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.”

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

We had a whole bunch of folks that came in from different parts of the globe to celebrate the event with us.  Being the owner of a vacation rentals by owner website, I asked most of them where they were staying so I could compare notes.  Our extended family stayed in a nice vacation rental right on the beach, a few stayed at resorts, and a few stayed at local hotels.

Here’s the hard data on the major expense items for the  trip, excluding rental car and airfare:

Hotel / Resort (Standard Hotel Room, Queen Bed, 1 Bathroom):

• Maximum Occupants:2
• Per Person, Per Night Rate: $175.00
• Per Day, Per Person Average Food: $125.00
• Per Day “Resort Fee”:  $25.00
• Per Day Parking:  $20.00
• Total Cost Per Person, Per Day: $322.50

Vacation Rental (2 BR / 2 BA Condominium on the Beach with Queen Sleeper Pull Out):

• Maximum Occupants: 6
• Per Person, Per Night Rate: $28.00
• Per Day, Per Person Average Food: $65.00
• Per Day “Resort Fee”:  $0.00
• Per Day Parking:  $0.00
• Total Cost Per Person, Per Day: $93.00

The vacation rental was extremely economical for three reasons.  1) It could accommodate a lot more people.  A family of 5 could all fit into one place that cost on average $140.00 per night.  That averages out to only $28.00 per person, per night.  The Hotel and Resorts that others stayed in cost around $350.00 per night, and it could only fit two people in it, so it ran $175.00 per person, per night.  That is a huge difference.  2) Most resort hotels charged huge daily fees for parking and resort fees, which were non-negotiable.  That added another $50/night in most cases.  Most of my wedding guests found out about that as they were checking in (they neglect to tell you stuff like this when you make the reservation).  It was too late then to re-book.  No such issues with the vacation rental.  3) Having meals in with the family was a very nice break from eating every meal out.  It was a heck of a lot more economical as well.

And, last, the other major expense item was the amount spent on food per day.  My extended family took a short trip to the grocery store and had breakfast, lunch and a couple of dinners in over the course of the week that we were there.  They went out for nice dinners a couple of times, but in a place like Maui where a basic entree can often cost $50.00 or more, eating some meals in for a family of five really starts to make some  sense.

As my fellow vacation rental owners are speaking with  prospective renters that are having trouble deciding between your rental or a hotel, make sure you remind them about ALL of the costs associated with your typical resort hotel.  Advising your renters as to the true cost of staying in a hotel may keep them with you at your vacation rental.  Not to mention the many other benefits that we all know about!

Cheers to All,
Jon Ludwig, Owner, FindVacationRentals.com

• How far away from the beach is your unit?
• How do I get to your property?
• Where is the nearest grocery store?
• Do you have a map of the area?

Community Walk (www.communitywalk.com) provides a great utility to build custom maps that showcase

Sample Community Walk Custom Map

your property, easily allow guests to generate driving directions, and highlight local point of interest.  These custom maps even let you filter the points of interest and let visitors make comments.  I’m confident anyone who owns a vacation rental property, would find this tool very as a marketing tool to add to your web sites or listings but also in communicating with booked tenants.  It is very easy to set up!  You can add points of interest by doing searches, entering street address or using longitude and latitude.  For each POI can you can catagorize, add a photo, inster links to web sites and modify many other details of the POI or customize how  it is displayed.

There are ads but they are very discrete!  You can purchase the maps if you would like to not have ads.

Enjoy,

Andrew M. Seward

Here’s a sad scenario: The day before your next guests are due to check in, they call with bad news. One of them is too sick to travel. Or there’s been a death in the family. Or a major ice storm has brought down power lines and closed the airport. They’re going to have to cancel their travel plans.

If only they had heeded the advice in a recent Wall Street Journal article (February 14, 2009) about the importance of buying travel insurance with trip-cancellation coverage (“Road Hazards: Buying Travel Insurance is More Imporant—and More Complicated—Than Ever”). With the right policy, they’d be entitled to reimbursement from the insurance company for their nonrefundable expenses.

But as the article explains, choosing the right policy can be complicated. So even though it’s not all that expensive, adding about 4% to 8% to the cost of the trip, most travelers just skip it.

So what do you do, as the vacation-rental owner, when a guest calls to cancel at the last minute? You’re sympathetic, of course. But should you feel obligated to refund their money? In our opinion, absolutely not. Unless you’re able to rebook your property for the dates these guests have cancelled. You’re not a big hotel, after all, and you shouldn’t be expected to take a financial hit because of your guests’ misfortune. That’s what travel insurance is for.

If you’ve established a clear cancellation and refund policy, communicated it to your guests in writing in your rental agreement, and encouraged them to consider buying a travel insurance policy with trip-cancellation coverage, you’ve done everything right in our view. The rest is up to your guests.

About the Authors: Alfred & Emily Glossbrenner are the authors of the highly acclaimed book/CD package How to Make Your Vacation Property Work for You! and co-founders of FullyBookedRentals, a new membership website dedicated to helping other VR owners advertise, rent, and manage their properties effectively, professionally, and profitably. Take advantage of their special introductory offer of $29.95 for a full-year membership by entering the promotion code FVR40 during the sign-up process. For more on FullyBookedRentals member benefits and to sign up, click here.

Panama City-Bay County International Airport

For those of you in Panama City Beach, Laguna Beach, Mexico Beach, Grand Lagoon, and elsewhere in Bay County, FL:

The county commissioners just raised the tourist development tax from 3% to 4% for March 1-31 and 5% for after April 1. Combine this with the state of Florida tax of 6%, we are now collecting 11% from our renters. Yikes!

From what I’ve read, 1% of this is to market the new airport on the west side of Bay county set to open in May of 2010. The other 1% is to lure a low-cost airline to the airport (Air-Tran or Southwest maybe?).

The new airport can accommodate larger jets, something I assume the old airport in Panama City could not.

I hope 2% brings in enough tenants in the area to justify this cost (including the cost of the airport relocation) I’m not so sure…

How many of your tenants drive versus fly to the gulf coast? How many more bookings will you get because of this airport? I would guess your answer is similar to mine - not many.

Add your comments below.

Late last week, FindVacationRentals.com released a completely revamped website with new features designed to attract and keep renters attention.  It also offers new ways for owners to market and promote their properties.  And the best part - this comes with no price increase to our owner community.  Some of the highlights of the new site include:

• New “Owner’s Specials” section.  This allows owners to promote short duration discounts on  properties to enhance the utilization of their vacation rental.  Discounts seem to work pretty well with renters in this economy - people are still taking vacations, but they want better deals, and this section of the site speaks to that: http://www.findvacationrentals.com/cheap-vacation-rentals.html
• New “Vacation Themes”, which are linked all over the site using recognizable icons.  This includs disney, golf, beach, pet friendly, cabin, and ski focused vacations. We created custom inventory for these “theme” pages that highlights vacation rental owners that have rentals in those areas to give them more exposure.  We are also using these themes to create custom email programs, so we send renters alerts periodically that generate even more traffic for owners.  Some sites do this to some degree, but I think FindVacationRentals.com is pushing the envelope a little further by having special landing pages and promotion of specific owner properties.
• New search functionality.  Every page on the site displays the “quick search” box on the top left.  The quick search now has “autocomplete”, so if a renter types in “D…Å…Y…”, it will display options in a drop down box like “Daytona Beach” directly underneath the search, kind of like Google does.  FindVacationRentals.com also offers a completely revamped advanced search page: http://www.findvacationrentals.com/vacation-rental-search.html
• All of the pages across the FindVacationRentals.com website, including country pages, state pages, region pages, city index pages, etc, have been polished and updated to a new design that was created to attract and keep a renters attention.  The city and country index pages that display summary listing information are also much improved.  There are now visible icons for “pet friendly”, and “smoking/non-smoking” displayed with the summary data for each vacation rental listing, as well an additional icon to draw attention to those listings with owner’s specials posted so renters are attracted to those.

We would love to get some feedback from both owner’s and renter’s on the new design.

Cheers,

Jon Ludwig, Owner, FindVacationRentals.com

This week I was amazed by how much attention has been paid to the fact that Barack Obama selected a vacation rental to stay in for the Obama family vacation in Kailua, Hawaii.  Initially, the focus seemed to be on how he paid for the vacation rental - you know, what is that campaign money or a kickback from a large contributor or whatever.  But, fortunately, that seemed to lead absolutely nowhere.  As it turns out, after a week of hawking it, all the press could come up with is that Mr. Obama found the vacation rental using an online website, and he paid for it using “personal funds”.

It’s very interesting how these very small things can call attention to a niche industry that we all depend upon to sustain our own vacation rentals by owner.  I have had friends that don’t know that I run a vacation rental website come up to me recently and ask me, “Did you hear that Barack Obama just paid cash for some place he’s never been to before?”, or “What is a vacation home rental?”.  I was puzzled at first, but then it dawned on me that they had never had any travel experience other than staying in a hotel.

Admittedly, HomeAway has the most listings in the vacation rentals industry.  They have bought up VRBO, VacationRentals, CyberRentals, GreatRentals, etc, etc.  It is undetermined as of yet whether or not their roll-up strategy will work financially, but if they are successful in making the term “vacation rental” or “vacation home” something that “most people” consider when they are booking their next vacation, smaller independent sites like mine at www.findvacationrentals.com will also benefit.  All of us as vacation rental owners will benefit.  So, even though they operate websites that are competitive to my websites, I am cheering for them in their quest to build an iconic travel industry where they was once only a small niche within a niche.

The fact that Barack Obama decided to stay at a “risky” vacation rental and that so many people (and the press) are talking about it is also good for all of us.  It’s good for vacation rental listing sites like FindVacationRentals.com, it’s good for all vacation rental owners, and it’s good for the vacation rentals by owner industry.

Incidentally, FindVacationRentals.com has the listing for the beachfront vacation home in Kailua, Hawaii selected by Barack Obama on our site, and we happen to perform better in Kailua related Google searches than any of our competitors.  Small world, I guess.

Cheers,

Jon Ludwig, Manager, FindVacationRentals.com

But what if you don’t have the time (or inclination) to screen renters, handle inquiries, maintain an availability calendar, send out rental agreements, and collect payments? What if, at this time and place in your life, you just don’t want to do it all yourself? 

If you’re not forced to maximize the income your property generates, if your current goal is to simply cover most of your property’s expenses, then going the property-manager route might very well make sense. But here’s the problem: The really good property managers handle dozens (even hundreds) of vacation rentals. They tend to market them all in the identical way, with a listing on their company’s Web site. And their goal is to generate as many bookings as possible for their company, rather than for your specific property.  

So, assuming that for reasons of the sort cited above, you want to turn your vacation home over to a property management company. What can you do to make sure your place stands out from the crowd and gets its fair share of the bookings? How can you help your property manager do the best possible job for you? 

Here are some suggestions:

• Write your own property description. It’s unlikely that your property manager knows anywhere near as much as you do about the joys and pleasures of your vacation home. But the system requires that they produce some descriptive copy, so you end up with bland, boring sentences that sound essentially the same from one property to the next. You can set yourself apart from the competition by creating your own write-up and providing it to your property manager. Put your personality into it. Explain what you love about the place. And be frank. If there’s an ocean view, but you have to crane your neck out the kitchen window to see it, go ahead and say so. Then make the point that for a full ocean view, the price would be considerably higher.
  
• Take charge of your photos. Unless your property manager is a terrific photographer or has one on retainer, we strongly recommend providing your own photos. Enlist the help of a friend (or hire a professional photographer for about $200-$300) if you’re not comfortable with a digital camera. Be sure to “dress” the set, pay attention to lighting, and use a wide-angle lens for your interior shots.
  
• Augment your management company’s online listings with your own. As noted, most property management companies now have their own Web sites with pictures and descriptions of the properties they manage. But when it comes to getting noticed by the search engines, more is often better. So boost your property’s “search footprint” by listing on several leading sites and directing all phone and email inquiries to your property manager. For suggestions on which sites to use, take a look at the free Vacation Rental Resources Guide available at our FullyBookedRentals Web site (www.fullybookedrentals.com).
  
• Spread the word with business cards for your property. For less than $25 at sites like VistaPrint (www.vistaprint.com) and OvernightPrints (www.overnightprints.com), you can design your own business card, including a picture of your property and the address of one of your online listings. Plan to order a supply of 100-250 cards to keep on hand. Offer them to friends and business acquaintances who ask about your property.

There really are many ways to get what you want and need from a vacation rental. And the Internet is a big help, regardless of the path you choose. Personally, we prefer doing everything ourselves. But we would never suggest that others might not be best off teaming with a property manager. It really is “different strokes for different folks.” The key thing is to take the reins and use the Internet tools at your disposal to help your property manager keep your place fully booked. 

About the Authors. Alfred and Emily Glossbrenner are experienced vacation-rental owners and the authors of How to Make Your Vacation Property Work for You! They also own and operate FullyBookedRentals (www.fullybookedrentals.com), a membership Web site devoted to helping other vacation-rental owners advertise, rent, and manage their properties effectively and profitably.

I deal with a lot of group bookings, and sometimes the groups try to over-max the property, but we would never know this if we didn’t talk to them and tell them the rules.

plus it is a bonus to form a relationship with guests to keep them returning year after year. i personally HATE automated systems and will never have on responding to any of our calls.

Hayley

Florida Deluxe Villas