Vacation Rental Listing Video: One Per Property

A vacation rental listing video can come from the photos you already have. Map each property in your feed to 24 fields, POST one request, and get back a 32-second 16:9 video for the booking page. The same fields render a 26-second vertical cut for Reels and TikTok. When the rate changes, render again. One script covers 10 properties or 10,000.

The finished video

This guide renders Vacation Rental Listing - Sun-Warmed, a 32-second 1920x1080 video in six scenes: the property name over the hero photo, the view with the host's tagline, three rooms, the guest, bedroom and bath counts with three amenities, the pool, and a close with the nightly rate and where to book.

Two siblings take the same fields. Alpine Winter is a 32-second 16:9 look for cabins and chalets. City Apartment is a 26-second 1080x1920 cut for the social half of the funnel.

What you need

• A Renderly API key. Create one in the dashboard under Settings → API keys.
• A property feed with one row per listing: your PMS export, a CSV or a database.
• Six photos per property at URLs that serve the image file directly.

Step 1 - Decide whether to film or to render from the photos

Most guides for this tell a host how to film a walkthrough with a phone. At least one property management platform offers a video made from the listing photos, delivered within 24 hours, and asks you to approve each video before it goes live. Both are good answers for one property.

A template earns its place when you run a portfolio. Every property gets the same type, pacing and close, so 200 listings read as one brand. The video is ready when the render finishes, and the cost is fixed by its length. A short-stay listing also changes more often than a home for sale: the nightly rate moves with the season and the availability window moves every month. A template renders the new values into the same video. If you sell homes rather than let them, the real estate listing guide is the better fit.

Step 2 - Map each listing to the 24 template fields

Send every field. An omitted one keeps the sample value, so a missing price_label shows the template's $540 on your property. In the City Apartment cut, photo_pool sits behind the three neighbourhood lines, so a street photo works better there than a pool.

Step 3 - Check the short lines before you render

The variables endpoint, GET /api/v1/templates/vacation-rental-v1/variables, reports a maxCharacters for each text field. Three lines are tight across the three looks. The property name has room for about 37 characters on the sun-warmed hero. The call to action has about 17 there, so "Book your stay" fits and "Check dates and book now" does not. The price has about 18 in the vertical cut. If one feed renders all three looks, write to these limits.

A line that is too long does not fail. The tail is hidden and the render still succeeds. Preview a few listings first. Previews take the same body, cost nothing, and return a previewUrl and a warnings array:

curl -X POST https://renderly.video/api/v1/previews \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RENDERLY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "templateId": "vacation-rental-v1", "replacements": { "property_name": "The Brick Loft at Vesterbro, Copenhagen" } }'

A line that will clip returns TEXT_MAY_CLIP. It is an estimate from average character width, so open the previewUrl for every listing it flags.

Step 4 - Render the 16:9 video and the 9:16 cut

curl -X POST https://renderly.video/api/v1/renders \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RENDERLY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "templateId": "vacation-rental-v1",
    "replacements": {
      "property_name": "The Brick Loft at Vesterbro",
      "location_label": "VESTERBRO, COPENHAGEN · DENMARK",
      "rating_label": "RATED 4.94 · 212 REVIEWS",
      "property_tagline": "Twelve-foot windows, original brick, and Vesterbro out the front door.",
      "room_1_label": "THE LIVING ROOM",
      "room_2_label": "THE BEDROOM",
      "room_3_label": "THE KITCHEN",
      "guests_value": "4",
      "bedrooms_value": "2",
      "baths_value": "1",
      "amenity_1": "Four minutes to Enghave Plads metro",
      "amenity_2": "Bakery, wine bar and laundry on the block",
      "amenity_3": "Airport in twenty minutes, door to door",
      "availability_label": "OPEN NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2026",
      "price_label": "1,450 kr",
      "price_note": "PER NIGHT · 2-NIGHT MINIMUM",
      "cta_label": "Book the loft",
      "cta_detail": "book.example.com/vesterbro",
      "photo_hero": "https://photos.example.com/vesterbro/hero.jpg",
      "photo_view": "https://photos.example.com/vesterbro/view.jpg",
      "photo_room_1": "https://photos.example.com/vesterbro/living.jpg",
      "photo_room_2": "https://photos.example.com/vesterbro/bedroom.jpg",
      "photo_room_3": "https://photos.example.com/vesterbro/kitchen.jpg",
      "photo_pool": "https://photos.example.com/vesterbro/street.jpg"
    }
  }'

Replace the photo URLs with your own. The response returns a jobId and creditsUsed: 1 immediately. For the vertical cut, send the same body with "templateId": "vacation-rental-listing-city-apartment". For a ski property, use vacation-rental-listing-alpine-winter.

Loop over the feed with the pattern in the CSV guide. Requests are limited per minute by plan: 120 on Creator and 300 on Business. There are no idempotency keys, so a retry after a timeout can render and charge for the same property twice. Check Dashboard → Renders before you retry.

Step 5 - Re-render when the rate or the season changes

The render request has no label field, so keep your own map from property to jobId as each POST returns. Register one webhook with POST /api/v1/webhooks for render.completed, look the property up by jobId, and publish the outputUrl to the listing. The webhooks guide covers verifying the signature.

Then watch the fields that change. When price_label, price_note or availability_label changes in the feed, render that property again and swap the URL. The rest of the portfolio stays as it is.

What this costs at scale

Renderly bills 1 credit per minute of 1080p output, rounded up to the nearest half credit. The 32-second 16:9 video rounds up to 1 credit. The 26-second vertical cut rounds up to half a credit. Both sizes bill at the 1080p rate.

The $159 is the Business plan plus 500 extra credits at $0.12. A seasonal re-render of the whole portfolio costs the same again, but a rate change on 50 properties costs 50 to 75 credits.

Where to go next

The template page has the preview and the full field list. The case for one fixed look over a generator that changes it every run is in template-based video vs AI-generated video. If the feed lives in a spreadsheet, the Google Sheets guide sends each row as one render. To narrate each listing, the real estate voiceover guide adds a spoken track per property.