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

Every email you send out to renters or friends should have, at a minimum, your contract information.  Include the following:

• Your name
• Your email address
• Your inquiry phone number
• Your listing website address from your favorite vacation rentals by owner website.
• If possible, insert a one-sentence blurb about your rental.

You never know who will read your email and decide to book!

As you may know, my email of choice is the free GMail from Google.  Setup an email signature by clicking “Settings” and look for the “Signature” option on the “General” tab.

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