HI·06.9 · How to · 7 min
Social media without losing your evenings
Honest version first: social media rarely books rooms on its own. What it does is prove you’re real, keep past guests warm, and give your best photos somewhere to live. That’s worth having, at the right price in hours.
I promised this site would never publish “10 Instagram hacks”, so here is the opposite: a plan sized for a host with a property to run, based on what social actually contributes to direct bookings. Which is, mostly, trust and memory. A guest deciding whether to pay your website directly will glance at your Instagram to check you exist and the place looks loved. A past guest scrolling in January sees your snowy garden and remembers they meant to come back. Neither needs you to be an influencer. Both need you to be present and lightly alive.
Pick one platform. Actually one.
For most UK holiday properties the honest choice is Instagram or Facebook, and the deciding question is where your guests are, not where the marketing industry is loudest. Family cottage with repeat bookers over 45? Facebook, no contest, and the local and niche Facebook groups are quietly the best free distribution a host has. Design-led place with a younger crowd? Instagram. TikTok only if you genuinely enjoy making videos, because enjoyment is the only thing that makes it sustainable. Running two platforms badly helps nobody; one done steadily beats both done guiltily.
The routine that survives real life
- One post a week. Phone photo, two sentences, done. The garden this morning, the welcome tray, the dog of this week’s guests (with permission; guests love this). Perfection is the enemy; a lived-in photo outperforms a stiff professional one surprisingly often.
- Batch it. One sunny afternoon a season, take thirty photos. You now have a quarter’s worth of posts and your evenings back. Scheduling tools are built into both platforms these days; no extra software needed.
- Reuse everything. The email to past guests becomes a post. The area page from your website becomes five posts. A good review becomes a post with the guest’s first name. Nothing gets written twice.
- Point everything home. The link in your bio goes to your booking page, not your Airbnb listing, and the profile says “book direct and save 10%”. Social’s job is to deliver people to a website that does the actual selling (guide HI·06.4).
Groups beat broadcasting
The highest-value twenty minutes a week isn’t posting; it’s being a helpful human in the Facebook groups where your area gets discussed: answering “anyone know a dog-friendly place near X?”, recommending the good pub, occasionally (and only when it genuinely answers the question) mentioning your own place. Group recommendations carry the trust that adverts spend fortunes failing to buy.
Cheerfully ignore
Follower counts, buying followers, posting daily because an infographic said so, trending audio you don’t understand, and paid ads until your direct booking machine is already converting (ads pour water into whatever bucket you have; fix the holes first). If a platform starts feeling like a second job, post less. Nobody ever cancelled a holiday because the cottage skipped a Tuesday.
That’s the demand side done: repeat guests, local links, search and social all pointing at your own front door. The final guide, HI·06.10, is about steering it all: deliberately shifting your mix until the OTAs are the garnish, not the meal.