If you want to maximize bookings, make sure to put phone number on your vacation rental listings and do your best to answer the phone.  Face it, some folks want to talk to a person before they commit to loading up the family truckster and taking the family on vacation:

You have a few options when it comes to your bookings over the phone.

1. Your Home Phone
This is usually the first setup for new vacation home owners.  Not bad, but not the best option.

Pros:

• Easy, Cheap, Already Setup

Cons:

• You’re probably not home all the time.
• Late-night calls (people will call at all hours).  Heck, I even post hours next to my number to call between 8am and 9pm Eastern and receive calls very late at night on occasion (but I don’t use my home phone number).

2. Second-Line / Distinctive Ring
This is an excellent option, especially if you are home often (telecommuting, etc).  Distinctive ring is a feature from the phone company that assigns another phone number with a different ring to your existing phone line.  When the phone rings, you know by it’s ring if it’s a renter or a personal call

Pros:

• Distinctive Ring is usually cheaper than a second phone line.
• A second line allows you to put the phone in the “office” of your house.  This is a little more helpful if you want to ignore it during dinner and when you are asleep.
• A second line allows you to have an outgoing message directed toward renters.

Cons:

• Same as above: you have to be home to get the call, and renters might call you at all hours.
• Second line requires your house to be wired with the second line, which is not a given for older homes.

Camera Phone

3. Your Cell Phone
This is a good option.  In this day and age, you typically carry your phone with you everywhere.  If you are at work and can take calls, you can close more bookings.  A mobile phone makes it easy to check your voice mail during lunch and call back those inquiries.

Pros:

• Always with you
• You can turn it off at night

Cons:

• Renters know your cell phone number.  To keep things separate, you might want a “vacation rental” cell phone and a separate personal cell phone.

4. Internet Phone

This relatively new technology is my current choice.  Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) is a fancy term meaning you can talk using your Internet connection.

If you go with a provider such as Vonage or ViaTalk, they give you a phone adapter that you plug into your cable modem or DSL modem, then you can plug a phone into the adapter.  They assign you a local phone number and you use it like any other phone.

4 A. GrandCentral

GrandCentral, by Google, is a great option if you’ve been lucky enough to get a phone number from them. They can forward calls to your cell, home, or work based on who is calling.  Unfortunately, this is in beta from Google and they aren’t setting up new accounts at the moment.

Pros:

• Allows you to have a separate number for renters.
• You can choose to have it ring your cell/home outside of work hours.

Cons:

• Google seems to have suspended new accounts for now.  No word on when they will resume.

4 B. ViaTalk

I use ViaTalk.  The funny thing is, I don’t actually use it to talk over the Internet.  ViaTalk has an amazing feature that allows you to setup call-follow, call-hunt, and do-not-disturb rules based on schedules.

I have a local phone number provided by ViaTalk.  When a renter calls, ViaTalk hunts me down at home or on my cell depending on my schedule (it can even simultaneously call both my cell & home).  This is a great feature, especially if you move or change cell providers, since you can keep your VOIP phone number for as long as you need and never change the number.

Pros:

• Cheap
• Can forward calls to your home/cell/work based on your schedule
• Maintain a separate voice mailbox for renters

Cons:

• Requires high-speed internet at home (not bad, but not a gimme)
• Must setup the phone adapter on your home router to talk over the Internet

Have I missed an option that you use to communicate with renters?  Let me know in the comments below…

Submitted by Jon M., FindVacationRentals.com

Up until now I have used the Firefox extension Signature, which allowed you to store “canned respones” on your computer and just right click and insert a response in an email.  I have “responses” for inquiries, whenever I email a rental contract, whenever I receive a payment, etc.  You get the idea.

The problem with that is you have to use Firefox and the responses are stored on your computer.  If you travel and use another computer, you are out of luck.

Gmail users, I present to you canned responses.  Now you can keep all these generic responses inside your gmail account.  Hooray!  Now, wherever you are, if you are logged into gmail you can respond to your inquires quickly and easily.  Good job Gmail team!