot of room for growth on the island.
