Escapia Blog - Vacation Rental News and Trends

Blogging VRMA: Guest Reviews - Experiences and Tips from the Top Users

2009-11-06T08:47:00-08:00

By Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

Over the past week we’ve blogged about sessions at VRMA presented by a range of industry experts. Escapia was honored to be chosen to present four sessions at the VRMA conference. The first session Escapia participated in was “Guest Reviews: Experiences and Tips from the Top Users.” Bill Furlong, CEO of Escapia, led the session along with TJ Mahony of FlipKey. Bill and TJ were also joined by a panel of vacation rental managers who shared their experiences and advice with guest reviews.

If you weren’t able to make it to this year's VRMA conference, we’ve included a video of the session below as well as the slides from the presentation.

Blogging VRMA: TripAdvisor on Vacation Rentals

2009-11-05T08:54:00-08:00

by Bill Furlong, CEO

One of the biggest developments in the vacation rental industry in the past year has been TripAdvisor's commitment to the category. With tab-level visibility for vacation rentals, home page promotions on TripAdvisor and creative approaches like their hotel/vacation rental price comparison tool, TripAdvisor is making a clear commitment to the category.

TripAdvisor's CEO, Stephen Kaufer, gave a talk at VRMA on TripAdvisor and their approach to the category. Much of the presentation was focused on TripAdvisor itself; though there was some interesting information about how they see the challenges and opportunity in the category:

...TripAdvisor's overall focus in the category
- TripAdvisor is here to grow the vacation rental market by putting it in front of the millions of hotel eyeballs that they have already on their site.
- They want to bring the TripAdvisor reputation for trust and transparency to VRs.
- They want to remove the reasons why people don't try vacation rentals.

...Their perception of vacation rental challenges
- Awareness: only 10% of people have stayed in a VR. TripAdvisor is addressing that by introducing vacation homes and giving them a high level of visibility.
- Confidence: TripAdvisor are facilitating guest reviews. Photos are key; their stats suggest that more photos mean more bookings. 20+ photos lead to a 150% increase in inquiries.
- Trust in owner/manager: 37% are worried that they won't have an emergency contact. TripAdvisor survey suggests that people will pay more for the reliabity that comes with professional management; of 177 people surveyed, 53% would rent from a PM even if it may cost more, 47% said they prefer to rent from an owner because it may cost less.

...TripAdvisor is helping differentiate VR managers from RBOs.
- TripAdvisor clearly labels a listing as being from a "certified owner" or a professional manager.
- The manager has an opportunity to present their brand, provide aggregate rating information, describe their company and have a link to their site.

...Repeat travel is huge
- 24% have stayed in a vacation home 10+ times.
- 14% stay in the same vacation rental property every year.

...Family focus is big
- 66% stayed in a vacation home because they can sleep more people
- 64% like having a kitchen for cooking meals.
- 60% like having more hang-out space.

Blogging VRMA: Customer Service

2009-11-04T10:13:11-08:00

By James Sells, Dir. Client Services

Jodi Taylor Refosco from Taylor-Made Deep Creek and Denny Honsey from Catalina Vacation Rentals gave a great talk at the VRMA conference on Customer Service called “From Yelling at You to Boasting About you: How to Deal with Difficult Situations and High Maintenance Owners and Guests”.

They shared many great tips and humorous examples (the cockroach story was great) during their session. Some of the things they covered that I thought were really great ideas and reminders to those of us in the Customer Service world are:

• Assume responsibility for misunderstandings
• Stay Positive
• Listen to the guest carefully, let them vent, and read between the lines
• Use the 2 Person Rule – if you are the second person to talk with a guest, take charge of the situation and resolve it.
• “I want to help you with this situation” – always use the words “We” or” I”.
• Anticipate needs/volunteer necessary information
• When you are discussing the situation give the guest 2 choices (always make the one you want them to choose more enticing)
• Have a specific goal when negotiating. For instance if you are negotiating a discount, make sure you know the maximum you are willing to do.
• Keep Track – once a problem occurs, record it
• Do not find the nearest exit when you see an angry guest come into the office

Do not let someone determine your behavior. When you are around behavior you do not like is the best time to exhibit behavior you want.

L- Listen attentively without interrupting, encouraging the guest to voice all of their concern

E – Empathize – Let the guest know you “understand how they feel”. It may be appropriate to acknowledge that you would also be upset in their situation

A – Apologize – Sometimes a simple apology is all guests really want. An apology is not necessarily an admission of fault, but an acknowledgment that the intentions were good.

R – Restate the options/Resolve the Problem. When a guests complain they want results. If their request is directly in conflict with policy, offer alternatives. (Avoid actually saying “policy” to guests)

N – Never Try to Prove Guests Wrong. Sometimes guests may offer undue criticism; you might even determine the guest actually caused the problem themselves. However, attempt to prove guest wrong never leads to satisfactory solutions.

Blogging VRMA: 25 Top Web Sites for VR Managers

2009-11-03T14:29:21-08:00

By Bill Furlong, CEO

Trent Blizzard, founder of Blizzard Internet Marketing, presented his list of 25 Web sites that every VR manager should know. Trent's presentations are always lively and packed with info. And best of all, they are very practical with some tips and/or sites that present opportuunities for VR managers to improve their online marketing.

Oh, and if you're counting you might note that Trent admitted that he fell a couple sites short of the 25. But there should be more than enough below to keep you busy.

According to Trent, links drive 66% of Google's search results. Metatags drive 0% of Google today (still drive Yahoo search results, but Yahoo search will switch to Microsoft's Bing under the recent deal between the two companies).

Social Networking faves:
- Facebook: Good for search engine results saturation. But you can waste a lot of time. A lot of people are doing it wrong.
- Twitter: All about last minute stuff.
- Linked In: All about your business. About business networking and not guests and bookings.

SEO Faves:
- DMOZ.org: submit your self
- PRWeb: for distributing press releases.
- Best of the Web: Nice listing and link that helps in search engines ("SE"s)

User Gen Content faves:
- Flickr: upload your pictures.
- YouTube: Second biggest search engine in the world. 50/50 split in the audience of how many managers are using videos on their web site. Consider Wistia.com for hosting videos. More customizable if you are putting it on your site. Tubemogul.com will push videos out to multiple sites at once (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
- CommunityWalk: Create maps. Good for search engines. Especially local SEs.
- Google MyMaps: Ditto above.
- Google Earth (keyhole): Ditto above.

>> Tip: Put full contact info with address and phone not just link.

Review Faves:
- FlipKey
- Yelp
- Judy's Book
- Google Local: Take ownership of your listing on Google Local

>> Tip: Try and get reviews in a lot of different places.

Yahoo Faves:
- Travel.yahoo.com
- Local.yahoo.com
- Yahoo Biz Directory: $299/year

>> Spending 10-20 hours can pay off. Sites are below the radar for a lot of people, so you can do well.

VRM Faves:
- Postlets: Upload homes. RE and VR site. Very time consuming to upload by hand. Free.
- Besttraveldeals.net: Helps Google page rank as well as passing traffic. Completely free.

Learn to Fish!
- SEMRush: Most exciting tool on Internet. Searches Internet phrases and what keywords you rank for.
- Yahoo Site Explore: Top links to your site or your competitors'.
- SEOMoz Juicy Link Finder: Fee-based tool. Rich tool set.

Blogging VRMA: Measuring Online Success

2009-11-02T07:46:00-08:00

by Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

At this year's VRMA show in Washington DC, I got the chance to attend some great educational sessions throughout the week. One of my favorite sessions was "Measuring Online Success: Following the Metrics the Matter" presented by Mark Randle and Rebecca Lundregan of Visual Data Systems.

In the session Mark and Rebecca discussed how to measure your company's website success by looking at the nine metrics that they feel matter the most. Here is a rundown of the metrics that matter according to the presenters:

1. Average Time on Site: What is the total time for all visits when divided by the total number of visits?

2. Average Pages per Visit: What is the total page views divided by the total number of visits?

3. Bounce Rate: Bounce rate represents the percentage of initial visitors to your website who see a single page and immediately leave to a different site. Also known as 'hit and run' visits, and not to be confused with 'exit rate.'

4. Exit Percentage: This is the percentage of visitors leaving your website from a particular page.

5. New Visits vs. Returning Visits: This shows you data for new visitors compared to returning visitors and is determined by a tracking code and not by an IP address.

6. Goal Conversions: Setting up goals on your site is a great way to measure if your visitors are navigating through your site as you'd like them to. An example of goals to set up would be getting visitors to a 'contact us' page, the booking page or the 'email a friend' page.

7. Paid Traffic vs. Organic Traffic: This is the overall visits brought to your site by either your SEM (search engine marketing) pay-per-click efforts versus the traffic brought to your site by SEO (search engine optimization) organic efforts.

8. Map Overlay: The map overlay is a great way to see where your website visitors are coming from by geographic area.

9. Google Custom Search Statistics: Google Custom Search creates a customized web search on your site with results from your website pages.

Blogging VRMA: Consumer Travel Trends

2009-10-30T13:42:20-07:00

by Bill Furlong, CEO

Peter Yesawich, President and CEO of the Ypartnership, the PR agency used by the VRMA, gave a very informative and entertaining presentation on how the consumer travel landscape is changing. The following were his main points:

...Travel is down from the peak
- 55% of households took 1 trip/year75 miles or more from home.
- That number has dropped from a peak of 66% in 1999 and 63% as recently as 2007.
...the Web is the dominant way people are planning travel
- % of households with web access has increased from 11% in 1996 to 80% in 2008 and 2/3 of that access is high-speed.

How do people plan and purchase travel:
- 61% use the Internet exclusively
- 24% use a travel agent and the internet
- 7% use a travel agent
- 8% use neither
(sample base is leisure travelers using airlines and hotels in 2009)

- % of people using the web was 53% of people in 2002. That number has increased to 66% by 2009.

...and the % of people using the Web to book travel is also a majority
- 35% used the Web to book travel in 2002. 56% of people used the web to book by 2009. BUT, the % using the web to book has been flat from 2007-2009.

... what do people think is important on a Web site
- 87% lowest fares and rates
- 74% easy booking
- 72% photos
- 46% user reviews

...the next generation of search is meta-search sites like Kayak that search a large number of travel sites for rates, availability and more and let people compare
- only 5% of travelers use meta-search today.

...Meta-search powered price shopping will make it more important to build equity into a brand
- But consumers today care less and less about the brand.
- A survey asked people when they fly whether they prefer to use a legacy carrier that they have used before, a low fare carrier or had no preference. 21% said a legacy carrier; 29% said the lowfare carrier; 50% said they had no preference. So half of consumers didn't care about the airline brand.
- A survey asked people how important the lodging brand name was. 57% said the brand name was very or extremely important in 2006. That number has dropped to 44% in 2009. So brand importance is dropping for hotels.

... blogs and advisory/review sites are increasingly important.
- 19% use blogs and advisory sites today to plan travel.
- 1/3 of next generation, younger travelers use them.
- What do they use? 42% use YouTube, 33% use Facebook, 30% use MySpace, 27% use TripAdvisor.

... The web empowers "conversational marketing"
- Consumers have a voice like never before. Google Spirit Airlines and see the gripes of a past customer who felt they were mistreated.

... We're entering the era of the 3rd screen
- 1st screen was TV; 2nd screen was the PC; 3rd screen is the cellphone.
- Cell phones are becoming dominant. in 2004 5% had only a cell phone and not a land line; by 2009 that was 19%. And among 25-29 year olds that number is 35%.
- 1/5 of phones are Internet enabled in the US. But compare that to ~half in Germany and 80% in Japan and South Korea.
- Get ready for "intercept marketing" where offers are deliverered at the right time based on the GPS location information available via the cell phone.

... Families are a very important audience
- The % of people taking trips with kids in 2000 was 25%; by 2009 it was 38%.
- But only 1/3 of households have kids, so how is that possible?
- Answer is multi-generational travel. 35% of leisure travelers are grandparents. 28% of grandparents took at least 1 trip with their grandkids in the past year.

... Special life events are also important travel drivers
- 70% of travelers have taken a trip around a special life event.
- Main two events are birthdays and anniversaries.
- Milestone years are any that are divisible by 5.
- Disney has made a major investment in that by launching a marketing campaign and program to give free entrance to their parks on someone's birthday. They found that the total amount spent on entrance fees, hotel and food by other travelers makes it all worthwhile.

... People increasingly want variety in their travel
- 64% of people say that on their next vacation they want to go someplace they've never been before.

... How much do people use vacation homes?
- 8% of all households have stayed in a vacation home.
- That percent increases to 11% when it is measured as a % of leisure travelers in 2008; and the % has increased to 14% in 2009.
- For households with income over $150k, 46% say they are interested in renting a vacation home in the next two years.

... The current economy is tough and driving consumer price sensitivity
- The travel sentiment index was ~100 in Feb 2007; dropped to 75 in late 2008; has rebounded to 90 by October 2009.
- The affordability of travel as perceived by consumer has skyrocketed; the index is up 97% from October 2008 to Feb 2009.
- How are people dealing with the recession? 87% plan to book packages to save; 64% will comparison shop for price; 51% will stay fewer nights.
- Good news is that it looks like in 2010 people are more inclined to trade down (shorter stays) rather than trading out (not traveling).
- One example of a company dealing with that is Liberty Travel, the largest seller of package trips. They aren't marketing by destination any more; they are listing their trips by price point.
- And don't think that affluent customers aren't price sensitive. They are. And the number of millionaires has dropped from 9.5 million households to 6.7 million as the financial markets have declined.
- Shorter trips are also a big trend. 48% of vacations are weekend trips. People take speed vacations where they hurry up to relax. Those short trips mean that the radius of marketing efficiency is shorter and shorter as people max out at 6 hours of travel for a weekend trip.

Helping VR owners prepare for generational change

2009-10-30T10:00:15-07:00

by Bill Furlong, CEO

A Seattle-based family practice lawyer I know recently sent along their quarterly newsletter. They included a link to a Seattle Times story (that was syndicated via the Minneapolis Star) about what owners of vacation homes should do as they think about the family cabin changing hands to their kids some day. The story may be a useful resource for vacation rental managers and the owners of homes they manage.

On caveat...my lawyer-friend notes that the story quotes Minnesota attorneys and that you should get legal advice from someone based in your home state.

Vacation Rental Data Suggests that Hawaii Is On The Mend

2009-10-02T07:53:00-07:00

By Bill Furlong, CEO

During our recent vacation rental breakfast seminars in Oahu and Maui, we presented a summary of vacation rental trends for bookings done in 2009. The past 12 months have been rough ones in Hawaiian travel business. More than anywhere else in the country, bookings have been incredibly slow in Hawaii since the country entered the recession. A few of the takeaways from our recent analysis:

Bookings have been on a steady recovery from the lows of early 2009.
The recovery has been broad-based rather than narrow. In other words, the steady improvement through the year isn't drive by a few management companies doing well. It is a trend being felt by many of the companies in our survey.
Most managers reduced rent in 2009 versus 2008. Discounting accelerated as the year progressed, probably because more and more managers turned to pricing as a way to fill empty homes. In July 2009, 93% of managers in our survey averaged a lower rent per booking than a year earlier.
Lead times, which have shrunk in recent years, have shrunk even faster in the past 12 months. The average booking lead time is up to 25% shorter than it was a year ago, averaging roughly 80-90 days.
Weekend bookings appear to be smaller dollar value bookings. And Monday and Tuesday appears to be when the long-range vacation planners book.

The slides below have all the details. In a few weeks, we'll be publishing our 3rd quarter 2009 vacation rental trends for the whole country.

Hawaii Vacation Rental Trends 2009

View more presentations from billfurlong.

Google Internal Study on Search Engines and Travel

2009-10-01T16:36:03-07:00

by Bill Furlong, CEO

Ever wonder what people at Google think about search engines and travel? Today, TechCrunch reported on a 2005 study from Google analyzing how search engines impact consumer decisions in a number of categories including travel.

Keep in mind that this study is from 2005 -- four years ago. And, as you'd expect, it skews towards airlines and hotels. But it is packed with info that might well be helpful for vacation rental managers thinking through whether to invest in search advertising. And since it is an internal Google document, the information is not directed to selling online ads as much as internal decision-making.

Use of Online for Travel Information and Purchasing -

Vacation Rental Seminars in Hawaii

2009-09-30T16:15:00-07:00

By Bryan Boice, National Sales Manager

Two weeks ago, Bill Furlong, Mike Zaroudny and I “took-one-for-the-team” and spent the week of the 14th in Hawaii visiting vacation rental managers and conducting our bi-annual Hawaiian Vacation Rental Breakfast Seminars. This time we were on Oahu (September 15th) and Maui (September 17th). Both seminars had great turnouts and good energy from property managers looking to increase revenue and manage bookings easier. While the evenings were filled with tiki torches and beautiful sunsets, the days were packed with great discussions with on-island property managers.

Our Hawaiian Islands Market Trends study, the most comprehensive in the industry, was a big part of those talks. Bill Furlong presented our updated results to seminar participants eager for the information. Overall, lead times have shrunk but overall bookings and dollars appear to be trending upward. All attendees left with a printed copy of the findings and said they look forward to Escapia’s continued analysis on the Hawaiian vacation rental industry. Many were also excited to see the additional market-leading features we’ve added to the property management platform and our websites.

We’re looking forward to going back again soon! For more information on Vacation Rental Seminars, visit our website for details and upcoming dates and locations.