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.

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.

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

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