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.

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

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

Perks - They're Grreat!

When I used to travel for a living, I enjoyed the perks offered by the airlines and the hotels.  Upgrade to first class?  Sure!  Upgrade hotel room?  Don’t mind if I do!

Everyone likes perks and incentives not available elsewhere.  For your vacation home, perks make your rental stand-out.  They can make things easier on your renters so they enjoy their stay more.

You can provide perks for your guests and increasing bookings at the same time.  Here’s some ideas:

Upgraded bedding

Have you noticed that hotels now all have their exclusive one-of-a-kind bedding system?  They might be on to something.  If you go the extra distance with a nice pillow-top bed and nice sheets/comforter/duvet, let everyone know!  Putting this information on your vacation rental listing and telling prospective renters might just close more bookings.

Free Internet Wi-Fi

Get DSL or a cable modem for your rental.  When you sign-up, ask for a wireless modem so renters don’t have to plug-into your network.  If you live in a condo or other dense housing, see if your association will vote for wi-fi access for everyone (so you don’t have to maintain it).

Exercise room access or complimentary gym visitor membership

I don’t go on vacation to exercise.  But, some folks don’t want to miss their workouts – and this is a great perk for those people.  If they can have access to run off those extra calories, they may book your place rather than the unit across the street without gym access.

If your resort / community does not have an exercise room, call around to local gyms and ask them how you can get your renters access during their stay.

Tickets to shows/parks

If you are near a theme destination such as Disney World, Pigeon Forge & Gatlinburg, or Branson, you might want to offer free or discounted tickets to your guests.  Chances are, they are booking a rental in your area for a reason.

Beach Chair Rental

If your beach condo has access to beach chair rental, talk to the company that does the rental.  They will often cut you a deal for the entire summer for some chairs.  Your renters will love it!

Gift basket

Okay, maybe this isn’t something that will close a sale.  But, I have learned that first impressions for renters make all the difference.  When your guests walk into the condo, they will probably smile if there is a nice little gift basket waiting for them.

The basket can be pretty simple (some snacks, etc) or can be above & beyond (some beers or champagne might be a nice touch).

Gift Card (Gas, Groceries, etc)

If competition is tough, you might score with some small perks such as these.  Everybody complains about the gas prices!

Free nights

Maybe not a perk exactly, but offering a free night if someone books a minimum stay with you might just help increase your bookings.  This is especially helpful during the off-season.

Repeat Customer Discount

I offer my past renters some sort of discount.  Past renters are less likely to cancel on you and they are easier to manage since they’ve stayed with you before.  Any way you can increase bookings from past guests should be in your vacation rental advertising arsenal.  You can make the security deposit smaller, offer free nights, or simply discount their stay.

I’m sure there are plenty of others I’m missing.  What kind of perks do you offer your guests to increase your bookings?

Posted by Jon M of http://www.FindVacationRentals.com

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

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.

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