What is the best sporting event bringing people to your online vacation home rentals?
In the past I have written, and some of you have heard/seen my webinar, about Niche Marketing in the vacation home rental industry. This information from SportsTravel magazine fits in perfectly with that theme. SportsTravel magazine has announced the list of sporting events that have been nominated for the 2008 SportsTravel Awards.
You should also think about how you, and your community, can organize voting and promoting your event to bring attention to your destination. As well as planning for 2009 and putting a new nomination on the ballot. Official ballots are available in the August and September issues of SportsTravel magazine. Readers may also vote online at www.SportsTravelMagazine.com.
Following are the 2008 SportsTravel Award nominees:
2007 Great White North Dragon Boat Challenge, Toronto, Canada
2007 National Bicycle League Grand National, Louisville, KY
2008 JAMfest Cheer Super Nationals, Indianapolis, IN
2008 National Draw Women’s Lacrosse Amateur Championship, Marlton, NJ
2008 Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon, Oklahoma City, OK
2008 U.S. Youth Soccer Southern Regional Championship, Raleigh, NC, and Wilson, NC
2007 AAU Junior Olympic Games, Knoxville, TN
2007 ICF Junior Wildwater World Championships, Columbia, SC, and Charlotte, NC
2007 Pop Warner Super Bowl & National Cheer/Dance Championships, Orlando, FL
2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Slalom Canoe/Kayak, Charlotte, NC
2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Swimming, Omaha, NE
2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field, Eugene, OR
2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Various
2007 Little League Baseball World Series, Williamsport, PA
2008 City Chase USA, Various
2008 Kick-it 3v3 Soccer Tour, Various
2008 Muddy Buddy Series, Various
2008 USA Softball KFC Bound 4 Beijing Tour, Various
2007 Army-Navy Football Classic, Baltimore, MD
2008 BCS National Championship Game (LSU vs. Ohio State), New Orleans, LA
2008 NCAA Division I Baseball Championship Game, Omaha, NE
2008 NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Championship Game, Denver, CO
2008 USA Triathlon Collegiate National Championship, Tuscaloosa, AL
2008 Under Armour Senior Bowl, Mobile, AL
2008 ACC Indoor Track & Field Championships, Chapel Hill, NC
2008 NCAA Division I Women’s Gymnastics Championships, Athens, GA
2008 NCAA Division II Spring Championships Festival, Houston, TX
2008 NCAA Division III Track & Field Championships, Oshkosh, WI
2008 NJCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, Levelland, TX
2008 Penn Relay Carnival, Philadelphia, PA
2007 EA Sports Maui Invitational, Maui, HI
2008 Big East Baseball Championships, Clearwater, FL
2008 NAIA Softball National Championships, Decatur, AL
2008 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships, San Antonio, TX
2008 NCAA Division I Softball Championships, Oklahoma City, OK
2008 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championships, Tampa Bay, FL
2007 Davis Cup Final, Portland, OR
2008 French Open Championship Match, Paris, France
2008 Kentucky Derby, Louisville, KY
2008 Masters, Augusta, GA
2008 U.S. Open Golf Championship, San Diego, CA
Super Bowl XLII, Glendale, AZ
2007 ESPN Summer X Games, Los Angeles, CA
2007 Professional Bull Riders Ford Tough Finals, Las Vegas, NV
2007 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV
2008 Arnold Fitness Weekend, Columbus, OH
2008 ESPN Winter X Games, Aspen, CO
2008 Teva Mountain Games, Vail, CO
2007 NFL NFC Championship Playoff Series, Various
2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup, Various
2008 NHL Stanley Cup Finals, Detroit, MI, and Pittsburgh, PA
2008 Red Bull Air Race World Series, Various
2008 STIHL TimberSports Series, Various
2008 XTERRA American Tour, Various
Best New Sports Event
2007 USA Rowing World Challenge, Oklahoma City, OK
2008 American Eagle Outfitters Tour of Pennsylvania, Various
2008 Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon, Fredericksburg, VA
2008 Puerto Rico Open, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico
2008 Ultimate Boarder, Various
2008 XTERRA Winter World Championship, Huntsville, UT
Any event you would add to this list?
Ralf
LiveRez
Opt-In Forms – What Data Should You Collect from potetial travelers?
The question about the "right amount of questions" to ask of potential guests for your vacation home rental signing up to your opt-in form is a tough one to answer. The answer: "it depends." It depends on what you really need for your business. Here are a couple of guidelines:
The better your information, the better you can market your vacation home rentals. Be careful to balance the desire for detail with the potential abandonment rate of asking for too much.
Lets us know what has worked and what has not worked for you? Do you have any online Jedi mind tricks the rest of us could use?
Ralf
Experience – What a great Asset!!
Experience can come in many forms. Mostly it seems to come from making decisions and then looking back upon what worked and what did not work. Now, what if I could just have knowledge without having to go through this adventurous and sometimes painful? How can I get experience without the time & decisions?
Easy! Bring on a guy who has been there, done that, and can use that experience to help me. How lucky am I to have Gary Gigot joining our team and using his experience to help me in my decisions? Very lucky. Gary's addition to our team has been significant already and established some fantastic plans of how we can grow our business and services to vacation rental property managers.
The bigger picture here is about making the most of experience. Chances are that you do not know everything (assuming you are not my 13 year old daughter). Finding the right resources that will complement your knowledge can have a tremendous affect on your ability to drive your business. Not only because your 'concilieres' provide you great advice, but also b/c they allow you to focus your energy and mind on the things that you are really great at. And that, what you are really great at, is what makes your business a reflection of you, different from anyone else, and something that customers value.
Ralf
LiveRez
Big Boys in Travel Are Looking At Vacation Home Rentals
A big week for our industry. My friends over at FlipKey collected on an investment from TripAdvisor, and then Orbitz announced a partnership with Zonder to provide a vacation rental referral service to their travelers. This activity resulted in an article in the Motley Fool about Expedia and the vacation rental industry.
Motley Fool article about Expedia and Vacation Home Rental Market
So what does all this mean? Not sure any of us know for sure, but it tells me a couple of things:
- The big travel companies are very interested in the vacation home rental industry
- Online bookings, not just referrals and reservations, is going to be come even more critical
- Taking their business online is essential for vacation rental property managers
- Vacation rental property managers stand to win, and win big, if they are ready for a new era
- HomeAway has some big decisions to make about their strategy
- We need to stay very focused on the Customer - the Traveler
What do you think it spells for our industry?
Ralf
LiveRez
The Trust Accounting Myths
Again and again I run into a discussion about 'trust accounting'. Trust accounting is one of those terms that people throw around, but usually mean many different things. So I thought I would put my 'stake in the ground' about how I utilize the term trust accounting.
a. Name of the owner and identification of the bank account
b. Dates of each activity
c. Amounts received and from whom
d. Amounts disbursed and to whom
e. Current balances of funds for each owner, each month, or as of any date
a. Name of the account (including the bank and account number)
b. Date of each transaction, each debit and credit to the account
c. Names of the sources of each deposit
d. Names of each person receiving a payment
e. Current balance in the account
All of the above are tracked and available in QuickBooks for vacation rental property management. So, find out what the requirements are for your state and do not be confused into thinking that QuickBooks cannot manage your accounting needs.
Ralf
Vacation Home Expo – coming again to Atlanta January 23-25
Based on the success and the lessons learned from 2008, the Vacation Home Expo is returning to Atlanta in January of 2009. This is exciting for the vacation home rental industry - all of us in the industry owners, property managers, suppliers, vacation rental software providers and marketeers. As a group we stand to gain from a rising tide of vacation home rental that will raise all boats, or should I say homes.
The Vacation Home Expo January 23 – 25, 2009 at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta the show will bring together various leaders in the industry to present a united front to the attending travelers. That united front is something that fascinates me. With a united front, and especially a united message we can make a significant impact in building the recognition and utilization of vacation home rentals by travelers. It is about bringing new travelers to vacation homes. Taking away from the hotels, not each other.
Ralf
LiveRez
Test New Niche Traveler Markets – Fast, Easy, and Cheap
You know it is time to launch another marketing campaign to get those guests coming in for your vacation home rentals. But you know the old "spray and pray" does not work. You need to be targeted, laser focused, a sniper of great vacation guests. So you spend some time planning, researching, and brainstorming new niche markets to go after. But how can you know which ones to focus on.
–Get a sense of how interested the market is in your offering.
Step one
Ralf
Flash is great to show Vacation Home Rental, but how about SEO?
What better way to show the spectacular vistas, the cozy living room, the high tech kitchen, and the private pool combined with a local flavor than a video tour. Vacation home rentals were made to be shown this way. Flash is great to capture the attention of shoppers and to hook them into exploring your offerings. But be careful, it has not done much for you in helping shoppers find you while searching the web. Until now, hopefully improvements are on their way.
Google and Adobe have made recent announcements around the improvement in Flash being used in SEO. Google's Official Webmaster Central Blog used the following example of how a Flash website listing looked in search results before the new Flash crawling technology was installed:
And this is how the same Flash website listing would now appear:
The difference, as you can see, lies within the important descriptive content that Google can now index. This peek into Google's accessibility, however, begs the questions: How well does Google index Flash? and How effectively can it be optimized for rankings?
Based on the information provided since the announcements, following optimization techniques for Flash pages:
- The textual content within Flash can be optimized for specific keyphrase(s) to assist targeted rankings.
- Text navigation within the website as well as text links within content can include keyphrase(s) to boost relevancy of the destination page. However, this is only applicable when Flash is separated into segments housed in separate files. For example, instead of creating a website entirely in a single flash file (i.e. www.xyzname.com/site.swf), the Flash file should be broken into segments housed in separate URLs (i.e., page1.swf, page2.swf, etc.).
- Emphasizing (bolding) may help to raise the value of keyphrase(s). This seems to be a logical capability, but we don't know at present if the new technology recognizes text emphasis.
Flash has made some amazing progress, but it still falls short of the efficacy of HTML when it comes to SEO. Use it wisely.
Ralf
Vacation Rental in Bejing……..You go first and tell me about it.
I love the Olympics. Some of the fondest childhood memories I have are of watching the summer and winter Olympics. In Austria, where I grew up, the coverage was 'old school'. Instead of the human interest stories and highlights, the coverage showed the first competitor and then showed every competitor thereafter - just like being at the event. That clearly has its pluses and minuses........the marathon........
Back to my point. I love the Olympics. In 2002 I was able to go to Salt Lake City to watch some of the winter games. Now what if I wanted to go to Beijing to watch and stay at a vacation rental. I know there are many places to look, but I Googled 'Beijing vacation home'. The #1, yes #1, organic listing that came up was from craigslist.
I love craigslist. Almost as much as the Olympics. But to go thousands of miles to Beijing on a craigslist ad. Whoa! I think I need a bit more reassurance. Not that I am a wimpy traveler. I can tell stories with the best of them. But there is just not enough confidence for me in booking a place far away, form a person I do not know, without any type of third-party reassurance.
This underscores the importance of creating a network within the vacation property manager community to validate and endorse certain property managers. By overcoming these types of traveler hesitations, we can grow immensely.
Good news - if you have what it takes, craigslist has 100s of available rentals.
Higher, Faster, Stronger.
Ralf
LiveRez.com
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