When looking for a vacation rental, submitting rental inquiries is one of the most important aspects of booking. After you narrow down your search of rental properties that you are interested in, you should contact between three to five property owners with rental inquiries. Submitting more than one will ensure that you hear back from at least a few property managers, who can sometimes be slow to respond, especially if managing their property is not their main focus.

Submit an inquiry for properties that you are interested in by filling out a form right from the rental website, calling the property owner at a listed phone number, or email a property owner directly if applicable. Make sure to ask any additional questions that you have after thoroughly reading the listing. These questions could include inquiries about exact property location, additional sleeping situations, early check-in requests, pet policies and more. Also be sure to mention your travel dates so that a property owner can alert you if they are in the process of booking another renter for those dates, or if they are already booked.

In most cases, property owners will respond fairly quickly to inquiries. For those that don’t, you can try to follow up again with an additional email or phone call. After the initial communication with the property owner, you can then have a more in-depth conversation about your expectations for the vacation rental, and start to form a relationship with the property owner. This will help you down the line if you should have any problems with the vacation rental property, paperwork, or any other issues.