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
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:
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
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.
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
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:
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
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
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
I’m baaaack! My apologies for the lack of blogging in the past couple of weeks. We have been busy here at LiveRez with new product solutions, including an integration for the vacation property management system to QuickBooks accounting. I actually have a whole big list of excuses……………………..but, I will spare you the details. As my high-school football coach always said, “Excuses are like ______, everyone has one and they all stink.”
Well, moving on. Over the next couple of blog posts I will convey some of the interesting tib-bits I picked up at the VRMA 2008 Conference.
The Vacation Rental Market is HUGE – it is currently $24 Billion annually. That is a lot of money. Based on an average occupancy rate of 35% and a Supply of vacation home ‘unit nights’ of 333 Billion. That is 21 Million bookers of vacation rentals.
BUT……that is not even the exciting part. The exciting part is that all this only represents a fraction of the total US Travel Market – and a fraction of the Leisure Travel market.
Why only a fraction? Because for most of their leisure travel, 57% of vacationers did not even consider a vacation rental, 23% considered it but did not book, and 20% booked a vacation rental.
57% did not even consider a vacation rental. Did not even consider it! We have an amazing opportunity to educate the public and brand the vacation home experience.
More to come……
Ralf
LiveRez
A recent article in the NY Time again tells a story of travel misery. A dream vacation spoiled by an inaccurate, incomplete, and ’skewed’ description of a rental property. At least the property was there this time.
Here is the full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/travel/05pracrentals.html
This is soooo painful to read:
“We ended up leaving midweek the conditions were so bad,” said Ms. Gismervik, a marketing director from Albany. “We couldn’t take it anymore.” The owner, she said, later apologized for the condition of the home, but did not provide any compensation. Moreover, Ms. Gismervik ended up paying an additional $2,000 to stay at a Marriott for the rest of the trip, and the experience soured her on vacation rentals. “I would not choose ever to do that again,” she said. “I’d stay in a hotel where I knew how things are. I’d never rent from a private person again.”
We have to continue to build trust, visibility, and a common standard of quality into our vacation home rental industry. Finding ways to diferentate quality professionally managed properties from vrbo properties.
Ralf
www.LiveRez.com
Here are 3 great tools from Google to help you in your research and online marketing strategy for your vacation home rental business. AND…..they are FREEEEE.
Cool Tool #1: Google Insights for Search
This tool gives you all kinds of information about any keyword/phrase in which you are interested. You’ll find out how searches for that keyword/phrase peak and ebb over time, where geographically your search is most popular, and what other keyword/phrases are used to conduct similar searches.
For example, at the time of this writing, we tested the tool using the phrases: “Web analytics” and “Web metrics”. The use of the phrase “Web analytics” has increased dramatically over the past four years while the use of the phrase “Web metrics” has decreased.
How can you harness all this data? Suppose you’re trying to figure out which product attribute to emphasize in an ad or on your website? As an example, this tool could help you figure out what’s more important to your audience: reliability, safety or price. Type in your terms, and see which ones resonate more with Google’s searchers.
Cool Tool #2: Google Trends
This tool shows you what the most popular searches on Google are in any given hour, plus a list of related news articles and blog posts that support the rise and fall of the traffic surges.
You can click on any of the keywords to learn more, including the hourly volume of searches, whether popularity is going up or down and (in some cases) where geographically the majority of the searches are coming from.
You can also put in your own keywords to see where your topic of choice stands over a selected period of time. We used the phrase, “email marketing”, over the past 30 days and saw that search interest surged weekly on Wednesdays and had severe dips on Saturdays and Sundays. The single highest peaks per week were tied into the publishing of press releases and articles on the topic, and the links to those resources were available for your perusal.
Cool Tool #3: Google Trends for Websites
This tool shows you the number of daily unique visitors to a specific site over your chosen period of time. The analysis details what regions visitors came from, what related sites they visited and the search terms those visitors have in common.
This tool does not work for sites with low traffic volume. However, it is a useful tool anytime you want to check out your overall business category, assess a potential online ad buy with a particular property or keep tabs on your largest competitors.