Recently I had a conversation with a vacation manager about her strategy of week-to-week rentals.  We agreed that although that was a good strategy in the past, it might not be what she wants to do for 2009.  As a matter of fact, she already changed her business model to adapt to the changing traveler booking habits.

Here are some noteworthy stats - based on 2007/2008 bookings:

• For 1 Week 25% 
• For 6 days 20%
• For 3/4/5 days 15%

My expectation, and what i am observing across our many vacation managers is that the % of 7 day rentals is decreasing and travelers are looking for more flexibility.  While not being able to afford the full 1 week vacation, they do not want to forgo the vacation completely and a few days is much better than no vacation home at all.

So my advice is, put the old 'week-to-week' rental only strategy on the shelf while the economy and travelers are in recovery mode.

Ralf
www.LiveRez.com

Another reminder that we are all in this together.  I am passing along this request by the CFVRMA leadership to help unite Florida vacation home managers.  Staying abreast of legislative issues and uniting in causes is essentail for our industry success.

Dear Industry Member:

I come to you today with an urgent request. The Legislature, now in special session, is considering cutting up to 90 percent of VISIT FLORIDA’s remaining fiscal year budget. This decision is being discussed now and will be made this week. These cuts would force VISIT FLORIDA to cancel major programs, marketing and advertising, except for those by which we are contractually bound. If these budget cuts pass, we will operate as a skeleton organization. CALL TO ACTION
We need your help today. Please make calls to your legislators and also mobilize your network of employees, partners, colleagues, families and friends to call. We need to communicate that budget cuts at this level will devastate our industry and hurt our economy. Every voice counts, so we are sending this email to Florida tourism businesses. Now more than ever, we need your commitment to keep our industry healthy and save VISIT FLORIDA. If you are unable to reach your legislators directly, please speak to their legislative aid or staff. Your message will be passed along to the legislator. When you call your legislators at the Capitol TODAY, I ask that you fill out the attached form  

http://www.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT03MDcxOTImcD0xJnU9MTA2MjIxMDM5JmxpPTI3Nzg5MjA/index.html

and email to https://cfpma.clubexpress.com/educationcampaign@floridastourismcounts.org or fax to 850-224-9286.

This will be the best way for us to keep a pulse on the legislative environment and determine next steps. To find your local legislators and their Tallahassee office contact information, you can visit this website http://www.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT03MDcxOTImcD0xJnU9MTA2MjIxMDM5JmxpPTI3Nzg5MjE/index.html .

Simply enter your zip code for a contact list of legislators in your district.

Suggested Talking Points
I am [NAME] with [BUSINESS], who lives in [CITY]. It is important to communicate that you are in
their district.
I am calling to strongly urge [REPRESENTATIVE X / SENATOR Y] to vote against cuts to VISIT
FLORIDA’s budget.
VISIT FLORIDA’s state destination marketing is critical to the success of my business.
If these cuts pass, my company and my community will suffer the consequences. [Briefly comment on how VISIT FLORIDA helps you do business].
Cuts to VISIT FLORIDA will only hurt our state tourism industry and Florida’s economy. Tourism is a profit center in Florida:
           o For every $1 the state invests in tourism marketing, more than $3 is returned to the state
               in tourism-related taxes.
           o VISIT FLORIDA provides advertising and marketing opportunities that are crucial to
               my business—opportunities that would not be possible otherwise.
           o VISIT FLORIDA is the catalyst for the tourism industry and matches every $1 in state funding with $2 in private sector investment. Without state funding, we will lose our ability to be competitive with other destinations.
The absence of VISIT FLORIDA could result in a loss of 143,750 tourism related jobs and will further harm our struggling state economy. 
I appreciate [REPRESENTATIVE X's / SENATOR Y's] consideration on this urgent matter. Thank you in advance for your assistance in this very important issue.

Respectfully,
President and CEO
VISIT FLORIDA®   

Be heard!

Ralf
www.LiveRez.com

http://www.keywordspy.com

This tool is a must have for your online vacation rental marketing and online booking efforts.  Keyword Spy will will show you exactly which keywords your competitors are bidding on in Google AdWords and how much they are spending.  It will also help you learn which worked work well for different players in certain parts of the country.  Helping you to design a more effective PPC strategy.

For example, enter the phrase "sun valley vacation rentals" and discovered who is bidding and who is coming up naturally.  When you click on a website name, it will show you what words they come up for.  The first 10 search results are free and a great source of some base info.

http://www.keywordspy.com 

This is a must-know reconnaissance tool for Internet search engine marketers.

Couple of reasons why reaching out to very specific segments of the vacation travel market is critical.  Among those are:  guests for your shoulder seasons, competing for consumer attention with a limited budget, making your way through the noise that consumers are trained to ignore, the web gives you great tools, and your competitors are doing it.

To help you make the most of your marketing dollar and utilizing the internet marketing tools available to you, come join us for a 30-40 min presentation.  I will discuss successes and not-so-successes that I have seen in the vacation home rental industry and in eCommerce when going after niche markets.

Follow the loink below and register today.  Space is limited and I promise you will walk away with some new ideas.

They are looking for a reliable friend.  Show them you can be that friend.

This is one of the things that scares them away from the vrbo and sends them towards a property management company that is experienced and equipped in dealing with the unforeseen things that happen during a vacation.  A good property mgmt company will be there to ensure they have a great vacation - from booking to check-out.  That needs to be you - their best friend.

How do they judge you to be that friend:
A quality website to get a feel for your company, the property, and the service you provide.

Clear rules - check-in/out, smoking policies, or pet policies

Good online pictures are also important.

Amenities are important (pool, hairdryers, computers, etc.)

Location information - map, attractions, etc.

Booking details - charges, taxes, etc. - Clarity is Key!

• Some questions you should anticipate:
  What if my flight comes in after your office has closed?
  What is the cancellation policy?
  Is housekeeping available?
  Is there a deposit or will charges be billed to my credit card?
  How many parking spaces are available to me?
  Are laundry facilities available?

Be their best friend, and they will be your best customers.

Ralf
www.liverez.com

In trying to capture the interest of the vacation shopper, we constantly try to make our website and our vacation rental homes more engaging and exciting.  Like all things, this is something that needs to be balanced and carefully planned.  Too much of anything is a bad thing.

Tood Folandsbee, of WebMarketingResources.net explains the best use of flash and animation on your website in a recent article.

While conducting usability testing with many people as they visit different websites, we hear lots of complaints about the use of Flash or JavaScript to cycle images and messages on homepages. We wonder: Is Flash truly a killer app? Or is it a sales killer?

I'm not talking about the Flash site introduction pages, which fortunately have nearly disappeared. I am talking about an increasing number of small sites which are cycling images, changing messages, and sending offers across the screen -- generally causing havoc among people trying to understand an often complex webpage.

This is not a tirade against Flash or JavaScript. It is an appeal for improved usability.

Problems with Scrolling Messages

Here are the problems caused by changing messages and scrolling offers:

1. Distraction. A large percentage of people, especially those with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), find them incredibly distracting. It is difficult to read -- let alone comprehend -- a webpage where dominant images continue to change and distract.

   The first rule to get conversions is: Convey your value proposition. Make clear what business you are in and why it is of benefit to the reader. But Flash often distracts viewers from understanding this essential mess age.

   Eyes are naturally attracted to motion and light. If your visitors don't finish reading a paragraph, they won't understand the value proposition. And unless they understand your value proposition, nothing will happen. Our user testing constantly reveals this pattern of distraction.
    

2. Disappearing messages. Some sites cycle images and messages a few times and then stop. However, once the cycling has stopped, it is impossible to go back and look at the messages. Visitors become frustrated when they can't review them.
    
3. Ineffectiveness. Flash does not seem to increase the effectiveness of messaging. Flash images alone convey little beyond an attractive look and feel, but these displays often consume 10% to 30% of valuable homepage real estate.
    
4. Transitoriness. When we allow test users 8 to 10 seconds to view a homepage -- and then hide the page -- they rarely remember the content of the Flash messages. Far more often they are able to remember simple static headlines.
    
5. Trained avoidance. Our testing indicates that Flash is becoming like banner ads that people have trained themselves to ignore.

A Better Solution -- User Control

Let others continue to run Flash and lose conversions, while our clients implement this simple and effective solution: On every instance of Flash on your site use the common video icon controls for play and pause (and mute, if you use audio). Start with your primary message and let people move through the display if they choose. Such controls allow users to:

·  Run a display if they want to. ·  Stop on any message they are interested in. (Hint: Hyperlink the image to take users to an appropriate landing page.) With this approach you avoid annoying anyone. Flash can be an engaging, entertaining, and impactful tool if you simply yield control to the user and end the forced distraction.

If you watched users get frustrated day in and day out with cycling images and messages, you might lose patience -- as we often do -- with sites that don't spend the time to determine exactly the kind of impressions they generate. As you explore new and supposedly engaging website technologies, be sure to test them before fully implementing them on your site.

Take the time to understand how your customers shop for their vacation rental property.  What information do they want to spend time on, and where the best place is to utilize animation.  I really like the concept - users want to have control.  I know my wife always does. : )

Lets talk about some different kind of matching available with Google Search Marketing to help you with both market your vacation rental home using pay-per-click and SEO:
1.  The exact match – an exact match of the terms you place inside brackets when you enter keywords into your account. If you were adding an exact match keyword to your account it would look like this: [beach house]. Ads associated with this exact match would only show up for those specific keywords, that is, for "beach house" but not for "rental beach house".

2.  The phrase match - terms are entered with quotes around them. The phrase match "beach house" term would allow ads to show when a searcher put in "rental beach house," "beach house vacation," or "California beach house".

3. Broad match - is a bit more complicated. With broad match, you simply enter your phrase with no special characters.  This is Google's default way to add keywords. With "beach house" into your account as a broad match, your ad would display for any search query containing "beach" and "house".

Broad Search has morphed into Expanded Broad Match.  Now for example, account could end up displaying an ad based on your broad match keywords of "beach house" when the searcher entered "sand" or "sunshine".

Over time, Google has stretched the relationship between the broad matched terms to the point that it is often difficult to see any logical relationship between the searcher's term, your account's keyword, and the displayed ad. This often results in the ad displaying for terms that are not relevant.

There are several approaches you can take to minimize the damage.
Avoid the use of broad match altogether. Exact match and phrase match often bring excellent traffic while avoiding Google making questionable expanded match choices. If you decide to run with broad match:
Avoid using one or two word keyphrases. Instead, adopt a practice to only run broad match on terms with 4 or more words in the phrase. This will minimize the chances of the Expanded Broad match algorithm misapplying your ads.
Identify non-relevant terms that the ad displays for and add those terms as negative keywords. If a searcher enters a keyword that is included in your negative keyword list, your ad will not display. The negative term negates the ad from showing. Developing a negative keyword list is an on-going effort. Don't be surprised if over time your negative keyword list becomes quite long. Tools like the Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), a good analytics program, and specialized tools like PPCProbe (www.ppcprobe.com) can help you identify negatives.Broad match can be very effective, but use it very carefully.Ralf
www.liverez.com?

I am a big fan of the Marketing Experiments team over in Florida.  Not only because they like to go surfing right out of their office, but because they are very scientific about their work in online selling.  Even though they do not focus on online vacation rental and online travel bookings, their materials are very applicable to vacation home rental managers.

Their latest publication:  Search Marketing 2008 Benchmark covers all the latest trends in Search Marketing.  See an excerpt:  http://www.marketingsherpa.com/exs/Search08Excerpt.pdf

Couple of immediate take-aways:
 - About half of online seller will increase their PPC and SEO budget by over 10%.
 - Only House Email Marketing has a higher ROI than SEO & PPC
 - SEO and SEM positions are very hard to fill
 - Long URLs are not good.  Short ones are.

If this is an area you plan to invest a lot of time and energy, the ME Benchmark could prove to be a very valuable resource for you.

Ralf
www.liverez.com

A new report out by PhocusWright highlight the many online travel trends.  No surprise, online travel is strong and growing.  Following are a couple of highlights from the report: 

The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Tenth Edition

What does this mean to you, the vacation rental manager?  You better be online - in a simple & pleasant way.  Have an online experience that is similar to what travelers will find in booking business travel.  Vacation homes are right in the sweet-spot of the trend that people need a change of scenario to vacation.  Know your target customer, and niche - because you will get outspent in marketing by the big online travel agencies.

Ralf
www.liverez.com

Whether you are SEO'ing or PPC'ing - it all comes down to having the right words in mind, and focusing your efforts on those words.  The word 'New York' is very powerful.  So is the word 'Skiing'.  But think about how many different contexts these words can be used in, and how many cyber-sellers are using these works to position themselves and their products/services on the web.

OK - nothing new so far.  But here is the new statistic - the Average Google search has 4 words!!  One place to check out how different keywords, and keyword phrases compare to each other is in Google Trends:  http://www.google.com/trends

That means your target vacationers are not thinking about which word they should search on, but which phrase to search on.  Shoppers are no longer inputting single words or a couple of related words.  They are searching on meaningful phrases that define very specific target content.

So my advice is, think in terms of meaningful phrases that define what your target prospects are searching for.  Not 'New York' or 'Skiing', but 'New York Family Ski Vacation'.

Happy booking!

Ralf
www.liverez.com