When reviewing your vacation rental advertisement, there are some basic items that need to be evaluated:

• Are my rates competitive with comparable listings in my city?
• Are my rates up to date?
• Are the details for my property current?

Making sure your rates are ‘in-line’ with the other vacation rentals in your city is an important step in web advertising that shouldn’t be overlooked.  Be sure to select several other comparable properties in your area when you are reviewing your rates. In addition, running discounts for weeks that you don’t have renters is another effective way to bring in more traffic.  At FindVacationRentals.com, owners can select to run an Owner’s Special in any amount, and once it has been added, the listing is then placed into an additional theme category named “Vacation Deals”.  This basically gives the owner two listings for the price of one – one in their listing city, and one in the “Vacation Deals” section.  In addition, recently FindVacationRentals.com began taking advantage of what is becoming one of the most powerful marketing tools around – social networking.  So now, as an added bonus for creating an Owners Special, FindVacationRentals.com posts a link to the special on Facebook, Google + and Twitter pages.

Another facet of vacation rental advertising is the Availability Calendar.  There are arguments both for and against the use of the calendar, but from the potential renters’ perspective, it is ranked as one of the most important factors weighing into their inquiry decision. Your potential guest would rather not go through the process of inquiring, just to find out that your weeks are booked.  Understandably, I’ve heard from some Vacation Rental Owners over the years that they prefer not to display a calendar, because they’d rather speak with the guest to see if they can offer them a discount on another week.  Whatever your position on Availability Calendars might be, if you do choose to use one, keeping it updated can help filter out inquiries for rented weeks that waste your valuable time, as well as that of your potential guest.

Recent positive guest comments cannot be underestimated in the power of advertising.  In the age of Amazon.com, as well as the ‘Like’s of Facebook and 1+ of Google+, posting an opinion about a link, product or service is almost second nature to most people.  When someone is looking for their ‘home away from home’ while on vacation, they want to know that others had a great experience.  Renter reviews that convey that the owner ‘anticipated our every need’, or that the ‘photos don’t do this beach house justice, this place is heaven!’ are powerful to your potential guest.  If you have reviews posted for your property on your personal website, or even entries in a guest book, FindVacationRentals.com works with owners to add them to their listing, just email support@findvacationrentals.com to find out more information.

Getting more traffic to your listing is important – traffic equals inquiries, and inquiries turn into bookings.  The more traffic, the better – and using these easy, no-cost steps to optimize your web advertisement will help you achieve it!

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Regard;

Vanessa Pavillet

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.”

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.

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 one responding to any of our calls.

Hayley

Florida Deluxe Villas

As a vacation home rental owner and operator of a vacation rentals by owner advertising website, I have been following the situation closely with regards to the recent sharp decline in both real estate prices (commercial and single family homes) and the stock market.  Like a lot of investors out there that I have spoken with, I pulled my savings out of the stock market a few months ago (phew…) and have been wondering what to do with my investment capital.

I recently read an article on the RIS Media site at the URL http://rismedia.com/wp/2008-07-16/the-upside-of-a-downturn-buyers-get-more-house-for-their-money/.  This was an interesting read – their main point was that housing prices in many markets have declined significantly in the last several months, making it a good time to consider investing in real estate.  Based on my own experience, this is especially true in real estate markets where one tends to find a lot of vacation rentals.  Those markets seem to be driven by speculation as opposed to serious longer term investors.

Based on that, I did some reasearch of my own to verify that was I suspected was true was actually true.  I looked at some of the inventory on my vacation rentals advertising website, including the markets I am most familiar with. This included Kissimmee FL, Destin Beach, FL, Lake Tahoe, CA, Breckenridge, CO, and Las Vegas, Nevada.  I looked at how many listings we had in each of those markets, and I looked at general real estate data showing foreclosures and overall pricing levels.  What I found was that while our number of active listings in each of those markets either stayed about the same or increased in the past several months, those markets were extremely hard hit with the recent decline in overall real estate prices.

Assuming vacation rentals owners are rational, they will not continue to pay to advertise their vacation rentals if there is no demand for their vacation rentals by renters.  In my own vacation rentals in Florida and Tennessee, I have seen farily steady demand.  I have had to offer some discounts, but that is mostly because everyone that is traveling seems to think that it should be at a greatly reduced price due to the overall economy being where it is.

So, all that said, I have concluded the following:

• I am still very nervous about re-investing in the stock market; real estate is looking pretty much like it is at a bottom right now.
• The demand from renters for vacation rentals is still pretty strong.
• By picking up vacation rentals investment properties for up to 40% less than what they sold for a year ago, my mortgage payment will be lower, which will increase my potential cashflow from the vacation rental.
• I am going to look for some really good deals on properties in markets that have been hit pretty hard by sharp price declines due to the speculators getting flushed out of the market.
• I am going to get creative on the discounting of my vacation rentals so if I do happen to pick one up in this buyer’s market, I’ll be sure to keep it as utilized as I can so I can cover my costs.

Best of luck to the rest of the owner community out there,

Jon Ludwig, Owner, http://www.findvacationrentals.com

Why “cost”, “comfort”, and “convenience”?  Cost is a pretty simple argument.  A typical family of four planning a vacation is probably going to require two hotel rooms, one for mom and dad, and one for the kids.  A decent hotel room generally costs $150/night, depending on the location.  In the high season in many hot vacation destinations, hotels can cost up to $300 or more a night.  If you multiply that times two for two rooms, you are looking at $300 to $600 or more per night.  In most cases, that same family of four can find a great vacation rental property with far more amenities than a boring hotel room for half of that price.

The other important aspect to the cost argument for vacation rentals versus hotels is the fact that almost 100% of vacation rental properties have kitchens with a complete set of appliances and cutlery.  This gives a family on a vacation the option of cooking meals in, which can save a tremendous amount of money.  A family of four would probably be looking at a budget of at least $150 a day in food if they had to eat every meal out, whereas utilizing the kitchen in an average vacation rental would allow them to save at least half of that figure by cooking a few meals in.

Comfort is a very important draw for a vacation rental versus a hotel.  Since many vacation rentals are individually owned and represent a families second residence, they typically have comfortable furniture, DVD players, music systems, nice kitchens, and comfortable beds in the bedrooms.  A hotel room exists to make money for its owners.  It is a safe bet that these owners have never spent a night in the hotel, and never will.  Typically, any comfort items in a hotel are looked upon by its owners as expenses that need to be minimized, not as items that the owner might themselves use from time to time.  This difference in philosophy creates a more comfortable atmosphere for the renter of a vacation rental; you are truly staying in someone’s home, and that is generally a far more comfortable experience than the clearly temporary surroundings offered by the average hotel room.

The convenience features of a vacation rental are often overlooked by the owners when they advertise their vacation rentals online.  For example, if you owned a vacation rental near the beach in Destin, Florida, it would likely come stocked with rafts, beach towels, children’s beach play equipment, a DVD player, a decent television, and a variety of specialty appliances in the kitchen, including everything from coffee makers to can-openers.  The average hotel has none of these things, so a family would have to go out an buy rafts, beach towels, beach toys, etc, they would have to haul it all along with them, or they would have to go without.  It is much more convenient for the traveling family to have these things available as part of the vacation rental’s standard amenities.

Being in the vacation rentals by owner advertising business, we have looked at a lot of advertisements that owners have posted for vacation rentals.  While many of them are good descriptions of the basic features of the property, it is too easy to lose site of the advantages that your vacation rental provides for the traveling family when you are trying to distill your vacation rental down to a basic set of features.  We suggest that you focus the text of your advertisements on the “Three C’s” advantages your rental has.  If it has a closet full of rafts, snorkeling equipment or beach gear that the renter can use, make sure to state that.  If it has a heated garage space for ski equipment so the renters boots will be warm and dry the next day, that’s important to mention.

It’s important to remember that your primary competition in the vacation rental business is not really other vacation rentals; it is hotels.  Yes, hotels are easier to book than vacation rentals.  Yes, they are less risky than vacation rentals.  But, they cannot compete when it comes to the “three C’s”, and we suggest that you push those advantages of your vacation rental in all your online advertisements.

Interested?  Check out photosynth now.  I also recommend you watch this great video tutorial on how to create your own in a matter of minutes.

Enjoy!

Andy

If you go the Google Maps home page http://maps.google.com/ you will notice a link to “put your business on google maps”

Go ahead.  You never know!

I’m not entirely sure what experience everyone out there is having with keeping your rentals booked with the touch economic times, but I am sure about one thing: the two most popular adjectives attached to all search traffic on the Internet are “cheap” and “discount”.  In general, everyone likes to think they are getting a great deal, no matter what they are buying.  So, they put the word “cheap” or “discount” in front of whatever it is they are looking for, and see what Google spits out.

Realizing this, I did a bunch of research on Google search traffic in the vacation rental industry specifically related to the phrases “cheap” and “discount”.  I was not surprised to find that “cheap vacation rentals” and “discount vacation rentals” are two of the more popular search terms in the entire vacation rentals by owner online industry.  On our website, http://www.findvacationrentals.com, we put up a speical website section called “Owner’s Specials“.  Our customers can log in to their Owner’s Corner and post an owner’s special anytime they want.  This immediately places their vacation rental on our special “Owner’s Special” section, giving them extra exposure and helping them to increase their inquiries and bookings.  We also make our Owner’s Specials available through a RSS feed, so anyone that finds our Owner’s Specials mini-site can elect to receive instant updates on their mobile phone, or can even have our owner’s specials on their “My Yahoo” or “iGoogle” page automatically.

Yeah, I know.  “Cheap” doesn’t sound like something you want to associate with your vacation rental.  But these days, I’m not as proud as I used to be.  I really need to keep my place booked, and advertising a special so that someone selects my vacation rental versus the many other choices they are going to have is a competitive advantage.

Another thing that owners can do is put the keyphrases “cheap vacation rentals” or “discount vacation rentals” in their actual online advertisements for their vacation rentals.  “Discount” probably sounds a little better than “cheap”, but either way it should increase the exposure to your individual listing.

If you are a customer of www.findvacationrentals.com, you can log in to Owner’s Corner if you want to make any adjustments to your listing text.

Cheers,

Jon, Owner, www.findvacationrentals.com

I had the good fortune of being able to do some traveling in Europe and Northern Africa this past summer.  Of course, I used my own site, http://www.findvacationrentals.com, as my first choice when locating vacation rental properties to stay at on my trip.  After spending a lot of time as a prospective renter, it gave me a really good perspective as to what type of experiences a renter is looking for, and what separates one vacation rental property from the next as I was deciding which properties to inquire about and which property to rent.  I read an awful lot of owner adversitements from the perspective of the renter.  As I was doing that, I took a lot of notes so I could pass on what I learned to my fellow owners about what separated one property from the next. It was kind of surprising.  It wasn’t really price, as long as the price was in the right range.  I actually spent a lot of time looking for the right experience, and those owners that sold the experience were the ones that got my inquiries.

So, yes, “experience” is a bit intangible, so referring to my notes, here are some thing in owner advertisements that I really responded to:

• “Stroll down to the near private beach with the cooler provided in the unit in hand, stop by the local wine merchant for some French Bordeaux and some nice cheeses, and enjoy a picnic as you watch the sun set over the English Channel”.
• “Kick back on our third floor balcony with a glass of wine and enjoy the westward evening views with the sun glinting off the ocean on one side, and the lake on the other.”
• “Enjoy a wonderful evening with the private patio doors open and the seabreeze blowing in while you select a romantic movie from the 40 DVD collection in the unit on the 40″ HD Television”

Any of these things is a little different than just listing that your property has a “40 LCD Television”, or a “third floor balcony” or a “private patio”.  These statements create strong images about how a renter could enjoy your property and have an unforgettable travel experience versus something that is just average.  It makes your rental a luxury instead of a commodity.

Some of these amenities require you to invest in your property, but the question is – what is that investment, really?  I looked up 40″ LCD HDTVs at Sams Club or at Best Buy – they are down to around 500 to 600 bucks.  One of our rentals has a 30 DVD collection purchased at a blow out sale at Target for 5 bucks each.  Could they get stolen?  Sure, but that’s why you have a security deposit.  I just asked our cleaning service to count them after each rental, and if any came up missing, we subtracted that from the security deposit.  No big deal.

It’s a tough economy out there right now across the board.  Putting some more thought and time into your written advertisement WILL get you results and increase your bookings and utilization.  Upgrading your amenities and tieing how those amenities could be used to create an unforgetable travel experience will also get you results.  It will likely be the difference maker in that fraction of a second when a renter decides which property is going to get his/her inquiry.

Customer of http://www.findvacationrentals.com can update their properties online by logging in to Owner’s Corner.

Cheers,

Jon Ludwig

Owner, http://www.findVacationrentals.com

As both an owner of a vacation rental website and as an owner of several vacation rental properties, we are often asked what owners can do to help keep their vacation rentals fully booked when inquiries and bookings slow down in an off season.  We’ve tried lots of different things, just like most owners probably have.  We’ve thrown in cleaning fees.  We’ve offered one night free with booking of one week.  We’ve discounted rates.  All of those things cost us revenue and eat up any profits we expect to make annually from our vacation rental properties.  What else can you do?

One of the things that we have tried, and seems to work really well, is to allow renters to bring their pet along.  As a matter of fact, “pet friendly vacation rentals” is in the top five overall in terms of traffic for search terms in the vacation rental industry.  As a vacation rental website owner, we target that keyphrase, and we are in the process of releasing a whole new section of our website exclusively focused on renters that want to see vacation rental inventory of only those rentals that choose to accept pets.  If you look at a standard city index page on our website, you will see big icons for each listing representing a little doggie.  The little doggie either has a line through him, meaning that vacation rental owner does not accept pets, or it does not, meaning the vacation rental owner does accept pets.  Clearly, whether or not your vacation rental allows pets is very important to renters, and you are going to get passed over if you don’t accept them.  Keep in mind, many renters are families traveling together for a vacation, so leaving their beloved pet behind is simply not an option.

Due to the popularity of pet friendly vacation rentals, have a special section of our site just dedicated to displaying our owner listings that allow pets.  This pet friendly vacation rentals page draws substantial traffic from search engines, which in turn transfers more leads to our vacation rental owners.  There are many examples of small regional websites or blogs that are dedicated to pet friendly vacation rentals, such as this one: http://sanibeladvisor.com/pet-friendly-homes-in-sanibel-island/.  Clearly, there is a lot to this market, and not something that owners should be ignoring.

Accepting pets does not cost you anything.  Yes, a pet may do some damage to your vacation rental property, but in our experience, we have not seen anything significant.  In fact, the only animal that has ever damaged any of our vacation rentals are college kids on spring break .  There are some good rules of thumb that we have seen if you decided to accept pets.

• Consider a higher cleaning fee than normal.  Most renters are fine with paying it.
• Consider making a portion of your security deposit non-refundable.  We have found that renters are OK with up to $100 in non-refundable security deposit.  With that money, you can have the average vacation rental steam cleaned from top to bottom.
• If your vacation rental is attached to other dwellings, make sure that you have a provision for noise in your standard vacation rental contract that states that if there are complaints of excessive noise from the pet and it is not cured within a reasonable amount of time and you have to remove the renter, you have the right to do so without losing revenue.
• You may want to consider a weight restriction; pets less than 20 pounds are typically not capable of as much destruction as larger pets.
• You may also want to consider an age restriction.  Older dogs are usually calmer than puppies.

We have allowed pets in our vacation rental properties, especially during slower off peak season, and have found that it greatly increases the amount of leads and bookings that you get.  As vacation rental website owners, we know for a fact that the search traffic related to “pet friendly” is there.  We have not found that we have excessive damages to our vacation rentals or any huge hassles to deal with.  So why not give it a shot?

Customers of FindVacationRentals.com can log in to Vacation Rental Owner’s Corner at any time to change their “pet friendly” preferences.

Cheers,

Jon Ludwig

Owner, http://www.findvacationrentals.com

Marketing your vacation rental website online can be an excellent way to keep your property fully booked.  These days, with a bad overall economy, it is even more important to keep that revenue coming in even when you are not in your peak season.  Fortunately, there are lots of options for vacation rental owners to choose from when it comes to selecting an online vacation rental advertising medium.  That can be a good and a bad thing – just because a vacation rental website exists, that does not mean that paying an annual fee to have a listing on that website is going to lead to inquiries and bookings for the owner.  As with many things, there are lots of dependencies that will determine success.  As a vacation rental owner, here is the checklist that I use to determine which vacation rental websites I am going to pay to advertise my property on:

• Check where that particular vacation rental website you are considering advertising on shows up in Google rankings for searches that a renter is likely to enter.  For example, if you had a beach condo for rent in Daytona Beach, Florida, see which vacation rental website comes up first for a Google search of “daytona beach condo rentals“.  The higher the vacation rental website is on that list, the better you are likely going to do by paying them for a listing on their vacation rental website.
• After clicking on the link from the Google search results that takes you to a particular vacation rental website, take a look at how many vacation rental properties show up on that page that Google took you to.  In the vacation rental website business, we call that a “city index page”.  The closer to the top your property shows up on the city index page, the more pageviews and leads you are going to get.  Many vacation rental websites will charge more to be closer to the top of the page.  This will lead to more inquiries and bookings for you, but as a business owner, you have to weight that against how much more that will cost.  On our website, http://www.findvacationrentals.com, we put together a matrix that compares the cost of advertising on some of the top vacation rental websites.
• Pay close attention to the organization of the city index page on the vacation rental website.  Is it easy to use?  It is cluttered?  Is there a search box available so the renter can hone down there search?  Is the text so small on the page that it is hard to read?  We have put a lot of thought and incremental improvements into our city index pages.  Our Daytona Beach vacation rentals city index page is an example of a clean, easy to read interface that allows renters to quickly find and inquire about vacation rental properties that they have interest in.

So, in the context of the Daytona Beach condo rental example, if you were to compare a basic listing on www.findvacationrentals.com versus a listing on vacationrentals.com, you would be looking at a base price of $125/year versus a base price of $199/year for the listing fee.  On Findvacationrentals.com, you would be listing #56 if you listed today and selected a basic listing level.  On vacationrentals.com, you would be at listing #230.  Current, vacationrentals.com is #5 for the search “daytona beach condo rentals”, whereas findvacationrentals.com is #1.  While I would like to think that we beat our competitors in every market, I know that’s not the case.  My point in making the comparison is that when you are evaluating your advertising options as a vacation rental owner, you really need to focus on the performance of a vacation rental website for the searches that your renters are likely to do, and then you need to look at how much it will cost you to be towards the top of the city index page on that vacation rental website.  Those factors, along with how well written your advertisement is and how good your picture are, are the key factors in determining how many inquiries and bookings you are going to get.

Jon Ludwig

Owner, http://www.findvacationrentals.com