Recently, I came cross this article excerpt written by industry expert think PhoCusWright. The jist of the article is that the traveler community does not select vacation rentals only on obvious factors, like cost and location. Many travelers are looking for a specific kind of travel experience, and they actually don’t care where they go, just that they have a specific type of travel experience.
Last year on FindVacationRentals.com, we rolled out what we called “vacation themes”, which are special sections of our website focused on vacation rental inventory that was well suited for specific vacation activities or travel themes. This included special sections for beach rentals, pet friendly rentals, vacation rental deals, cabin rentals, golf vacation rentals, ski rentals, and disney vacation rentals.
Initially, we were targeting search traffic that occurs around those specific vacation themes, but, what we found what that travelers were randomly combining an activity type search phrase, like “beach”, with a destination, like “Destin Florida”, and then adding “vacation rentals” or something like that onto the end.
From our perspective, this type of searching called for a new approach to better match those searches to our owners vacation rentals. Stay tuned to FindVacationRentals.com, as that release will be published the short term.
As we are making an effort to target these highly desirable traveler activities, vacation rental owners can help themselves a bit as well by making sure that their vacation rental descriptions are specifically mentioning vacation themes like the ones we have targeted. There are many more that travelers are interested in - scuba diving, surfing, and many more - and owners can sell those travel experiences in their vacation rental descriptions.
For those of you renting in a spring break area (I have a condo on the Gulf Coast), will you rent to “spring breakers”?
When I first started renting and had a hard time keeping my condo booked, I would rent to the 21-25 crowd with a larger deposit.
Would you rent to anybody in this picture?
Maybe it’s my old age and the fact that I don’t want to deal with the hassle anymore, but I do not rent to anyone under 25 and haven’t done so in about 5 years. I focus on families only and require someone over 25 to pickup the key. Sometimes that means my condo sits empty a week in March during the college spring break period.
I am curious - Do any of you rent to the “under 25″ crowd? Does it work for you? How do you handle the deposits? Can you keep a housekeeper more than one season? Is it worth it?
This is an interesting topic with the economy making many owners nervous about maximizing bookings. Plus, many of us know that after the holidays starts the rush of emails & inquiries and need to decide who we are going to cater to.
Post your comments below.
Tags: condo rentals, vacation rentals, vacation rentals by owner, vacation rentals spring break
In last Sunday’s Boston Globe, there was an article talking about staying in a vacation rental for a great honeymoon experience. The article really got me thinking about how vacation rental owners are marketing their vacation rentals properties - specifically, the description of the property and the photos that owners post of the property.
What I found was pretty interesting. While vacation rental owners typically do a great job describing the basic features and amenities of their properties, such as whether or not it has a microwave, or how close it is to a beach, there is little information that owners post about what kind of travel experience one could expect by visiting the destination, and there are very few, if any, pictures of those experiences.
The honeymoon concept got me thinking, so I did a search on FindVacationRentals.com, using our Advanced vacation rental search, for they keyphrase “romantic”. The results I got indicated that about 5.6% of our customers used the word “romantic” in their description text. This listing is a great example of a well written description that really sells the experience and does not just talk about the # of bedrooms and bathrooms the place has.
Next, I tried a search for “honeymoon”, which speaks to the suggestion by the Boston Glove article to the traveling public. This time, I only got results representing 1.8% of our inventory. This listing was a great example of a well written description that sells the romantic and honeymoon experiences very well.
So, a marketing lesson to be learned here. Clearly, travelers are looking for a certain experience. Search engines like Google match travelers to content that matches there search criteria. Travelers are often not looking for just a certain location and number of bedrooms - they are looking for a certain travel experience.
I think, as vacation rental owners, we could do a better job providing descriptions of those types of experiences. If we do, our interest are all better served!
Jon Ludwig, Owner
http://www.findvacationrentals.com
Tags: beach rentals, rentals, romantic getaways, romantic vacation rentals, vacation rentals
Although it’s a tough thing to ask owners to constantly keep their calendars updated, or respond to renters when they send an inquiry for a date range that the owner already has booked, it is an unending source of frustration for renters.
Anytime I receive an email inquiry, I make an effort to respond immediately, even if I don’t have availability. A good response, with maybe even some suggestions for other rental units that you know of that might be available can go a long way to securing a booking the next year, or later that same season. I’ve even had renters delay their trip to a date that I had available after I responded courteously and promptly.
Although you do not want to give renters over to your “competition”, it may come back to you in the form of good karma and you’ll get a booking in return. For example, I’ve referred people to our Panama City Beach Vacation Rentals page to find another vacation rental when mine is not available and they can’t change their dates of travel, and I’ve received calls from those other owners thanking me. And, yes, I’ve even gotten some reciprocation. Everyone can win, here.
I think all owners can agree it’s bad for the industry as a whole that renters feel like booking a vacation rental is such a huge hassle. Thoughts, anyone (See feedback text below)?
“>>I could not find ANY that were actually available for the dates of
>>3/13 to 3/20, even though they were listed as available. I contacted
>>over a dozen condo owners and I’m very disappointed that they do not
>>care enough to update their availability calendar.
>>
>>It’s not a problem with your website, I think the site is pretty good.
>> It’s the owners that list their properties. It seems to me that they
>>don’t really care whether or not they are wasting time because they
>>only care about getting their condos booked — not about the
>>vacationer who is trying to find out what is available.”
With more and more people owning GPS units you may want to think about providing pre-built POI files that can be loaded on most modern GPS Units. These can include not only the location of your unit but also nearby amenities and attractions. On a recent trip to Walt Disney World I found it an invaluable resource not only in getting the parks each day but also finding resteraunts, shopping, ATMs and Gas.
If your unit is in a popular tourist area you may be able to find some of these already built with instructions on how to load them. Here is a link to one I used when traveling to WDW http://www.mousesavers.com/gps.html
For the technically capable here is a link to a popular POI site that includes directions on building these files. http://www.poi-factory.com/
If anyone can share a great guide on how a novice can build and/or customize their own custom POI files please post!
Andy
