Ouch!! $4,000 Vacation Rental Scam Hits Canadian Family
Read the full story here: Canadian Family Gets Scammed for $4000 By Vacation Rental
This is so painful. Painful because a family lost out on a vacation, lost out on some money, and also because it is another black eye for our industry. The ability of the vacation rental industry to break into the 'mainstream' - real mainstream, like being on Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, etc. - hinges on our ability to create an environment of trusted vacation experiences and sources for travelers to book with confidence.
So where did this family book their trip? On www.flybynightvacationrentalscam.com? No. Actually it was on www.forgetaway.com. A site associated with the Weather Channel. If you cannot trust the weather guy, who can you trust?
I am interested in what you have to say about what we can do to change the perception and reality within our industry.
Ralf
www.LiveRez.com
Faith in your Website Service Provider
I had an interesting meeting with a gentleman from Akami last week. Akami is a web hosting company and an expert in web performance. An interesting part of the conversation revolved around the consumer's reactions to a website and its performance.
When you understand all that happens between your vacation rental website and your prospect guest's computer, you realize how critical the quality of the many service provider's between these two point is to the traveler's perception as you as a company. Performance issues could be caused by your web hosting provider, by another internet service provider, by the traveler's service provider........lots of factors that you have no control over. But guess what? The traveler who has web problems while going to or on your site, will not differentiate between you and the problems.
Any problems will reflect on you. So do all you can to ensure a quality web experience, by selecting your partners carefully. Control what you can control in this dynamic environment.
Your website can be an awesome tool to differentiate yourself. Make it count.......make those 5-8 seconds you have to make an impression count.
Ralf
LiveRez
Representing the Theme of PhocusWright 2008 – Search, Shop, Book
The theme for the show was 'Search, Shop, Buy'. We changed that around a little into 'Search, Shop, Book'. The key - no email or phone exchange required, the traveler can choose to book completely and seamlessly online. Something that is critical for the mainstream adoption of vacation rentals and the aability for vacation rentals to be part of the mass OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) like Expedia, Priceline, and Travelocity.
Ralf
LiveRez
PhocusWright – Day 3 Report: Too much to put in one post……
First, I had an incredible run this morning in the LA hills. I found a little regional park that leads up hills overlooking the LA valley. It was an incredible morning - clear skies and 65 degrees. The day was filled with some great meetings, as well as sitting through some facintating presentations.
I will focus on only one of the presentations for this post. Travel Channel. Yes, they had a bunch of cool videos. Really cool travel videos - short, snipet videos. What makes a great video in the eyes of Patrick Younge, their CEO? Here are 4 items:
- Searchability - must be able to find the video online and integrate it into the website
- Quality - does not mean it has to be expensive; good story, narrative; 1.5 to 3min
- Relevance - expert and trusted advisor tone, not commercial
- Mobility - able to publish to various formats including a mobile device (I will discuss mobile in travel in a future post)
Video is worth doing. But it is only worth doing if you do it well.
It was interesting in my conversation with Priceline, Orbitz, MSN Travel, Yahoo Travel, and others, how prevelant discussions about the future of the vacation rental market are. Our market is definitely seen as a great oppty and a new fronteir for the mainstream online travel and booking business.
Much more to come......stay tuned......I have content for post for the next couple of weeks from this show. Also coming soon, the picture I took with me, Darth Vader, and a Stormtrooper.
Ralf
LiveRez
PhocusWright – Day 2 Report: Blogging & Customer Experience
On day 2, after a beautiful run in 70-degree sunny weather to start the day, I had the oppty to attend a few interesting sessions as well as meet many leaders in the travel industry. Two of the sessions I attended were about Blogging and about Customer Experience. Way too much info to give you a detailed summary, but here are some key points I took notes on and apply to online vacation home rentals:
Blogging. Couple of takeaways that I thought might be useful to you.
- When creating, or starting, or continuing a blog, these are the critical questions to ask:
Why are you blogging?
Who is your audience?
What value are you delivering? (you cannot use this as a promotional tool)
New 'online tools' that were discussed were Facebook and Twitter. Honestly, no one could come up with a compelling use of Twitter. As cool and as fun as it may be.
Be significant, meaningful, less data and more structured information.
Customer Experience: Some interesting notes.
In the past year, 9 out of 10 online customers experiences problems shopping online.
41% of those abandoned the website right away.
47% of those attempted to contact the website company for help.
Only 50% of those 47% were able to resolve their issues. (75% of these will never return to the site)
80% will share their negative experience. 58% sharing online and 80% sharing offline.
More to come from LA. Stay tuned.
Ralf
PhocusWright – Day 1 Report on Travel & Vacation Conference
I arrived in Los Angeles on Sun afternoon. Welcoming me to Burbank were the burning and smoking hills of the Los Angeles area. It was pretty scary actually.
Monday morning opened with the Innovators Forum - this was a collection of 32 innovator companies in the Travel space presenting their solution. The focus was on demonstrations and it was very interesting to see what is out there. I categorize what I saw into a couple of categories:
- Trip Planning - planning the destinations and how to get there
- Trip Info Aggregation - aggregating the info that is all over the web into a new personalized results
- Vacation Rentals - creating a complete online booking and distribution solution
See a list of all the companies that presented - PhocusWright Innovator Summit
It is exiting to see vacation rentals take on such a prominent role at this conference. The recent investment of $250M into HomeAway certainly has a lot to with this.
Over the next few weeks I will review some of these innovator companies. One that stood out to me as being a potential partner for us, both LiveRez and you the Vacation Manager, is rezgo. Go check them out.
RezGo manages the planning and online booking of vacation tours and activities. This is something that some of you may be able to use for services you provide, or something that your friends in your destination could use. It is a web-based solution. Stephen Joyce, the founder of rezgo, also has a blog on Travel, Tourism, & Technology Trends Blog - go check it out. His knowledge and passion come through.
More to come from LA.
Ralf
$250 Million……..for Vacation Rental Industry Giant HomeAway
Not sure when the last time was that I heard some good economic news. I am sure it was a while ago. This week however changed all that. $250 million is a lot of money - read about HomeAway's big catch. I have gone up and down Sandhill Road in Palo Alto, CA looking to raise money from the Venture Capital community before, it is not an easy task. Walking away with $250 million from these folks that are pretty darn smart is a great, great accomplishment.
So what does this mean. In my opinion a couple of things:
1. HomeAway has some very defined plans on what they will do with that $250million
2. HomeAway has cornered the RBO market already, so I do not believe that this money will go into the RBO line
3. RBOs and Vacation Rental Managers split the market about 50/50 - currently HomeAway does not have much of a story to address 50% of the market
4. HomeAway needs to address that missing 50%
I assume you can guess by now where I think that HomeAway Will invest their $250 million - they will be making in-roads into the VRMC market. Personally, I think this is great news for us in the vacation rental industry. The tide raise all the ships and with an infusion of $250 million into the vacation rental industry, the tide will rise.
My advice, make sure that you have a solid online marketing, online bookings, and guest management/service strategy and partner. Partner means someone who you can trust and who will be looking out for you in this changing time.
Ralf
LiveRez
Vacation Rental Article Full of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt)
Wall Street Journal - Renting a Villa, or a Dump
So here we go again. Like the entire vacation world revolves around VRBO, and all the issues associated with VRBOs. I am boiling with frustration that we, the VRMC community, cannot get in front of the media, the travel industry, and especially the travelers to dispel this very one-sided view of the vacation rental industry.
"Vacation Rentals are great, but it is luck of the draw. Just hope you get a good one." BULL____!!
We are a community of professional Vacation Managers (note I emphasize 'vacation', not the property). We offer a wide selection of professionally cleaned, well maintained, stocked with amenities, and concierge serviced vacation properties.
That is what travelers need to learn about. I urge all of us to make as much of an effort to drive our public relations, and also to offer great vacation experiences.
Ralf
LiveRez.com
PhoCusWright Identifies Seven Emerging Themes for Travel Industry
- The growth of pure Travel 2.0 businesses is slowing-dramatically.
The Travel Innovation Summit demonstrators, along with applicants who were not selected for this year’s event, described very few applications involving new social networks or pure social networking. - Travelers will enjoy easy access to rich subjective, objective and experiential content for trip planning.
Look for the pairing of trip planning and established social network brands and other sources of objective and subjective content. To facilitate the learning and shopping process, first movers are emerging in semantic search. Tools that facilitate an easier trip planning experience by narrowing alternatives based on profiles, stated preferences and observed behaviors are coming. - Abundant, varied mobile applications are beginning to emerge.
Interestingly, many of the emerging mobile application innovations focus not simply on shopping and purchasing, but on a variety of content, including day-of-travel and concierge applications. Creative approaches to the mobile business model challenge also are arising. - The Long Tail is coming of age.
With low cost computers and more pervasive Internet access than ever, the Long Tail of travel is poised to spread beyond the traditional air, car and hotel market. Unique approaches, including Software as a Service (SaaS), are on the horizon for the effective, efficient distribution of additional content and services. - Air shopping is still a work in progress.
Innovators like Air Canada are redefining the airline seat as a product-think of a world where every seat is a SKU with unique characteristics and services-rather than a mere commodity. The complexities of air shopping mean new approaches are still in their infancy-with ample room to grow and mature. - Attention shifts from “learn, shop, book” in the travel value chain.
Innovators are recognizing that elements beyond “learn, shop, book” in the travel value chain can be monetized. Expect pre-trip, trip experience, and post-trip technology models to arise. - Building supporting business applications loses its luster.
Innovators are focused on the customer-facing applications in the travel value chain, with much less emphasis on the infrastructure services that support content development, content distribution, financial accounting and settlement, and even provisioning of Internet access.
Know Your Vacation Rental Customer – Targeted Efforts to Thrive
In the past I have spent much effort on discussing niche marketing. I am all for targeting, profiling, and not trying to be everythign to all people. I want to share some very interesting points that I picked up last week at the VRMA (Vacation Rental Managers Association) annual conference.
Target Customer: Know who your target audience is and spend time to understand how the travel habits (budget, transportation, and other logistics) will be affected by the economic crisis. Are their jobs recession resiliant? Do they need to fly to your destination?
Here are some statistics from a recent PhocusWright study to help you understand the typical Vacation Rental traveler:?
60% have a college degree
33% have an income over $100,000
90% take over 2 leisure trips/year
Here is one you have to internalize. 75% use the internet for over 1hr per day. 75%!! For over 1hr.
I am not saying that this decribes your exact travler, but if you think that the internet is not critical to your success as a vacation manager, think again.
My message - Know your customer. Know your customer. Know your customer.
Happy renting.
Ralf
LiveRez
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