Vacation Rental Owner Forum

19 Unusual Tips To More Vacation Rental Bookings

2012-01-23T15:47:00.004Z

Save $25 on new 12-month listings at HomeAway.com with code G307.

Save 10% off new 12 month listing on VacationRentals.com with coupon code: VRCJ10.

Looking forward to a successful year for renting your vacation home? With some planning and creativity, you can significantly increase your rental bookings.

Matt Landau (author of Vacation Rental Marketing Blog: free and inexpensive ways to increase your vacation rental occupancy), kindly provided the following very useful tips for increasing your Vacation Rental bookings.

Thinking about your vacation rental marketing more like a hotel can help even the simplest of property owners increase their bookings and make more money. These quick, innovative, and effective tips are also low-cost ways to boost your reservations in no time.

1. Create an annual award and promote it: Everyone loves winning or being nominated for an award, so saluting anyone you do business with can lead to backlinks, free press, and increased referrals. Some examples may include Most Supportive Travel Agent, Most Supportive Individual Promoting Rental Abroad, Best Tour Operator…etc. Create badges, trophies, or give away free room nights.

2. Join the local chamber of commerce: There’s no better way to get involved and connected in your community than joining the local chamber of commerce. Oftentimes the membership fee is small for small businesses and you can display the chamber’s seal on your website making your rental business appear more noteworthy.

3.Institute a monthly newsletter: With decent client management software, export all your past client data and start distributing interesting news, events, or blog posts via a monthly newsletter. Services to distribute start as low as $5/month.

4. Promote the internship of a lifetime: Internships are great for vacation rentals or property management companies because a) there’s tremendous supply of smart youngsters desperate for a resume boost nowadays and b) if creative enough, interesting internships can also bring in spectacular press. Everyone remembers the Best Job In The World (http://islandreefjob.com/) campaign by the Austrailian Tourism Board. Have your intern help with anything from phone calls to grassroots marketing.

5. Trade a great artist: Whether it’s a photographer or painter or videographer, offering free nights at your vacation rental in exchange for a piece of their artwork can pay off huge.

6. Submit your vacation rental blog to Google Alerts and Google News: If you’re spending time writing unique content for your blog, why not syndicate it and have it distributed to the masses?
Submit your blog to these two free platforms (delivered daily to user’s email inboxes) and you’ll be amazed by the amount of referral traffic it generates.

7. Create a small brochure: Having a good, concise, attractive pitch brochure is worth its weight in gold. Beyond simply using it in meetings, try dropping it around town (inside magazines, books, in-flight magazines…etc).

8. Commission a local artist to do a beautiful mural on the sidewalk in front of your vacation rental

9. Contribute free nights to a local school or charity auction or fund raiser

10.Check in with your competition: To know where you stand, it’s important to know what your fellow vacation rental owners think about you. Try inquiring anonymously and gleaning their feedback about your establishment.

11.Write a book or e-book: Everyone loves a free giveaway, so try creating an informative, unique, entertaining piece of literature about your neighborhood (for example, “21 Experiences in Sonoma Only Insiders Can Deliver”) that you can give away for free on your website. It will allow you to build your newsletter subscribers and stimulate bookings in the same breadth.

12.Come up with a slogan or motto: Having a concise, accurate, and catchy phrase associated with your vacation rental can do wonders for your bookings. Set yourself apart from all the competition with a phrase that harnesses what makes your property unique. My slogan is "Stay Authentic. Stay Tulipanes" (with Tulipanes being the name of our rentals).

13. Include a local lottery ticket with your welcome packet: There’s no better way to improve the vacation rental experience than to involve them with the local neighborhood. This can be done in a number of ways, but try including a local lottery ticket in their arrival packet is fun, memorable, and inexpensive.

14. Add a “bookmark me now” link to your website: When guests search for vacation rentals, they look at an average of 5.1 options before making their decision (which, oftentimes, is not even done that same day). Prompting the guest to bookmark your website is an easy, obvious, no-frills way to retain users and set your rental apart from all the others.

15. Affiliate marketing: While not a new concept in the least, affiliate websites like Clickbank.com allow for anyone to work with high-trafficked websites to secure more sales. The bigger your commission percentage, the more attractive your vacation rental bookings become to the vendors.

16. Photo wall: Take pictures of all your guest at a particularly iconic spot at your rental. Maybe this is a scenic balcony or at the entrance? Anything that visually represents your brand. Print out these photos or post them on your website or social media accounts. The repetition of the backdrop paired with the changing faces has a nice way of demonstrating reputation and popularity.

17. Capitalize on defunct businesses: Has a hotel or tour company in the region gone out of business? Act quick and work with the local telephone company to redirect the defunct phone number to yours and/or buy their URL when it becomes available. Forwarding these leads into your database can do nothing but increase bookings.

18. Get a toll free phone number: Registering for a toll-free number says you mean business and these days, with services like Skype, anyone can have an 800 number forwarded directly to their cell phone.

19. Third-party ticket stubs: Work with any restaurants, tour groups, or other complimentary businesses in your region to place a discount voucher on the bottom of their receipts. This way, when a traveler new to your town finishes, say, lunch, he or she will be encouraged to contact you using the referral coupon at the bottom of their bill

Google Data on Online Travel

2011-11-28T14:37:00.007Z

12 Days of Deals - It's the holiday season and Homeaway are giving you 12 reasons to celebrate! Starting Cyber Monday, Nov 28th. Ends Dec 13th.

Google presented some interesting data on Online Travel at a recent Vacation Rental Manager Association’s Annual Conference in Orlando.

1. Vacation Rentals Search:

Searching for Vacation Rentals online is becoming more popular. Specifically, there has been 42% year on year growth for popular vacation rental queries at Google.com. There has also been 34% growth in overall travel terms over the same time period.

This is good news for vacation rental owners and indicates that the market is continuing to grow.

2. Travel Decision Making:

When making a decision, travellers in 2011:
read email from a travel company (27%)
used a search engine (85%)
searched online hotel reviews (49%)
read online travel reviews (37%)
read online comments (25%)

The importance of online vacation rental Reviews continues to grow. Although many vacation rental owners have mixed feelings about this trend, it is clear that vacation rental owners with a lot of (good) reviews will benefit in terms of increased bookings. Interestingly, 67% of travellers say they trust online reviews as much as word of mouth!

3. Travel Purchase Timeframe and Planning Window:

Although there will always be last minute bookings, most travellers began thinking about the travel purchase at least one month before taking their trip. The breakdown is:

More than 6 months (37%)
4-6 months before (8%)
2-3 months before (24%)
1 month before (21%)
3 weeks before (10%)

Again, this is good news for Vacation Rentals Owners, as it allows time to make arrangements for advance payment, key pick up etc etc.

4. Use of Mobile for Travel Search:

The use of Mobile in travel search is exploding and Google estimate that there will be
29.7M mobile travel researches by 2012 in US alone.

At the moment, 19.5% of Google queries in the hotel and accommodations category are on a mobile phone. There has been a 377% of year-over-year increase in query volume and an
844% increase in click volume in the last year.

The increase has been even more pronounced for Vacation Rentals, with Vacation Rental an increase 2 times the volume increase for general travel.

Intreresting to note that 9 out of 10 searchers have taken action as a result of a smartphone search. With almost 50% of Americans having a Smart phone by the end of the year, this is becoming increasingly important.

5. YouTube and Travel :

At the moment, 40% of all web traffic is online video and Google estimate that 90% of all traffic will be online video by 2014..

Increasingly, travel enthusiasts watch online video:

62% of travel enthusiasts watch online video on YouTube
70% of travel enthusiasts watch video watch when choosing a travel destination
69% of travel enthusiasts watch video watch when choosing accommodations in a destination

Hence, it might be worth posting a video of your vacation rental home!

Best Holiday Rentals Listings Sites Survey 2011

2011-10-28T14:40:00.008+01:00

COHR recently conducted a survey of Holiday Rentals Owners to find which Holiday Rentals Listings Sites gave them the most bookings in 2011.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the bigger sites came out best in the survey.

Owners voted Homeaway as the best site overall, with 19% of Holiday Rentals Owners saying it gave them the most bookings. VRBO was only just behind with 18% of Owners saying they received most bookings on the VRBO site. Flipkey was third with 14%, a strong finish for a site that it definitely emerging as a major player in the Holiday Rentals by Owner industry.

Given the consolidation that has been going on in the Holiday Rentals marketplace, it is perhaps no surprise that 5 of the top 9 sites are owned by the Homeaway group. These are Homeaway, VRBO, Homelidays, Ownersdirect and Vacationrentals.

There were also two sites owned by Tripadvisor in the top nine i.e. Flipkey and Holidaylettings.

Among Free Holiday Rentals Listing Sites, Vacationrentals411 (18%) was the narrow winner over Adventurepads (17%). Vacationrentals411 was also the only free site to make the top nine overall sites.

(There were two sites that offer free trials that featured in the top nine: Flipkey and VacationHomeRentals .)

However, it was interesting to note that 26% of Holiday Rentals Owners said that they either don't use Free Holiday Rentals Listings sites or that they don't get any bookings from them.

You can find the full survey results on All Holiday Rentals Best Holiday Rentals Listing Sites Survey 2011 .

Help Promote COHR and AHR

2011-10-25T17:01:00.003+01:00

We need your help!

Over the past five years, COHR has established itself as a leading source of information for Vacation Rental Owners.

The COHR site provides information on the price of listings, site reviews, special offers, free trials, Free Sites and much more.

The COHR Newsletters and BLOG provide information and analysis on the Vacation Rental by Owner business.

As a way of enhancing our service to Owners, COHR recently launched a sister site, All Holiday Rentals (AHR), which allows easier searching and sorting of vacation rentals sites.

If you find our information useful, please help us by promoting us to other owners. How can you do this?

Forward our newsletters to other owners that you know
Mention us in Owner Forums
Post links to our sites, either on your own link pages or in forums/ Blog

Your support will help us to continue to enhance the service we provide to Owners.

Thanks in advance!

Inquiry and Reservation Management Service

2011-10-25T16:07:00.004+01:00

Are phone and email inquiries for your vacation rental taking up too much of your valuable time?

COHR has partnered with the Travel Rental Network to provide a unique service for busy vacation rentals property owners that can help free up your time and maximize your conversion of inquiries into bookings.

"Handling inquiries from sites like TravelRentalNetwork.com, Homeaway.com, VRBO.com and others can be very time-consuming. Travel Rental Network's Inquiry and Reservation Management Service could be just what you need to help you stay on top your inquiries and make sure that they are all handled quickly and professionally."

SPECIAL OFFER: Travel Rental Network have agreed to waive the normal $99 set up fee for anyone who signs up through COHR. Contact kevin@compareownerholidayrentals.com for more details.

You can find more details on this service by by checking out COHR's Vacation Rental Management Services

All Holiday Rentals - Reviews, Free Listings and Special Offers

2011-10-21T13:30:00.003+01:00

Since it's launch earlier this month, All Holiday Rentals has been busy adding new features and now has pages featuring Holiday Rentals Site Reviews, a directory Free Listings sites and a directory Special Offers for Holiday Rentals Owners.

The Holiday Rentals Sites Review page currently lists reviews of holiday rentals industry leaders Homeaway and Flipkey, together with one of the leading Free Listings sites, Adventure Pads. It is planned to add more reviews in the coming weeks.

The Free Listings page currently lists more than twenty holiday rentals sites that offer either a free trial or a completely free listing. Free sites listed include Adventure Pads, Holiday Cube and HolidayHomeAds. Sites that offer trials such as VacationHomeRentals, Rentalia and Flipkey are also listed.

The Special Offers page lists offers that are available to COHR subscribers.

How to Increase Occupancy Rates of your Vacation Rental

2011-10-21T08:42:00.003+01:00

Achieving high occupancy rates is one of the absolute keys to success in running a Vacation Rentals business. I recently came across an interesting and informative book that provides lots of tips and advice for vacation rentals owners on how to boost occupancy.

The Boost Occupancy and Increase Revenue Report is aimed at both small hotels and vacation rentals. It was written by Matt Landau, an online marketer and owner of a boutique hotel in the historic district of Panama City, Panama. Matt has been featured on CNN, BusinessWeek, and US News & World Report among other publications.

The Boost Occupancy report contains 50 pages of valuable strategies that allow small hotel owners and vacation rental owners to increase their reservations with free or inexpensive, game-proven tactics.

The report explains "54 separate marketing tactics in detail and provides key methods for their implementation including social media tricks, low season secrets, industry memberships and associations, insider PR moves of the pros and much, much more. Even the most innovative strategies are explained with the layman in mind."

The report is an easy and entertaining read. It costs $99 and should be worth it, even if you glean only a few tips. (If you increase occupancy by just one night, it will pay for itself.) However, you can get a "sneak preview" by registering on Matt's site.

COHR Launches "All Holiday Rentals"

2011-09-30T08:48:00.003+01:00

Over the past five years, COHR has established itself as the leading comparison site for Owners of Vacation Rentals accommodation. COHR compares more than 50 different Vacation Rentals sites and provides information on Price of Listings, Special Offers, Trial Listings, Free Sites and much more.

COHR has launched a sister site, All Holiday Rentals (AHR).

AHR is targeted at both Renters and Owners. It provides much of the same information as COHR, but provides additional functionality, such as the ability to sort by Site Name, Number of Listings and Price.

Vacation Rentals Owners can view all the sites listed on AHR to sort and compare
- the number of listing
- the price of listings
- whether a free trial of offered

You can also Search for Holiday Rentals sites by geography or simply Browse all the listed holiday rentals sites.

For example, if you own a holiday rental in Spain , you can browse sites that specialise in holiday rentals in Spain. Alternatively, you can also view a list of Global sites that feature Spanish holiday rentals.

Whether you are an owner of holiday rental accommodation looking to find the best places to list your rental, or a renter looking to find the best selection of rentals in a particular location, it's definitely worth checking out http://www.all-holiday-rentals.com/ .

AHR are planning to add a lot of extra functionality in the coming weeks and months, so bookmark the site and check back often for updates.

Survey: More than 50% of Vacation Rental Sites Feature Renter Reviews

2011-09-02T15:40:00.004+01:00

A recent survey commissioned by COHR found that more than 50% of vacation rental sites now faciliate renter reviews. An additional 13% of sites indicated that they plan to add this feature to their vacation rental site in the next year. Hence, it certainly looks like providing the facility for renter reviews is becoming the standard in the industry.

At the moment, it appears that use of renter reviews is still not terribly widespread. On sites that offer the facility, only about 25% of properties listed actually have reviews. However, it is likely that this figure will increase over time.

Although contentious, renter reviews have been shown to increase enquiries on sites such as Flipkey. It looks likely that, over time, more and more sites will offer this facility, so choosing a site that has associated policies that you are comfortable with it a good idea. Hence, COHR also explored some of these issues.

When asked what validation they perform on the renters, 40% of sites said that renters must provide a valid email address, while 20% require renters to be registered with their site. Others ask the vacation rental owner to confirm the renter's name and one uses a third party validation process. One site requires a Facebook login for the renter, something which I imagine will be a little contentious with renters.

When asked about the approval process, 30% of sites allow the Owner to approve the review. Given that a single bad review can do a lot of damage, this is no doubt of great comfort to the owners on these sites.

On the other hand, 20% of sites don't require anyone to approve the review, which surely must cause some concerns among owners on those sites.

Other sites use either approval by the vacation rental site staff or third parties.

Some sites allow owners to respond to reviews, providing a means to address anything that they feel is unfair or inappropriate in the review.

Is Your Holiday Rental in Spain?

2011-09-01T20:31:00.003+01:00

I always recommend to holiday home owners that they consider advertising on regionally focused sites. If your holiday property is in Spain, I would recommend you take a look at Spain-Holiday.com

Spain-holiday.com is a well established site and was founded in 2002, by Claus Sorensen. The primary purpose was to create a strong holiday rental brand focused exclusively on Spain. Since then, Spain Holiday has become the market leader for holidays in Spain.

The site receives more than 6 million unique visitors a year. Although focused on properties in Spain, it receives visitors coming from all over the World.

Indeed, Spain-holiday.com serves its visitors in 10 different languages, thereby offering homeowners enquiries and bookings from many different cultures and sources.

To take advantage of the fact that they only focus on Spain, Spain-Holiday.com have designed an information section including videos from Spain where visitors can be well informed before they decide on a final destination.

Spain-Holiday.com has built up a portfolio of over 5100 properties for rent directly from verified owners. Whatever the Spanish holiday rental requirement, from luxury beachfront apartments, to country homes, city flats, or looking to rent a villa in Spain ?… renters are sure to find it on Spain-holiday.com.

Spain-holiday.com focus on Spain and only Spain: if your holiday home is in Spain, you should certainly consider listing with them.

Best Vacation Rentals Sites: Yahoo Group Survey Results

2011-08-12T11:30:00.008+01:00

I recently conducted a survey on the best vacation rental sites for 2011. The participants of this survey were the yahoo group for vacation rentals and the results are shown below.

Overall, there were 49 respondents, so the sample is quite small. Also, the yahoo group is not necessarily fully representative of all vacation rental owners. For example, they consist primarily of US vacation rentals owners. Also, they are presumably more heavily involved in renting on a personal basis than most vacation rental owners, as evidenced by their active membership of the group.

(I plan to conduct a similar survey among the COHR newsletter subscribers later this year.)

However, the results give an indication of the views of an experienced group of vacation rental owners.

In response to the question, "which of these vacation rental sites gave you the most bookings this year?", the results were:

VRBO 20

Homeaway 7

Flipkey 6

Vacation Home Rentals 3

Vacationrentals 2

Holidaycube 2

Other 9

Total 49

VRBO is the clear winner among the group, probably not surprising, as VRBO has been an industry leader, particularly in the US, for many years.

(Note: VRBO Special Offer: Sign up for a 12 month listing and get your 13th free with VRBO.com. Use code CJQ4 )

Homeaway's position in second place is also not a big surprise. As the largest player in the industry (with many other sites in the portfolio), Homeaway is continuing to build capability.

(Note: $25 OFF 12-month fees at HomeAway.com when you enter code G307. )

Flipkey's strong showing is interesting. Flipkey is owned by Tripadvisor and is obviously benefiting from this relationship.

Although smaller than the big players, both VacationHomeRentals.com and Vacationrentals are strong in the US and have loyal supporters among those who list with them.

(Note: Vacation rentals are running a special $99 promotion during August: click below for more details. )

Save $100 off a new annual membership on VacationRentals.com. Enter code VR100AUG at check out to redeem. Hurry, Offer ends 8/31/2011.

Holidaycube's inclusion is interesting: they were not on the original list of options, but were mentioned in the comments on both paid and free sites (see below).

In response to the question, "Which of the following FREE sites has given you most bookings this year?", the results were as follows:

None 15

Vacationrentals411 6

Adventurepads 5

Holidaycube 4

Craigslist 2

Domegos 2

Other 15

Total 49

It is interesting that almost one third of the vacation rental owners polled said that they either don't use or don't get any bookings from free vacation rental sites. In some ways, this is not surprising, as many of the free sites are sites that are still trying to establish themselves by building vacation rental listings. Hopefully, as some of these sites get established, they will begin to attract greater renter traffic. On the other hand, is does call into question whether it is worth investing the time to list on free sites.

The leading free site was Vacationrentals411 (which also got one vote in the overall category). VR411 has been established for quite some time and offers free listings as standard, with the ability to pay for premium listings. This perhaps gives it the funding to invest the marketing dollars to attract renters.

Adventurespads also scored highly. Adventurepads is a niche site, focusing on vacation rentals for active travellers.

Holidaycube also received 4 votes , even though it was not on the list of options and hence might be worth checking out.

Homeaway Adds Slideshow on Facebook

2011-08-09T09:16:00.004+01:00

Save $25 on new 12-month listings at HomeAway.com with code G307.

HomeAway has started to integrate features from it's recent acquisition of Second Porch. Vacation Rental Owners listed on Homeaway can now add a slideshow of their property into their Facebook pages.

Feedback from users so far has been positive and (at least for now) it's free. You will need to provide Homeaway with access to your Facebook account.

Second Porch launched in 2009 with a view to allowing users to leverage their social circle on Facebook for advertising their vacation rental properties. Homeaway has clearly identified that Social networking has huge potential for the marketing of vacation rental properties and hence the acquisition. As is usually the case, terms were not disclosed, but it is sure to be a healthy multiple of the $1.8m that Second Porch raised in financing the venture.

Homeaway have stated their intent to "accelerate the integration of social features across its network of sites to provide an additional word-of-mouth marketing channel to its customers."

This has the potential to be another significant differentiator for Homeaway compared with other vacation rental sites.

Homeaway Exploring Revenue Sharing

2011-07-29T15:40:00.002+01:00

Save 10% off new 12 month listing on VacationRentals.com with coupon code: VRCJ10

Save $25 on new 12-month listings at HomeAway.com with code G307.

The dominant model in the vacation rentals industry continues to be that owners pay a fixed fee for an annual listing on a vacation rentals site, which generates bookings (usually via email or phone ) that are then paid for by check (particularly in the US), bank transfer or even cash.

In a bid to slowly transition to online booking, HomeAway has introduced ReservationManager on HomeAway.com and VRBO .

Currently, with ReservationManager, vacation rental owners pay 2.5 percent fees for Visa, MasterCard and Discover card processing and 1 percent fees for eCheck processing. This is a relatively inexpensive way to allow vacation rental owners to accept credit cards, making it a lot easier and more convenient for the renter to pay.

However, Homeaway are looking at taking this further.

HomeAway CEO, Brian Sharples say recently that new business models are under discussion which may see some vacation rental owners paying a percentage of revenue for using ReservationManager. He indicated that a revenue-based model might be especially appropriate for vacation rental owners who may wish to advertise their properties for several weeks only, rather than paying for full annual listings.

I think this is certainly an interesting innovation, particularly to sell late availability weeks: I can get most of my bookings through the traditional listings (possibly on lower cost sites than Homeaway) and then use the revenue sharing approach for any unsold weeks.

It remains to be seen how Homeaway will roll out this option and whether there will be restrictions to avoid "cherry picking", but it's another example of Homeaway leading the way in the vacation rentals industry.

Homeaway Rolling Out Tiered Payments

2011-07-28T17:11:00.007+01:00

HomeAway.com indicated recently that they are in the process of rolling out "tiered payments" for vacation rental owners. The concept is that owners will pay higher fees to appear higher up the listings on the page. This approach is currently in beta testing on Homeaway.com and will be gradually rolled out in the future to Homeaway's sites globally.

Price-based tiered listings are not new. They already exist on HomeAway’s VRBO . Other sites, such as Vacationrentals411 offer free basic listings, but you can appear higher in their listings by paying for a "premium" listing. Also, many sites offer the ability to pay a premium listings on a short term basis (e.g. for featured listings for a week or month).

However, Brian Sharples, HomeAway cofounder and CEO, indicated that vacation rental owners generally would have to pay triple the normal fees to get their listing to the top of the page.

Given that Homeaway is already one of the more expensive sites, is this really practical?

Well, maybe for luxury villa owners, which rent for thousands per week, this might represent good value and a way to stand out from the crowds of more ordinary vacation rentals listings.

On the other hand, many vacation rental owners on the large sites such as Homeaway already feel that they are lost in the crowds and might be tempted to switch to other sites where they can find it easier to be noticed.

Homeaway may also find it harder to attract new owners to list their vacation rental property, since these owners will be reluctant to commit to paying for premium listings up frontand the results from standard listings will not be as good as they have been. (On the other hand, I know that some vacation rentals sites actively promote new or expiring listings, particularly during trial periods, to increase visibility and enquiries.)

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Best Vacation Rental Sites Survey

2011-07-26T16:39:00.002+01:00

Although the summer vacation rental season is now in full swing, probably most renters have booked their vacations. Of course, there will still be last minute bookings, but anyone who owns a vacation rental will have a good feel for how this season is goin to turn out.

Hence, I've decided to post a survey to see which sites are giving the best bookings this year. I've kept the survey very simple, asking about the best paid sites, as well as the best free vacation rental sites.

If you want to participate, you can find the survey here :

COHR Best Vacation Rentals Sites Survey 2011

Please note that I am using iContact to host the survey and hence it will ask for an email address to validate your response. This email address will not be used for any other purpose (so feel free to make one up !!!!)

I will publish the results on this blog site as soon as I have a decent level of responses.

Flipkey Trial

2011-06-29T08:35:00.006+01:00

Flipkey, owned by Tripadvisor, began offering a 60 day trial a few months ago and I decided to sign up with my 2 bedroom holiday apartment in Nice, France.

So far, over the course of two month, I have recieved 21 enquiries, one of which turned into a booking, which I think is pretty good for a free trial! (Some of the enquiries were for dates I already had booked: because I wanted to gauge the level of enquiries, I did not keep my calendar fully up to date.)

Flipkey is one of the larger vacation rentals sites, with more than 100,000 properties listed and it comes with most of the features you would expect of such a site.

Sign up with Flipkey is fairly easy: I mostly just cut and paste information from my listings on other vacation rental sites. Also, there is a dashboard for managing your property listing and enquiries.

As you would expect from a site owned by Tripadvisor, there is an emphasis on soliciting guest reviews. Because mine is a new listing, I have not yet collected any guest reviews, but there is compelling evidence that vacation rental properties with more guest reviews get more enquiries.

Flipkey also provides badges that you can put on your own website, indicating that your property's guest review count and average rating by Flipkey. (Of course, this is also a good way for Flipkey is build links from your own site to theirs!)

Many sites allow you to pay for "Special Offers", such as limited time discounts or free nights. Interestingly, Flipkey provides this facility for free and these special offers are then highlighted on your listing. I just discovered this feature and posted a special offer today: it will be interesting to see if this generates a specific response.

A full listing on Flipkey costs $299.99 (that really $300!) per annum, which is not cheap. However, my experience so far is that would indicate that it could be good value. My recommendation would be to avail of the free trial, see how it works for you and then decide at the end of the trial period.

(Tripadvisor also owns HolidayLettings .)

Homeaway Renewal and Reservation Manager

2011-06-27T10:29:00.011+01:00

$25 OFF 12-month fees at HomeAway.com when you enter code G307.

I had let my vacation rental listing with Homeaway expire last year (mainly because I was fully booked). My property is in Nice, France and, although bookings have also been good this year, I have had a lot more short stay requests than in the past. When you take changeover costs into account, these are not as profitable as the longer stay requests.

Hence, I availed of a special offer to renew with Homeaway. This was partially because of having previous good experience with getting bookings on Homeway from US renters, who tend to stay for two weeks or more. It was also because I like to keep track of how the largest vacation rental company is developing.

One thing that is new (or updated) on Homeaway is the Reservation Manager functionality and I am quite impressed. Reservation Manager allows you manage all the enquiries that you receive and has many useful functions such as standards editable templates for replying to enquiries, online contracts etc. Also, although most of the larger vacation rental sites give you statistics on the number of enquiries, Homeaway's ability to track and search enquiries is quite sophisticated.

Once those enquiries become reservations, Homeaway's Reservation Manager then allows you to track details of each reservation, including adding your own notes.

Homeaway also offers integrated payment facilities, allowing you to accept online payment via credit card or echeck. At a cost of 2.5% for credit cards or 1% for echecks, this seems reasonable (particularly if you compare with Paypal, which I occasionally use.) Unfortunately, Reservation Manager currently only supports owners residing in the US, so I cannot use it at the moment.

However, for those who do sign up, Reservation Manager allows you to track and initiate payments, (including repayment of breakage deposits, a pet peeve of mine) with the ability to handle fees such as cleaning, changoever etc.

During my last listing period, I received 4 bookings and 34 enquiries from Homeaway. I'm looking forward to seeing how this compares .....

List on HomeAway and get 5x more exposure than other sites. Pay 1 low price to be listed on 5 websites.

Vacation rental reviews: Data from Flipkey and Escapia

2011-06-24T16:11:00.004+01:00

$25 OFF 12-month fees at HomeAway.com when you enter code G307.

Many vacation rental sites now include the ability for renters to write reviews and, while good reviews can help bookings, one single bad review can do a lot of damage. Hence, many vacation rental owners are reluctant to use reviews. However, my advice is, if the vacation rental site you use offers renter reviews, don't shy away from them.

I recently came across some interesting data from Flipkey (owned by Tripadvisor) and Escapia (owned by HomeAway) on this topic that is worth considering.

Escapia reported that about 39% of renters who were requested to complete a review actually did so. (They also indicated that higher priced properties tend to get both higher average ratings and a better response rate.)

Across 142,000 reviews analysed, the breakdown of overall ratings was as follows:

5 Star : 64%
4 Star: 25%
3 Star: 8%

Flipkey's data is remarkably similar, based upon 320,000 reviews:

5 Star: 63%
4 Star: 23%
3 Star: 11%
2 or 1 Star: 4%

This is consistent with the view that most reviews are positive. However, how does this impact on the level of interest generated?

Flipkey looked at the impact of the number of reviews on enquiry volume and found that vacation rental listings with:

3-5 reviews received 34% more interest
6-10 reviews received 159% more interest
11+ reviews received 246% more interest

That's quite an impact! Clearly, when reviews are available, renters have a preference for vacation rental listings with lots of reviews. Hence, if the vacation rental site you are listed on offers the facility for renter reviews, soliciting lots of reviews should generate more enquiries (and hopefully bookings!)

Save 10% off new 12 month listing on VacationRentals.com with coupon code: VRCJ10.

How Many Sites: Yahoo Group Results

2010-10-26T11:22:00.006+01:00

I recently published the results of a survey of COHR subscribers on the subject of the number of paid and free sites on which they list their vacation rental properties. In response, I received a comment indicating that perhaps the survey results were skewed by the fact that many COHR subscribers are heavy users of Free listing sites? (After all, COHR subscribers get a list of Free sites!)

Hence, I conducted a survey among members of the Yahoo! Group for Vacation Rentals
to see how the results would compare.

Dissappointingly, I only received 44 Yahoo responses (compared with 141 for the COHR survey) and almost all the respondents were from the US. However, the results confirmed that Yahoo group members do not use Free Listings sites as much as COHR subscribers. Nevertheless, 55% of Yahoo members are listed on at least 3 Free sites and 25% are listed on 5 or more Free sites.

Interesting to note that Yahoo members are also listed on more paid sites than COHR subscribers, with 47% listed on at least 4 paid sites (compared with 35% in the COHR group). Is it possible that the COHR group's greater use of Free Listings sites means they don't need to spend as much on paid listings?

The results are given here .

Homeaway Acquires Vacation Rental Management Software Company

2010-10-13T20:18:00.002+01:00

Save $25 on 12-month listings at HomeAway.com with code G307

Homeaway has acquired Instant Software Incorporated (ISI), a leading provider of vacation rental management software.

Although Homeaway has previously partnered with ISI, with the acquisition, Homeaway should be able to better integrate ISI vacation rental management software into its offerings.

ISI's software is targeted mainly at larger vacation rental property owners / professional property managers and they boast more than 1400 property management customers. Although there is no indication of the actual number of vacation rental properties that this represents, it is no doubt a significant addition to the Homeaway portfolio.

It will also be interesting to see how Homeaway will use the technical resources to increase the value of its offerings to its existing customers of both prefessional property managers and private vacaation rental owners.

You can read more here

Homeaway contemplating IPO?

2010-10-13T11:29:00.002+01:00

If you are one of the 500,000+ vacation rentals homeowners listed on one of the Homeaway sites, you might be interested in this article from TechCrunch, speculating that Homeaway is planning an IPO, likely sometime in 2011. Homeaway, which has been gobbling up many of its rivals over the last few years, has already raised more than $500m and, according to TechCrunch, has annual revenues of about $200m and annual profits of about $70m.

Earlier this year, Homeaway denied that it had any plans to IPO "at this moment in time", in response to speculation from the CEO of Expedia. However, with an estimated valuation of in excess of $1 billion, it must be tempting for this venture capital backed company to cash in on what has been a very successful investment.

Assuming the IPO goes ahead, what is the likely impact for vacation rental owners listed with Homeaway?

On the plus side, the increased publicity and exposure should increase Homeaway's public positioning as the leading player in the vacation rental industry, particularly important now that Tripadvisor seems to be shaping up as a serious competitor.

However, it is also possible that the IPO might prove a distraction to Homeaway management as they seek to continue to build features and capabiity to their offerings. Also ,the pressure of keeping Wall Street happy with quarterly earnings may impact on the process of building the long term business.

On the other hand, maybe Homeaway will offer IPO shares at a discount to any owners listed with them?

Survey: How Many Vacation Rental Sites Do Owners List On?

2010-10-11T18:06:00.005+01:00

Sign up for our N ewsletter for websites that provide FREE Vacation Rentals by Owner listings !

A while back, I conducted a survey of COHR subscribers on the number of vacation rentals sites that they list on.

The results contained some surprises. For example, more than 50% of vacation rental owners said that they paid for listings on three or more sites, with a surprising 26% paying for listings on more than 5 sites!

Unless you own a lot of properties (or one that is very expensive!), this would seem to be an expensive option to keep you vacation rental fully booked.

On the other hand, 14% indicated that they don't use paid listings at all ( presumably, using their own website or offline marketing methods to get bookings for).

Also of interest, a third of all vacation rental owners said that they were listed on 10 or more FREE vacation rental listing sites. This is despite the growing scepticism of using such free listing sites. I guess these owners don't mind putting the time into creating a free listing, on the grounds that, as some point, it may produce bookings!

You can find the full results of the survey on the COHR Surveys page.

COHR Newsletters

2010-10-11T13:45:00.007+01:00

COHR uses iContact for all Newsletters

I received very positive feedback from the COHR October 2010 Newsletter, particularly on the acquisition of Holidaylettings by Tripadvisor . You can find a copy of this newsletter and an archive of previous newsletters at our COHR Newsletters Archive .

How many renters visit your vacation rental listings?

2010-09-23T15:57:00.009+01:00

$25 OFF 12-month listing fees at HomeAway.com when you enter code G307.

Now that the 2010 vacation season of pretty much over, many vacation rental owners will look back on the season and try to review which sites worked best at attracting renters. Some will no doubt decide to take a look at whether they should switch to other sites or indeed add their listing to more vacation rental sites.

Although there are lots of considerations, one useful and simple way to benchmark sites is to make a rough estimate of the number of visitors it attracts for each property on the site. The higher this number, the more visitors your listing is likely to attract.

However, although most sites will tell you the number of properties listed (or you can calculate it, using the search tools), getting accurate estimates of visitor numbers is a little more problematic. Some of the larger sites will quote numbers, but do you believe them?

There are a number of independent resources on the internet for estimating visitor numbers. Two that I like are Statbrain.com and TrafficEstimate.com . These allow you to enter the url of the site you are interested in and they will estimate for you the number of visitors (plus some other details about each site).

Let's take an example, first of all using a large site such as Homeaway . According to COHR, Homeaway currently has about 118,000 holiday properties listed. According to Statbrain, Homeaway receives about 95,000 visitors each day i.e. an average of about 0.8 visitors to listing.

As a cross check, according to TrafficEstimate, the number of visitors to Homeaway is about 3.5 million per month or about 118,000 per day. This corresponds to about 1 visitor per day to each property listed on Homeaway.

How does this compare to one of the smaller sites? Let's take Holiday Lettings as a comparison. Holidaylettings has about 35,000 property listings, so it is still a pretty large site. According to Statbrain, Holiday Lettings receives about 35,000 visitors per day i.e. about 1 visitor per listing. According to TrafficEstimate, the number is closer to 56,000 visitors per day i.e. about 1.6 visitors per listing per day.

As a third example, take VacationHomeRentals , which has about 11,000 vacation rental listings. According to Statbrain, VacationHomeRentals receives about 18,000 visits per day or 1.6 visitors per listing. Using TrafficEstimate's numbers of 880,000 visitors per month, this gives an average of 2.4 visitors per listing per day.

Summarising, this simple metric indicates that:

Each listing on Homeaway gets between 0.8 and 1 visitor per day;
Each listing on Holidaylettings gets between 1 and 1.6 visitors per day
Each listing on VacationHomeRentals gets between 1.6 and 2.4 visitors per day.

Of course, this metric does not factor in the fact that visitors will view multiple sites, nor does it allow for the fact that some of those visitors are the owners themselves, but it's a useful and simple indicator.

Why not run these metrics on the sites you are listed on and compare?

Tripadvisor acquires Holiday Lettings

2010-09-23T10:53:00.009+01:00

Tripadvisor is one of the best known travel advice sites but is now getting serious about entering the holiday rentals market place.

Following on from the acquisition in 2008 of a majority stake in Flipkey in the US, Tripadvisor launched vacation rentals on its site in 2009 and in June 2010 acquired one of the better known European holiday rentals sites, Holidaylettings

For the moment at least, HolidayLettings will continue to be run independently, but no doubt Tripadvisor will be looking to leverage the synergies between HolidayLettings and the other Tripadvisor brands.

For owners who advertise with HolidayLettings, this should be good news. With 46 million visitors per month, Tripadvisor and its associated companies should be able to bring a lot more potential renters to the HolidayLettings site, which should translate into more holiday rental bookings.

In addition, the extra resources that Tripadvisor can bring to the table should help with increase funtionality on the HolidayLettings site.

No doubt Tripadvisor will also look to significantly increase the number of holiday rental properties on Holiday Lettings, (HolidayLettings are launching an affiliate marketing programme to incentivise adding properties) but hopefully, this won't result in the site suffering from the overcrowding problems of other large sites.

The acquisiton also indicates that perhaps Tripadvisor plans to take on Homeway in the battle to become the leader in the online vacation rentals marketplace. Tripadvisor's positioning as a trusted source of independent recommendations presents some interesting possibilities ...

My Vacation Rental Story

2010-04-13T11:39:00.002+01:00

Vacation Rental Owners: Do you have a story to tell?

Is there an interesting story behind your vacation rental property? I am currently writing a book, which will feature interviews with a number of vacation rental owners. I am seeking about 10 owners with human interest stories about their vacation rental ownership experience and who would be willing to share these stories with my readers.

There is no formula for the stories, but I am interested in exploring why people purchased their vacation rentals, did it turn out as expected, how it has impacted their lives etc . Funny anecdotes on renters are welcome, but I more interested in telling the human story of a small number of vacation rental owners.

If you are interested in participating, please email me at kevin @ compareownerholidayrentals.com . It would be helpful if you include a very brief (less than 100 words) summary of your story.

Vacation Rental Site Owners: Do you also have a story to tell?

The book will also feature at least one rental site owner, so if you would like to share the story of how you got into the business and how it has impacted your life, then please email me at kevin @ compareownerholidayrentals.com .

Vacation Rental Documentary

I am also in discussions regarding filming a documentary on the same subject, so please let me know if you are also interested in participating in this project.

Industry Standard Vacation Rental Listings

2010-03-26T13:12:00.006Z

One of the biggest hassles for a vacation rental owner who wants to list on multiple sites is entering and maintaining these listings in the various formats required. Each Vacation Rental site asks for basically the same info, but each requires the information to be entered on its site, in its own format.

What if there was an Industry Standard for creating vacation rental listings? Each site could then write some software to import the complete listing, into their site with a single button click!

Particularly for smaller sites offering free trial periods, this would make it so much easier to sign up new members. At the moment, the main reason that owners don't avail of special offers/ free trial periods etc, is that it is too much hassle to create and maintain the new listing. However, if the owner could create the listing with a single button click, there would really be no reason he/she would not sign up!

For this to be manageable, any proposed format should stick to the basic elements of a listing, rather than trying to include every single bell and whistle that each vacation rental site offers.

Since most of the vacation rentals sites subscribe to COHR, I asked for their input on this topic.

Most vacation rental sites were positive on the idea, although a number of potential issues were identified:

1. Agreeing a standard vacation rental listing format could be difficult: However, if the format is restricted to the basic elements, this is achieveable.

2. The bigger sites (i.e the Homeaway sites) would not support it: Actually, Homeway indicated they think the idea has merit, although, having invested heavily in trying to automate listing conversion between their various sites, they raise concerns about the amount of work involved. Again, if we stick to the basic listing information, this makes it easier.

3.Standard listings might mean duplicate content, which could hurt SEO ranking: However, it should be relatively easy for the different vacation rentals sites to format the information from the basic listing in such a way to avoid duplicate content.

4. It would make is to easy for fraudsters to create listings "all over the place". This is a valid point, but there is already a need to properly validate listings in some way. This could be done with utility bills, for example.

5. Do we really want to encourage even more new sites, none of whom get the traffic from renters to be worthwhile? :)

If we could get the vacation rentals industry to adopt a standard format for a basic listing, so that you could import this into any vacation rental site with a single button click, the benefits to vacation rental owners would be enormous.

I would be very interested in comments from other vacation rental owners.

VRBO Special Offer

2009-10-14T13:51:00.003+01:00

Homeaway continues to market VRBO separately from the other Homeaway brands and it still actively trying to sign up new vacation rentals owners to VRBO.

As one of the earliest and largest players in the Vacation Rental by Owner market, it is still very much worth considering advertising your vacation rental with VBRO. They are not cheap, but attract a lot of visitors to the VRBO site and hence are likely to generate rental enquiries. You may want to read our VRBO Review or see the comments from owners advertising on VRBO.

To encourage owners to sign up, VRBO are currently running a promotion, but 13 months for the price of 12. For more details, follow the link below.

Sign up for a 12 month listing and get your 13th free with VRBO.com. Use code CJQ4

Espana Breaks introduces "AdScore"

2009-10-12T14:23:00.003+01:00

Espana Breaks have introduced an interesting rating system that rewards owners who try harder to be "renter friendly". Their listings are now ordered by a rating system called
"AdScore". Using a variety of measures, it score all adverts out of 100 and the top scorers are listed first.

According to Espana Breaks, "Despite some initial nerves it has proven massively popular with owners. AdScore gives points for doing things that make great, informative adverts for rental properties. Displaying lots of pictures, having a good length write-up, showing an availability calendar, offering card payments and lots more are all "scored". We've found the best property floats to the top, gets more exposure and improved visitor retention and conversion rates by making listings far more useful for renters."

A by-product of Espana's approach is that, over time, it encourages all owners to put some effort into making their listings attractive. It rewards the best owners with more enquiries, so it is worth the effort make your listing as attractive as possible.

Another interesting feature of AdScore is also Espana's "Verified advertiser" system. This is a voluntary ID check scheme that asks owners to prove they are who they say they are and is our response to combating scam adverts. This was launched 2 months ago and so far just over 30% of Espana's advertisers have adopted it.

This is a useful innovation and one that can really help bridge the trust gap between renters and owners.

For more information, see the Espana Breaks website.

Homelidays offers Holiday Insurance to Renters

2009-04-17T09:42:00.003+01:00

Do the renters of your vacation property buy travel insurance? Homelidays recently launched a travel insurance option called the "Carefree Package" and provides insurance for the renter against

Cancellation (refund of deposit up to Euro 350 per day)
Early departure due to medical problems etc
Repatriation in the event of illness
Damage to the holiday home
"Surprise proof" insurance

I think this is quite an interesting offering and it costs about 5% of the rental fee. Although many renters avail of travel insurance that would cover the first three items, the last two are of particular interest for vacation rental owners.

Unfortunately, the Damage insurance does not cover deliberate to your vacation property by the renter! This is one of the main areas of risk that vacation rental owners have, as one destructive renter can seriously impact your profits from renting, as well as damaging your vacation home.

Instead,the Damage insurance is mainly targeted at injuries that the renter might incur while staying at your vacation property. It is possilbe that some owners may already have insurance for this and, depending on your travel insurance policy, the renter may already be covered anyway.

The really interesting aspect of the Carefree Package is the "Surprise proof" insurance. This tries to address one of the main concerns that renters have when renting directly from owners: will the vacation rental property live up to it's description when they actually arrive?

Subject to certain exclusions, this allows the renter to get back any money they have paid if the vacation property is substantially different from what was advertised. This might just be the peace of mind that many prospective renters need to make the jump away from traditional hotels and rent directly from owners.

For those renters who don't want to pay extra, smart owners might consider building it into their price and then offering it for free.

It will also be interesting to see if other vacation rental by owner sites respond by offering similar insurance packages. Homelidays is now owned by the same group (the WVR Group) that owns Homeaway and so it part of the largest vacation rentals business that exists. No doubt, other Homeaway sites will also add insurance, if it is a success on Homelidays. I would be very interested to hear comments from owners of other sites about their plans in this area.

(One specific exclusion is fraud perpetrated by the leaseholder: it would be interesting if they could also offer a similar insurance to owners against fraudulent renters, which continue to be a problem.)

You can find out more directly on the Homelidays site.

Broaden Your Base of Vacation Rental Sites to Get More Bookings

2009-03-30T17:03:00.009+01:00

List on 4 vacation rental websites for 1 low price. Centrally manage your inquiries and bookings.

In the current economic climate, finding renters for your vacation home is tougher than it used to be. So now might be a good time to review how to broaden the base of potential renters for your vacation home.

In a recent survey, most vacation rental owners confirmed that they use multiple rent by owner sites, including both paid listings and free sites. But how you select those sites can make a big difference to the number of enquiries and bookings you receive.

Here are my five tips for getting more bookings by broadening your base of vacation rentals sites.

1. List on at least 3 and preferably 5 paid listing sites.

Most of your bookings will come from established vacation rental sites. Most of these sites (with the exception of free trial periods, which I will come back to) charge for your listing, usually somewhere between $100 and $300 per annum. Depending on the size and number of vacation properties you own, spending up to $1,000 per year on marketing is a reasonable amount that will pay back with increased bookings.

2. Choose vacation rental sites that are complementary to broaden the base of potential renters.

Different vacation rental listing sites appeal to different demographics. You should carefully consider the mix of sites on which you list.

For example, in my view, you should certainly choose at least one of the very large sites (e.g. Homeaway ). Being present on these large sites give you access to the many thousands of renters who search the vacation rental listings on these sites every day. Because these sites are so large, you may want to consider paying a premium to ensure you get the best placement possible. You also should make sure you understand how to improve your ranking in searches (e.g. Homeway allows renters to search by how recently availability was updated).

To complement your listing on such a large site, also list on at least one niche site that focuses on your particular geography or property type. For example, if your vacation home is in Spain, consider choosing a vacation rental site that specialises in Spain, such as Spain-Holiday.com. If you own a high end Villa, consider listing on a site that focuses on expensive Villas e.g. VIPVillas.com . Specialist sites such as these attract different renter traffic than the large sites and hence any enquiries you get are likely to be from a different pool of renters than the large vacation rental sites.

To further broaden your reach, consider adding a site that attracts renters from a specific geography. For example, if you have a vacation property in the US and are listed on Homeaway, you might also want to list on a site that attracts renters from the UK that are interested in travelling to the US e.g. Holiday-rentals.com .

3. Take Advantage of Free Trials

There are several sites that offer limited free trial periods, such as VacationHomeRentals or Rentalia . These are usually well established sites, but less well known that the very large sites. They hope that you will receive sufficient renter queries during the trial period to convince you to sign up for a full listing. From my discussions with owners who have tried them, the conversion rate is quite high, so, what have you got to lose by signing up for the trial? However, note that normally, these sites have sophisticated mechanisms to identify if you have already had a trial, so choose your timing well!

4. Take Advantage of Completely Free Sites.

There are a large number of free sites out there. Some of them, such as Vacationrentals411, are very well established and are a very good source of potential bookings. Others are new and offer free listings in order to build up the number of vacation homes listed with them. These may not offer immediate bookings, but could do so in the future.

I recommend that you list on at least 5 and preferably 10 free sites. Other than the time and effort to create your listing, there really is no downside. You can find a good list of free sites by regstering at COHR . Once you are registered, you will get regular updates on new sites as they occur.

5. Track the performance of the sites you are listed on

I would recommend that you keep track of the source of all bookings and enquiries that you receive. At least once a year (preferably around the time of renewal of your paid sites), you should rank and evaluate the vr sites you are listed on. My recommendation is that you change at least one site each year, just so that you can continue to find the best mix of vr sites for your vacation home.

Finally, if you are looking for new sites, you should check out the COHR home page.

Vacation Homeowners Share Rental Enquiries

2009-03-19T12:58:00.003Z

Incircle Rentals has launched a service that allows vacation rentals homeowners to share rental enquiries. When you receive an enquiry for a time that your vacation home is already booked, you can share with other vacation homeowners in your locality. In return, you can bid on enquiries provided by other fully booked owners.

Although the concept is attractive, my experience is that vacation homeowners are in practice somewhat reluctant to share leads with others. Even if the owner is fully booked now, that renter might come back later to try and book with the homeowner, so why give them the opportunity to develop a relationship with a competitor?

On the other hand, if it can be made to work, this can improve overall bookings for the vacation homeowners in the circle. For example, different owners might be advertising on different vacation rentals sites, therby allowing broader overall access to potential renters.

Incircle provides a free 90 day trial, so you can try it out to see if it works. After that, it costs $199 per year.

Right now, Incircle does not provide any incentives for referring leads: I think this might be a useful enhancement. For example, high rate of referrals could result preferred status (first option?) for receiving enquiries. It is possible that something like this might emerge as users get experience with the service.

Homeaway allows search by renter reviews

2009-03-11T07:28:00.006Z

The topic of renter reviews is one that divides vacation rentals owners. Although positive reviews can be help build trust among renters, one bad review can seriously damage the vacation rental owner's business. The fact the these renter reviews are subjective and often unfair only adds to the problem.

Nevertheless, Homeaway have added the ability for renters to search based upon the number of reviews your vacation rental property has received. This is likely to give owners who encourage feedback from renters a significant advantage in finding renters. Therefore, it is at least worth thinking about utilising this feature.

According to Homeaway, the advantages of renter reviews include:

1. Reviews increase trust and credibility: Your guests read reviews from past guests for reassurance.

2. Travelers rely on them: 77% of online shoppers use reviews when making purchase decisions (Jupiter Research).

3. Travelers can sort by reviews: This gives homes with more reviews increased visibility with travelers looking for their next vacation home.

4.Reviews let guests promote your vacation home: More than 95% of reviews are positive

What do you think? Are the benefits from positive reviews worth risking receiving potentially damaging reviews?

Rentalia Measures "Vacation Rental by Owner" Response Times

2009-02-20T12:21:00.004Z

List on 4 vacation rental websites for 1 low price. Centrally manage your inquiries and bookings.

Rentalia Rentalia , a leading "Vacation Rental by Owner" site covering Spain, Portugal and Italy, has announced an innovative new feature.

Rentalia have picked up on an interesting trend: many vacation rental owners fail to respond to email requests in a timely manner (only 20-30% of owners on Rentalia's site respond in less than 48 hours!). This can be because the requested time is already booked, the time requested is too short or simply because the vacation rental owner does not check their email frequently enough.

At any rate, this can discourage potential renters from bothering to email, often resorting to phoning the owner (which can cause other problems: who remembers the availability of their vacation rental home when they receive a phone call when they are out at a restaurant, or worse, in bed sleeping?)

Rentalia tracks the response time of both the renter and the vacation rental owner. The response time of the vacation rental owner is published on the Rentalia website. Hence, potential holiday home renters can see in advance which vacation rental owners are most likely to respond to a request to rent their property.

You can find more details, in English, here : Rentalia VRBO Response Time

You can also find the original Rentalia press release in Spanish here:
http://francoisderbaix.com/2009/02/03/rentalia-mide-el-tiempo-de-respuesta-a-los-mails/

Homeaway acquires Homelidays

2009-02-09T22:57:00.006Z

Online holiday rental giant HomeAway has made another major acquisition in the European market, snapping up Homelidays for an undisclosed fee. This acquisition will give HomeAway control of the number one and two holiday rental sites in the UK and France.

The latest purchase – the WVR Group's twelfth since 2005 – comes just three months after HomeAway secured a record $250 million investment round in private financing.
Homelidays currently has around 40,000 properties listed, boosting the overall HomeAway portfolio to an amazing 360,000 worldwide!

HomeAway acquired another leading French site Abritel.fr in January 2007.

As a user of both Homeaway and Homelidays, I will be intrigued to see the impact of this acquisition.

ArrangeYourVacation Contest

2009-01-20T16:56:00.003Z

ArrangeYourVacation – A contest with a difference!

How does winning $500 in a contest sound to you? ArrangeYourVacation, a leading vacation rental portal, has introduced a very interesting concept to attract visitors to it's web site.

ArrangeYourVacation.com has been offering information on vacation rentals for quite some time and is a well run vacation rental website. I would recommend you check them out.

So, how exactly do you win that $500?

Follow the contest link and you'll find clear rules to the contest. Participating in this contest is easy: just write a post about ArrangeYourVacation.com on your blog; register your review with the site and join the numerous other participants who have joined the contest. Don't feel pressured to actually promote ArrangeYourVacation.com, your blog post can just be an informative article about the travel site itself.

The contest will run until 28th February, 2009. The winner will be chosen by a lucky draw and declared on the 15th March, 2009. It is important that all participants have a PayPal email address so they can receive the money should they win the contest. Be sure to review the official rules before entering.

There couldn't be an easier way to win $500 – just join the contest and write a blog post – it really is that simple!

Do vacation rental sites send you false rental enquiries?

2008-07-14T11:23:00.006+01:00

Many vacation rental owners send me complaints that, as soon as the trial period on their vacation rental listing is about to expire, they receive enquiries from renters. However, when they follow up on these enquiries, they find that the renters don't respond. Hence, they suspect that the Vacation Rental Sites are sending them these enquiries in order to entice them to pay for a full listing and that these enquiries are, in fact, bogus!

So, could this possibly be the case?

I have spoken with several sites owners and all deny that they would engage in such a practice. (Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they?) Furthermore, they say it just wouldn't be practical for the following reasons:

1. If these enquiries are generated manually, the amount of work would not justify the potential revenue they would receive. Typically, conversion rates from trial to full paying customers are less than 10%. Even if they could increase this to 20%, this means they would have to generate enquiries for 10 trial owners just to get 1 more to sign up. Of course, they would need to generate more than 1 enquiry for each owner, so the reality is that it would take probably up to thirty or more enquiries just to get one more trial owner to convert to a full paying account. Since most sites charge around $100 per year, it would hardly be worth it!

2. What about if enquiries are generated automatically? Well, this would certainly reduce the work in generating the enquiries. I am not a technical expert, but I suspect it is technically feasible to generate false enquiries. However, if this were possible, why wait until the end of the trial period? Surely, it would be more effective to generate enquiries within the first week or so of the trial period, rather than waiting until the owner has effectively written off the listing on the site.

I suspect the reality is that when owners get an enquiry at around the same time as a trial is expiring, they are putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5, and that these enquiries are likely to be as genuine as any other they recieve from the site.

At any rate, I would encourage owners to log the performance of the vacation rental site over the full trial period, counting not just the number of enquiries, but also the number of follow up responses, before deciding to commit to a fully paid vacation rental listing.

Vacation Rental Site Performance and Guarantees

2008-05-11T18:46:00.007+01:00

I am often asked my opinion of which is better: the large vacation rentals sites, such as Homeaway , or the smaller ones such as Villa4Vacation .

Larger vacation rental sites will argue that they have the higher volumes of traffic from prospective renters, while smaller sites will argue that your vacation rental property will get lost amongst the thousands of other properties in the larger sites. Hence, you are better on a small site where you can stand out.

It reminds me of an article I wrote a couple of years ago about assessing the traffic to vacation rentals sites. The gist of the article is that you should try to calculate the expected number of visitors to your listing, using the tools available to measure website traffic.

Rather than just looking at the number of vacation rental listings, you should use an estimate of the traffic to the vacation rental site, together knowledge of the number of listings on the site, to calculate, on average, how many visitors a listing will get. Although the tools available (such as Alexa or Trafficestimate.com) to measure website traffic only provide approximations, at least it gives you some measure for comparison. You can find the full article here:

vacation rentals traffic

Of course, not all listings will attract the same number of viewings, and this is particularly true for sites that allow you to pay a premium for a more visible listing. Before paying for a basic listing on these sites, you may want to consider whether it is better to pay the extra for a premium listing.

In response to concerns about generating enquiries, some vacation rentals sites have started to offer guarantees. (In some cases, this if offered instead of the "free trial", which many of the more established sites have moved away from.)

For example, vrbo VRBO will guarantee that your listing will generate at least ten times your listing cost in the first year. If not, you get an extra 6 months free.

Other sites will offer a money back guarantee, although usually only when you specifically ask for it. A discussion on the Lay My Hat forum recently indicated that Holiday Rentals have offered such a guarantee on certain occasions in the past.

My advice is that you should at least ask about a guarantee before signing up with any vacation rental site.

Holidaylettings Guide to Letting Your Holiday Home

2008-04-23T18:34:00.002+01:00

Andy at Holidaylettings contacted me recently to let me know about a guide they have produced for holiday home owners, covering all the important aspects of letting your holiday home. Although I have seen several similar guides, I am impressed with the simple and clear style of Holidaylettings guide and it is full of very useful tips.

The guide covers a number of areas, including :

Choosing the right property
Furnishing a rental property
Being a responsible owner
Setting your pricing
Letting your property
Managing your bookings
Owners’ checklist for renting
Marketing your property
Advertising secrets
Internet advertising
Tricks of the trade

I particularly like the "Tricks of the Trade" for letting your holiday property, including tips such as providing a welcome pack for guests on arrival at your property (I know from personal experience this can make a huge difference in getting repeat renters or referrals to other renters) and working with other holiday home owners in your area.

I also like the final peice of advice " don’t forget to keep some weeks free for you & your friends/family to enjoy! It can sometimes be tempting to take all the bookings on offer, but make sure you don’t end up in a hotel!"

For more information, go to the Holidaylettings guide

Alexa, Homelidays and VRBO

2008-04-17T20:26:00.003+01:00

I received an email notification from Homelidays announcing that Alexa now ranks Homelidays as the number one vacation rentals site worldwide, beating VRBO, who have long since held this title. The claim is based upon the "Daily Reach" figure that Alexa calculates.

Alexa recently changed their ranking system, expanding it to include sources other than just users of the Alexa toolbar. It's possible that this might explain the change in ranking, although it's not clear from the information provided.

According to Homelidays, they overtook VRBO sometime early in 2008. If true, this is quite an achievement, as Homelidays is a European site,with a lot fewer vacation rental listings than VRBO, which has a huge amount of US vacation rental listings. However, when I check the latest alexa traffic rankings, using the vacation rentals site reviews page of COHR, VRBO seems to rank higher than Homelidays. Which is correct?

Alexa rankings should be used with caution. They are a good overall indicator of the traffic on a particular vacation rentals site, but because they are only based on a small sample of web users, you should not take them as an exact indicator.

iContact and the COHR April Vacation Rentals Newsletter

2008-04-16T15:03:00.007+01:00

I sent out the COHR Newsletter to over 2,000 vacation rentals owners this week. The newsletter includes links to many of the posts here and on COHR. You can find it here :
http://community.icontact.com/p/wwwcohr/newsletters/advertisors-april/posts/cohr-newsletter-april-08

I recently switched from sending the newsletter out via regular email to using a professional email marketing package. The one I use is called iContact and I am very pleased with it so far. Not only does it have excellent editing tools, including lots of great HTML templates, it's amazing the level of information that it gives you. If you do any email marketing of your vacation rental business, I would encourage you to give it consideration.

For example, I used to wonder how people actually read my newsletter: with iContact, not only do I know how many email actually got delivered (and how many bounced), but I can also tell how many people opened the newsletter and how many clicked on links within the newsletter. I also give a list (by email address) of all those that opened the newsletter, together with a list of which links were most popular!

This is really powerful marketing information .... you can also create segments based upon the responses and send follow up emails to these segments.

For the record, approximately 15% of those who received the email clicked on at least one link. Overe time, I will be able to tell if this is good or bad and hopefully tune my newsletters to be more effective.

iContact offers a free 15 day trial and thereafter, you pay depending on the size of your subscriber list. It starts at $9.95 per month (with discounts if you pay for a full year), which seems reasonable enough to me.

Also, they conform to US standards for spam and will automatically manage subscribes/ unsubscribes for you. They also have tools for rating how email spam filters will assess your email newsletter, so that you have the best chance to ensure your newsletter actually reaches your readers.

If interested, you can sign up for the free trial here :
http://www.icontact.com/a.pl/224908

Vacation Rental Homes Offer Bright Spot in Bleak Real Estate Market

2008-04-05T16:31:00.005+01:00

According to research by Homeaway ( the rental network with over 95,000 listings) , a "record number" of vacation home owners are planning to rent their vacation homes. About 25% of purchasers of a second home intend to rent out their home, up from 14% in 2005.

It's not clear if this is because more of the puchases are for vacation homes, or if, in light of the current economic situation, more vacation home owners need the money! However, it is interesting that more and more people who initially did not intend to rent their vacation homes, now plan to do so. Again, it is possible this is because they need the money although the research also indicates that, after a couple of years of vacation home ownership, the owners realise that they are not getting as much use as planned, and, rather than seeing their vacation home lie vacant, they go ahead and rent.

I must admit, this makes some sense, although I have also seen the opposite, where some owners stop or reduce renting when they realise it is sometimes not as easy as it looks, and one bad experience with a renter can cause a lot of second thoughts.

The research also indicates that over 70% intend to use online vacation rentals sites, such as Homeaway, in order to find renters. The WVR Group, which owns Homeaway and many other vacation rentals sites, has made huge investments in the "vacation rent by owner" market in last few years, so they will no doubt be re-assured by the results of the research.

Of course, as a vacation home owner, it may not be good news that the level of competition for renters will become even more fierce.

You can find more details here ...

Homeaway Press Release

Vacation Home Exchange

2008-03-19T17:37:00.003Z

Although most Vacation Home Owners seek to offset the cost of vacation home ownership through renting their property, either online or through a vacation rental agent, Vacation Home Exchange is another way to leverage your investment.

There are a number of vacation home exchange networks, including Digsville, Holswap, Homex, HomeExchange, HomeForExchange, SeniorsHomeExchange, TheVacationExchange, Vacation-Home-Exchange and 1stHomeExchange, that allow you to swap your homes with another vacation home owner, so that you can take a vacation without needing to spend money renting a hotel.

Most of these vacation home exchange networks charge a small annual fee, which gives you access to thousands of other vacation home in a variety of desirable locations.

However, before joining up with any of the above networks, it is worth considering the advantages and disadvantages of vacation home exchange from the vantage point of the vacation home owner.

So, what Are the Advantages of Vacation Home Exchange?

1. It is cheaper than renting a hotel, villa or apartment!

2. You can choose from a wide variety of high quality vacation properties, in a wide variety of locations.

3. Vacation Home swapping is more personal that renting a hotel, villa or apartment. Vacation home owners who exchange their homes usually only do so a couple of times per year and they are often much more selective about who they rent to: many people report making friends with those with whom they exchange vacation homes.

4. Vacation homes that are exchanged are typically better cared for than most vacation rentals. Continued participation in vacation home exchange networks is contingent on positive feedback from the person with whom they exchange their vacation home, hence vacation home exchange owners are more likely to ensure that their vacation home is maintained to a high standard.

5. Vacation home owners who exchange their homes are more likely to take good care of your property. Being vacation home owners themselves, they understand the importance of being a good "renter".

6. Vacation home swapping is a good way to use your vacation home during low season, when you might not otherwise we able to rent your vacation home.

But there are some drawbacks:

1. You can't earn rent on your vacation home when you are exchanging it!

2. You may find it difficult to find a suitable property to exchange with. However, most of the vacation home exchange networks are so large now that this is less likely to be a problem. For example, HomeExchange has more than 20,000 listings in more than 100 countries and HomeForExchange.com has over 10,000 listings worldwide.

3. You have to pay for membership of the vacation home exchange network. However, the cost is usually very modest. For example, HomeExchange costs only $99 per year and they will give you your second year free if you don't manage to exchange your vacation home in the first year. HomeForExchange.com cost only Euro 45 per year, plus you get 6 months free as a sign on bonus.

Is the Sub Prime Crisis Good for Vacation Rental Home Owners?

2008-03-19T17:34:00.001Z

At first glance, it would appear that the sub prime mortgage crisis is bad news for owners for vacation rental homes. Many people may have bought vacation homes, relying on overly optimistic projections on rental income to fund a mortgage that they might otherwise not have been able to afford (and which more prudent mortgage lenders might not have approved). Surely, many of these people will have no option but to sell or foreclose on their vacation home?

But wait, it is not all gloom and doom!

For a start, particularly in popular areas such as Florida, there have been too many vacation home owners chasing too few renters. As a result, rental prices and occupancy rates have dropped for many vacation rental owners, even those who have been renting their homes successfully for a long time. A reduction in the number of renters might not be a bad thing in the long run and might help increase the prices that vacation rental properties can command.

Secondly, for most people, their vacation home is a second home and these vacation home owners tend to be financially secure, with good credit histories and enough resources to qualify for regular mortgages and hence may have avoided the sub prime bullet.

Thirdly, vacation home owners can take advantage of the aggressive cuts in interest rates that are happening to keep the US economy out of recession as a result of the sub prime mess. For those in the vacation rental business for the long term, this is good news.

Craigslist and Vacation Rentals

2008-03-17T18:59:00.001Z

Craigslist has become quite a phenomenon, with thousands of free classified listings every day across a wide range of areas. The size of the vacation rentals listings is evidence of the fact that many vacation home owners are using Craigslist as a means to find renters. In fact, it is not uncommon to find some of the smaller “vacation rentals by owner” sites advertising on Craiglist themselves, although most of the listings are from individual vacation rentals owners. Judging from the popularity of these ads, I assume that many renters also use Craigslist to find the perfect vacation rental.

Craigslist’s rules on vacation rentals listings mean that you can’t post the same ad more than once at a time. Some vacation rentals owners try to get around this by posting in multiple destinations, with slight changes of wording. However, although you might get away with that for a while, you run the risk of being flagged and possibly banned from the Craigslist site.

However, to make things easier, some vacation rentals sites have added tools to help with building Craigslist ads. For example, VacationRealty has a Craigslist ad builder as does Vacationrentaldirect .

As an alternative to Criagslist, you might also consider Free Vacation Rentals Classifieds .

VRWD and Standards in Vacation Rentals

2008-03-17T07:57:00.004Z

One of the biggest reasons why holidaymakers don't rent directly from owners is that they don't know exactly what they will be getting. Most "vacation rental by owner" do not do any vetting of vacation rental properties on their books. Because there is no independent way to assess the standards in vacation rental by owner properties, it is very much up to the renter to do the necessary due diligence to ensure that what they are buying will be acceptable to their requirements.

Effectively, there no equivalent to the "star" rating system for hotels or large vacation apartments.

One company, VRWD, is attemping to introduce a Trusted Vacation Rental Seal . Members are allowed to put the trusted logo on their own websites, after completing a review by VRWD. However, it's not clear what is involved in this review process, nor how do VRWD assure and maintain the standards of their members. Presumably, if complaints are received, members can be dropped from the program. However, until the Trusted Vacation Rental Seal is adopted as a standard, it's influence with renters will be limited.

When is comes to standards, vacation rentals have a big disadvantage over hotels or even bed and breakfast properties. Part of the reason for this is that governments and tourist boards are typically a lot more supportive of hotels and B&Bs than they are of vacation rentals by owner properties.

In Ireland, where I live, Board Failte, the Irish tourist board, has an active program for assessing and grading B&B properties and I would not dream of staying in a B&B that was not Bord Failte approved. Until we get to the same stage with vacation rentals, it may continue to be "caveat emptor" for the renter.

The WVR Group, Homeaway, VBRO, Ownersdirect and More

2008-03-15T16:29:00.005Z

The WVR Group continue to add to it's portfolio of Vacation Rental by Owner sites, with the list of sites now running to at least 14 different sites. One of the latest additions is Ownersdirect , a long established UK based vbro site.

It's hard to keep track of exactly how many vacation rentals properties WVR now has signed up on the various sites, but they are clearly seeking to dominate the industry. WVR has raised a lot of money and is betting that this will pay back as the industry consolidates.

At one point it looked like the vacation rentals by owner industry might be a battle between WVR and VRBO, but when WVR acquired them, it effectively took out their biggest rival. The acquisition of VacationRentals VacationRentals followed and now the WVR is way bigger than any of it's rivals.

For a full list of the WVR Group sites, visit the WVR Group page on Compare Owner Holiday Rentals.

Homeaway, Homaway Vacation Rentals Review

2008-02-29T15:17:00.002Z

I recently added a review of the HomeAway rental network with over 95,000 listings for the Compare Owner Holiday Rentals website. Homeaway is owned by the WVR Group, which also owns several Vacation Rentals by Owner websites, including VRBO and Holiday Rentals.com. However, the Homeaway network specifically consists of four different vacation rentals sites i.e. HomeAway, Cyberrentals, Greatrentals and A1Vacations.

The HomeAway rental network has invested a lot of resources in building and developing their vacation rental network. For example, they claim to offer an integrated environment for vacation rental owners across all four vacation rentals sites, plus the search function is quite sophisticated, a must given the very large number of vacation rentals listings.

Here's the full Homeaway Review . As always, I welcome any comments.

COHR: It's been a while ....

2008-02-21T20:24:00.002Z

I have been very busy with projects that have nothing to do with http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com . Hopefully, I will have more time now, but in the meantime, I wish you all the best with the upcoming Vacation Rental season!

Kevin

Homeaway acquires Abritel

2007-04-03T17:12:00.001+01:00

Homeaway continues to grow, with American Capital investing an additional $75m to facilitate the acquisitions of the both VRBO and Abritel .

With more than 160,00 Vacation Rental properties listed, Homeaway is now the "800 pound gorilla" in the Vacation Rentals market.

Since formation, Homeaway has acquired most of the leading Vacation Rentals sites including CyberRentals.com, A1Vacations.com, GreatRentals.com, TripHomes.com, HolidayRentals.co.uk, HolidayRentals.fr and FeWo-direkt.de, as well as VBRO.com and abritel.fr.

With this amount of consolidation, is there any room left for the smaller Vacation Rentals sites?

Although the reach of Homeaway is definitely very large, many owners complain that their property gets lost among the huge numbers of similar vacation rentals. Hence, there's still plenty of room for niche sites that attract enough potential renters to cover the cost of listing.

If you want to research the varous options, we recommend you visit Compare Owner Holiday Rentals : they list more than 100 different sites, ranging from the large global sites to small, regional sites.

Homeaway acquires Abritel

2007-04-03T17:12:00.000+01:00

Homeaway Acquires VRBO

2006-11-15T15:02:00.000Z

Well, it finally happened: Homeaway, already the largest Vacation Rentals company on the internet, finally acquired VRBO for an "undisclosed" amount. However, Homeaway have raised an amazing $160m in financing to help fund the deal.

Will this be good for vacation rental owners? Already, Homeaway has gotten mixed reviews for it's acquisitions, including Cyberrentals , Greatrentals, A1Vacations and Holiday-Rentals.com. Although Homeaway has tried to offer additional benefits, such as discounted packages on several sites, high profile advertising and new features, many vacation rental owners have complained that they are not seeing the same quantity and quality of renters since those acquisitions, at least partially due to being "lost" among the vast numbers of listings on the Homeaway sites.

Now that VRBO has also been acquired, will that get even worse? Won't the competition on the Homeaway sites get even tougher, with all those extra VRBO listings to compete with?

What about the owners currently listed on VRBO : how will they feel about this acquisition? For many owners, being listed on VRBO was viewed as necessary, but expensive. Despite the often criticised user interface and marginal customer service, VRBO by and large got results. Will this continue to be the case under the management of Homeaway?

You also have to wonder, are the investors in Homeaway getting good value for their purchase? Let's assume that only half of the $160m that Homeaway have raised is going to fund their purchase of VRBO and that most of the vacation rental owners currently listed on VRBO will stay with Homeaway. This still works out at more than $3,000 per listing: that at least 10 years worth of subscription fees, which seems expensive to me.

Online Availability Calendars : to update or not?

2006-07-11T17:13:00.000+01:00

Do you keep the availability calendar for your vacation rental updated ? Is it worth it ?

If you are listed on multiple vacation rental sites, particularly those that have their own online availability calendar, then keeping them updated can be quite a chore. There are tools out there to help, but it is still a pain.

The question is : does it matter ? Do renters use online calendar availability to narrow down their choices, or do they simply ask for price and availability first, ignoring whether this information is already provided in your online availability calendar ?

In my experience, quite often, renters do not check your online availability calendar before sending a query. This can be for several reasons :

1. They simply don't bother ( or don't realise that they can check availability) Although I am sure this is sometimes true, I suspect this is a small minority of cases.

2. The renter's dates are flexible and hence, they don't want to limit their choices. I think this is often the case : the renter may not have yet booked their flights and hence their dates may be quite flexible. Ignoring the information in the online availability calendar allows them more flexibility in finding suitable vacation rentals.

3. The renter may send a lot of queries to see which vacation rental owner comes back with the best option on price and availability. Many vacation rental by owner sites now allow owners to create an enquiry list and then send the same query to all of these vacation rental owners at once. Thus it is easier to send off a "mass" enquiry to 10 or more vacation rental owners, than to individually check which of those vacation rental properties are available for the dates requested. This feature, although great from a renter's point of view, it somewhat of a pain for the vacation rental owner, since it results in a lot more enquiries from renters for every booking that will be generated.

So, it is a waste of time keeping your online availability calendar up to date ? Well, keep in mind that some vacation rental by owners sites prioritise the search results they provide to renters on the basis of which properties have most recently updated their online availability calendar. Hence, updates may actually increase your visibility to renters, resulting in more enquiries.

Comment, as always, welcome.

Kevin

Vacation Home Owner Newsletters

2006-07-05T12:05:00.000+01:00

I am in the process of writing the July COHR Newsletter for publication to all the vacation home owners registered on COHR. I thought I would pause a while to consider the general topic of newsletters.

I receive a lot of newsletters from a variety of sources on a variety of different topics and they vary widely in their quality and ability to attract my interest.

So what makes a good newsletter ?

1. A good newsletter is targeted to the right audience :

Even if the newsletter is well-written and with good content, if the topics are not of interest to me, then I am not going to read it. Hence, make sure that your subscriber list contains only people who are interested in the topic at hand. All those registered for the COHR Newsletter are either vacation rental home owners, or owners of vacation rentals sites : hence, as long as my content is relevant to this group, my newsletter has at least a fighting chance to be read.

2. A good newsletter has original content :

It can be hard to keep coming up with original content, but if you want people to read the newsletter, there has to be some NEW element to the NEWsletter! I always include at least one feature article in the COHR Newsletters.

Examples include
On How Many Vacation Rental Sites Should You List ? , Comparing Visitor Traffic on Vacation Rental Web Sites or Vacation Rentals by Owner sites, Are they Profitable ? All of these are of interest to the vacation rental home owner and all are written personally by me based upons original ideas, analysis or research.

3. A good newsletter is short and easy to read :

I try to keep my COHR Newsletters to one page, using links to the additional content, such as feature articles. Even then, I fully expect that many readers will just scan and stop or click on something that looks interesting.

4. A good newsletter is a rare thing :

Don't try to publish newsletters too often. People will be too busy to read them or may even consider them to be spam ! I try to publish my COHR Newsletters about every two months. Depending on your topic, you may be able to do more frequently, but follow the general rule that less is more.

5. Keep in mind your reason for sending the newsletter :

If you objective is simply to educate, that's fine.

If your objective is to enhance your reputation as an expert in your field, then the quality of your content is key : this is one of the reasons why I always include a feature article. For the next issue, the feature article is on the topic of Free Vacation Rental Listings Sites , giving readers useful information on how to select the right free sites and what they can expect from the various types of free vacation rentals sites.

If your objective is to provide up to date information on services or products that you offer, make sure that the information is presented clearly and concisely, with links for more information.

6. Finally, don't forget to also publish your newsletters on your web site : many people may come back to them at a future date, and they can add useful content to your web site. Check out the COHR Newsletters as an example !

Regards,

Kevin

COHR Vacation Rental Site Listings

2006-07-03T13:09:00.000+01:00

When I began Compare Owner Holiday Rentals (COHR) , my primary objective was to create one place where vacation rental home owners could go to select the best Vacation Rentals by Owner sites on which to advertise their vacation rentals.

I also wanted to generate at least a small amount of income to make running COHR worthwhile.

I had a number of different ideas, including offering "bundles" of listings on several vacaton rentals sites together : my thinking was that I could "purchase" these from the various vacation rentals by owners sites at a discount and then "resell"them to vacation rental home owners. (Research that I had done indicated that most vacation rental home owners need to list on at least 3 paid sites in order to optimize bookings : see my article On How Many Vacation Rentals Sites ? )

However, as it turns out, there was not much interest among the vacation rentals by owner sites in participating, so that never came to much. (Interestingly, though, WVR has subsequently taken this "bundling" approach with it $299 offer for combined listings on Cyberrentals, A1Vacattions, Greatrentals and HomeAway. )

I also pursued direct advertising and affiliates as a source of income. My advertising with Adbrite has actually been quite successful, with a 75% renewal rate among advertisers on the COHR site. However, the amount of income this brings is very small, barely covering hosting fees.

After some thought and a great deal of deliberation, I decided that I would convert the basic listings on COHR from free to paid. I had some concerns, because I don't want to be seen to promote specific vacation rentals sites. Hence, I only accept payment for the basic listings in our comparison tables. These tables contain only facts about each Vacation Rentals by Owner site, together with a link to the vacation rentals by owner site. I do not accept any payment for Reviews of vacation rentals sites, in order that these be completely impartial and independent of the vacation rental site owner. ( Actually, my Vacation Rentals by Owner Site Reviews focus primarily on highlighting facts and features of each vacation rental site, rather than subjective comments on how good or bad a particular site is : I rely on the owner comments to provide such subjective feedback.)

Over the last couple of months, I have gradually been shifting to this paid listings basis. At this point, all new listings are accepted only upon payment. During July, I will move to only paid listings on the COHR home page, and will slowly migrate the other pages after that.

I do have some concerns about moving in this direction : I really want to make sure that vacation rental home owners who visit my site feel they are getting good and impartial information. Also, even when all listings are converted, COHR is not going to make me rich. However, I think this is a win-win-win situation : vacation rental site owners benefit from the opportunity to reach a targeted audience of vacation rentals home owners ; vacation rental home owners benefit from having one place where they can review a large number of vacation rentals by owner sites and I recieve some compensation for the work involved in putting it all together !

As always, I would welcome comments.

Regards,

Kevin

Blogger Sidebar Problems Fixed !

2006-06-30T12:35:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to fix my problems with the sidebar moving to the bottom of my page !

My sincere thanks to Rat from the blogger help group, who posted to the following solution :

Fix Your Sidebar by Changing Template

As you can tell, in the process, I had to choose a new template. I much prefer the new "blue" scheme, so it is some compensation for all my trouble that I have ended up with a nicer template !

Regards,

Kevin

Blog Problems and Google Ad Sense

2006-06-29T15:32:00.000+01:00

My apologies to those of you who may be confused by the format of my BLOG lately.

I recently tried to add Google's Ad Sense to my Blog and then decided to delete it. However, in the process, my sidebar seems to have moved to the end of my page. I havn't a notion as to why this is, but checking on some of the help boards, it appears I am not unique in my experience.

I have tried playing around with my template, but have probably done more harm than good at this stage.

I will keep trying, but in the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. !

Regards,

Kevin

Vacation Home Owner Blogs

2006-06-24T19:14:00.000+01:00

Are you a Vacation Home Owner ? Do you have a BLOG ? I would like to try to collate a list of all Blogs by Vacation Rental Home Owners or that are related to the Vacation Rentals industry.

So, if you have a BLOG that you would like me to list, just let me know by leaving a comment here.

Alternatively, go to my main website, Compare Owner Holiday Rentals and leave me details, using the contact form .

While you are there, why not sign up for our free newsletter ? We will send you a list of Free Vacation Rental Listing Sites , together with some Special Offers for Vacation Rentals Owners .

Regards,

Kevin

RDFO Review Posted

2006-06-14T17:15:00.000+01:00

I have completed the reviews of RDFO and posted on Compare Owner Holiday Rentals .

As mentioned previously, RDFO is not a traditional Vacation Rental by Owner site, but acts as a search engine. By registering your personal site (or listing on another vacation rental site) with RDFO, your property shows us in searches on the RDFO site.

The other unusual characteristic of RDFO is the referral network. Basically, this provides a facility for allowing you to give ( and hopefully receive) rental enquiries and bookings to ( and from) other vacation rentals owners. When a vacation owner receives a rental enquiry for a week that is already booked, they can pass this on to other vacation rental owners in the network.

I was thinking about whether this would work in practice while writing the review : I often pass on booking enquiries for my property on the French Riviera to other vacation rental owners , but seem to get few ( if any) referrals from them. It could be that I simply receive more "over-bookings" than other owners, or it could be that my altruism is not being returned in kind!

Anyway, although the RDFO system seems to operate on an "honour" basis, feedback from owners who have used it is positive. Maybe there are a more altruistic bunch than my friends ( or maybe the enquiries are spread more evenly).

I asked RDFO is they considered implementing some sort of comission system to provide incentives to share bookings, but they indicated that would add complications ... and besides, right now it is working, so why mess with it ?

RDFO indicate they have a patent pending on their referral network, although I know similar schemes have used in the past, so how defensible the patent is remains to be seen.

However, I certainly wish them well.

As always, comments are welcome.

Regards,

Kevin

RDFO

2006-06-06T15:43:00.000+01:00

I recently came across an ususual vacation rental by owner site called RDFO ( www.rdfo.com) . Actually, they had read my article on Consolidation in Vacation Rental by Owner sites and contacted me, because they agreed with the basic premise that vacation rentals sites will need to find a way of differentiating themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace for vacation rentals.

RDFO basically operates as a search engine and is particularly attractive for those vacation rental owners who have their own site. Basically, when you register with RDFO, your personal site shows up in their searches, allowing you to leverage their web presence, but maintain your own individual site design and layout. Your availability calendar also shows up in the search results, so that renters can quickly see if you have a vacancy for the required time.

RDFO also has a patent pending on it's use of a referral network. Basically, this allows you to share enquiries with other owners. I need to do more research to investigate, but the principle is that you can refer bookings to other owners for periods you are already booked, and vice versa. ( I need to check how owners are incented to reciprocate, as many owners can jealously guard their enquiries.)

Besides registered properties ( it costs $80 per year but you can find an attractive Special Offer on the COHR site), RDFO also lists thousands of other non-registered properties. My asumption is that, over time, they will try to move to a higher percentage of registered owners, but for now, the extra results benefit renters by providing more choice.

I have added RDFO to Compare Owner Holiday Rentals and intend to write a review of their site in the next week or so : it's nice to find an ususual offering in the vacation rentals marketplace.

Regards,

Kevin

Vacation Rental Site Optimization : All the Web Live Search

2006-06-06T14:54:00.000+01:00

Optimizing your vacation rental site for search engines takes a lot of hard work and some creativity.

I have just come across All the Web's beta test of Livesearch and I must say, it is an impressive tool that you may find useful in search engine optimization !

Livesarch allows you to enter a search term and while you are typing, brings up relevant results. In addition, it will prompt you with search terms that might be useful in narrowing your search.

For example, if you type "vacation rentals", livesearch will return a standard list of search results on the right hand side of the page. However, on the left hand side, it will list a number of other search terms ( e.g. vacation rentals by 0wner), which you might want to consider using.

If you continue typing, say vacation rentals california, the results on the right hand side of the page are updated to reflect this search term. Also, the left hand side now shows updated suggestions for narrowing your search ( e.g. vacation rentals california beach).

This is quite a useful tool if you are looking for inspiration in finding search terms that might be useful for optimising your vacation rental site.

If you enter these terms into other tools such as Good Keywords, you can check the popularity
of these terms with search engines : with some luck ( and a little persistence), you may find some terms that you can use for optimizing pages on your vacation rental site.

Can you guess which terms I used to optimise Reviews of VRBO, Cyberrentals ?

Regards,

Kevin

Vacation Rentals Keywords and Google Trends

2006-05-22T13:22:00.000+01:00

Getting search engine traffic to your vacation rentals site, whether it is a commercial site with many vacation properties listed, or an individual site for your personal vacation home, can be a difficult and frustrating process. Trying to find key words and phrases that are not so popular that they are just too competitive, but popular enough that you will get a reasonable amount of search engine traffic if you are successful, is getting harder and harder.

There are various tools out there to help the vacation rental site owner evaluate key word popularity, but Google have recently launched Google Trends, which is a very interesting additon to this area.

Basically, Google Trends allows you to see how the popularity of a particular phrase has changed over time. It also allows you to see which cities, regions or languages are most popular for that search.

One interesting use is to compare the popularity of phrases : you can do this by typing in each phrase separated by commas. For example, it you type in "vacation rental, holiday rentals", you can see how the popularity of these phrases compares over the last two years, and that "vacation rental" is much more popualar in the US, while "holiday rentals" is much more popular in the UK.

Google trends is still in it early stages, and it based only on a sample of Google searches, but it looks like it will be a useful tool in optimising your vacation rentals site for the Google search engine.

Regards,

Kevin

Cyberrentals / HomeAway/ WVR Pricing

2006-05-17T17:12:00.000+01:00

I've been out of commission for the last few days ( due to a family bereavement), so I am a bit late noticing that the WVR group have announced a new deal for owners of vacation rentals : you can now advertise your vacation rental home on 4 WVR sites ( Cyberrentals, a1vacations, greatrentals and HomeAway) for an annual cost of $299.

This is another sign of how WVR are beginning to excercise the leverage they have since acquiring Cyberrentals, a1vacations, greatrentals and Holiday Rentals.com( one of the leading European holiday rentals sites ). The intention is that, at some point, owners will only need to maintain their listing on one site and changes will automatically happen on the other listed sites.

On the face of it, this is a welcome development for vacation rentals owners : getting exposure on multiple sites, with less effort and reduced costs is a good deal. However, a lot will depend on how effective these multiple listings are in generating bookings.

Cyberentals went through a tough time after the merger, but seems to have bounced back (see the comment on the COHR review here for Cyberentals ). It remains to be seen how much WVR plan to build on the historical strength of the Cyberrentals brand, or will be be submerged into WVR ?

It also begs the question, why not simply merge all the sites together ? (Although $299 per year would be expensive for listing on just one site.) If all 4 of these sites list essentially the same properties, they will only be differentiated by the renters they attract.

When I first launched Compare Owner Holiday Rentals , I started with the idea that I would sell "bundles" of listings on multiple sites. My idea was that I would negotiate volume discounts from the different vacation rentals sites and then sell a "bundle" of listing on, say, 3 different sites to vacation rental owners. Indeed, I had conversations with some of the folks at WVR about this concept, but for a variety of reasons, it did not go ahead.

I wonder will there now be appetite among WVRs competitors for something similar to this bundled concept ? Or will there is a move for more consolidation amongst the smaller / medium size players in the vacation rentals market ? Smaller sites will certainly need some way to combat the marketing muscle of WVR.

Regards,

Kevin

How many links to your Vacation Rentals site ?

2006-05-11T16:20:00.000+01:00

I was prompted by a post on the www.laymyhat.com forum to check how many sites have linked to Compare Owner Holiday Rentals . There are a number of tools you can use, but the particular tool that was mentioned was http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ . This tool allows you enter up to 4 urls and it will tell you how many other sites have linked to these urls.

Compare Owner Holiday Rentals currently has 3275 sites linking to it, indicating a presence in the "average" range, although not bad for a site that has only been around for a few months. However, we have a long way to go, with leading vacation rentals sites such as VRBO and Holiday Rentals having 265,000 and 209,000 links respectively ! Presumably, many of these links are from vacation rentals home owners who have listed on these vacation rentals sites.

However, is all this linking a good thing ? There has been a lot of talk amongst SEO experts that reciprocal linking in particular has fallen out of favour with search engines when determining the "importance" of a web site in search results. Is it worth the effort to continue to build links ?

Although relevant one-way links, (with the right anchor text) are clearly best, my view is that relevant reciprocal links are still a useful way to build up the presence of your vacation rentals site. Although the direct traffic they bring will be minimal, there is still evidence that they will have some positive impact on your search engine results (particularly on MSN).

Also, there is lots of software out there to help minimise the effort involved, although I have personally found that active participation in much of the automated link exchange tools is quite low.

Personally, I have had good experience with free sites such as www.linkmarket.net and www.link2me.com : although the number of links you can exchange per day is limited, they have some nice features that make the process relatively automated.

Regards,

Kevin

Free Vacation Rental Listings Sites

2006-05-09T13:27:00.000+01:00

Free vacation rental listings sites come in various forms.

I have noticed an increase in the number of vacation rental sites offering extended free trials or free listings in the past few months. Most of these are new sites that need to build up the number of vacation rental homes advertised on their site, and they offer anywhere from 6 months to 3 years free. Once established with a strong pool of potential renters visiting each day, the intent is to begin charging vacation rental owners for their listings.

Some examples of this type of site are villaholidayhomes.com and www.tenant.com , though there are many others.

I wonder if any research has been done to see how many of these sites successfully move from free trials to paid listings ? This is a area I plan to research later this year, so let me know if you have any information or thoughts on this subject.

On the other hand, some of the established vacation rental sites continue to offer free trial listings. This is a "try before you buy" model, with the intent being that you should be sufficiently impressed by the level of enquiries and bookings for your vacation home that you will go ahead and pay for a listing at the end of the trial period. Trial periods are usually between 1 and 3 months.

Some examples of these type of vacation rental sites are Homelidays and VacationHomeRentals .

However, there are also some sites that offer permanently free vacation rental listings. These are funded either by advertising ( e.g. Google ads) or offer the opportunity to upgrade your free listing to a paid listing.

Examples of these sites include VacationRentals411 ( which allows you to bid for position on their search results ) and holidaylease.com .

Finally, there are also sites which offer free classified listings. The most famous of these is Craigslist, although US FreeAds Vacation Rentals Classifieds is another popular example.

With all of these free options, why would anyone pay for their vacation rental home to be listed on a vacation rentals site ? The answer lies in the fact that most free vacation rental sites will generate fewer enquiries and bookings than the paid sites. However, it's still worth listing your vacation rental home on several of these free vacation rental sites : after all, what do you have to lose ?

For a list of some of the better free vacation rentals sites, visit Vacation Rental by Owner Forum and sign up for the free Vacation Rental by Owner Newsletter

Regards,

Kevin

Spain Holiday Update

2006-05-06T21:50:00.000+01:00

Well, no sooner had I posted my comment that Spain Holiday.com had not yet contacted me, when I received a very nice email from them, with some comments and corrections on the review. Fairly unexpected for a saturday evening !

I've updated the review and it's now live : read my review of Spain Holiday.Com and let me know your comments !

Regards,

Kevin

Spain Holiday.Com Review

2006-05-06T19:07:00.000+01:00

I've just posted a review of spain-holiday.com on Compare Owner Holiday Rentals . This is the first Spanish holiday rentals sites I have reviewed. I've also just realised that I have now completed four European focused reviews in a row, following on from reviews of Abritel , Holiday Rentals.com and Villarenters . It must now be time to move back to reviewing some of the US sites : please post a comment if you have a suggestion.

Spain holiday.com is the largest holiday rentals by owner site focused exclusively on Spain ( and the Spanish islands including the Canaries.) By focusing their marketing on one geographic region, they can carve out a niche that differentiates them from some of the larger sites. ( For more on this topic, see my article on the profitability of the Vacation Rentals by Owners Industry ).

I contacted Spain Holiday.Com to solicit their feedback on the review, but so far no response. I have had good feedback on them from other sources, so perhaps they will get back to me in due course. Also, I have not yet solicited comments from holiday rentals owners who have used Spain Holiday.com, but will do so in the next few days : in the meantime, if you have any comments on them, please feel free to post your comments here.

Regards,

Kevin

Poll : European Holiday Rentals .. the voting has begun

2006-05-04T10:31:00.000+01:00

Looks like there are a few people who have stopped by to vote in the European Holiday Rentals Sites poll on Compare Owner Holiday Rentals (COHR). Our visitors include many of the webmasters and owners of the holiday rentals sites listed, so you have to discount the fact that some of them may vote for themselves, but hopefully we will get a decent trend of which holiday rentals sites produce the most bookings for owners of holiday rental homes in Europe.

As expected, www.holiday-rentals.com has gotten off to a strong start, and Portside Promotions is also receiving some votes, but I am surprised by the fact that several owners have voted for "none". What are we to make of this ? Is it that these owners don't use holiday rentals sites, possibly using their personal site or rental agents for bookings ? This seems unlikely, as such holiday rentals owners would probably not bother to visit COHR.

A more likely answer is that these votes indicate these holiday rentals owners get most of their bookings not from a European holiday rentals site, but from one of the US Vacation Home Rental sites. However, are these votes being cast by holiday rentals owners or perhaps the owners of the US sites themselves ?

In any case, please feel free to specify the name of the non-European site when you are voting. It will be interesting to see if many European holiday rentals owners rely primarily on the large US vacation rentals sites for their bookings !

Regards,

Kevin

Poll : European Holiday Rentals Sites

2006-05-03T11:44:00.000+01:00

I have posted a poll on COHR, to determine which European Holiday Rentals sites gives the most bookings. You can find the poll here : European Holiday Rentals . Just scroll to the end of the page to cast your vote and you will then be able to view the results.

It will be interesting to see which sites get the most votes. Based on the Alexa traffic rating, you would expect www.homelidays.com and www.holiday-rentals.com to be the front runners, as they get the most Alexa-certified traffic. However, according to the latest Vacation Rentals Traffic figures we did, sites such as www.click4holidayhomes.com and www.holidaylettings.co.uk have higher average visitors per listing.

Which site works best for you ? Post your and vote or leave a commen here !

Regards,

Kevin

Cyberrentals Leads US Vacation Rentals Bookings Poll

2006-05-02T17:17:00.000+01:00

Although vacation rental home owners are interested in many things when selecting a vacation rental site on which to advertise their vacation rentals, the most important factor is : will this vacation rentals site generate bookings ?

A few weeks ago, I added a poll to the Compare Owner Holiday Rentals site on the US Vacation Rentals page, which you can find here :
http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/us_owner_rental_sites.htm

The poll asks which US Vacation Rentals site has given owners the most bookings.

To vote, just scroll to the end of the page !

As I write, the leading US vacation rentals site in the poll is Cyberrentals : somewhat surprising, given that Cyberrentals received a lot of criticism after their acquisition by the WVR Group. It appeared that, at least for a while, they lost their way and visitors to the Cyberrentals site were down dramatically. Over the last several months, traffic to Cyberrentals seem to have recovered. When we did a review ( http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/review-cyberrentals.htm ) although the comments we received from vacation rentals owners about Cyberrentals were somewhat mixed, they indicated Cyberrentals was on the road to recovery. You can view the comments here :
http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/comments-cyberrentals.htm

Regards,

Kevin

Abritel Review Published

2006-04-27T10:46:00.000+01:00

I've published the Abritel review on COHR ; you can find it here : http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/review-abritel.htm

I would welcome any comments : it's pretty clear that most of their business is with French speakers and not many of my normal US or UK vacation rentals owners know much about them.

I am also a little dissappointed that they did not respond to my request for comments / feedback on the review. I normally like the vacation rentals site owner to take a look at my review to ensure accuracy and highlight anything I might have overlooked. However, Abritel didn't respond to my request : maybe I am not yet forgiven for mis-spelling the Abritel name.

Regards,

Kevin

Abritel Fr Holiday Rentals Review

2006-04-24T16:52:00.000+01:00

I am currently writing a review of the Abritel (www.abritel.fr/uk/) holiday rentals site for the Compare Owner Holiday Rentals (www.compareownerholidayrentals.com) web site and would appreciate any comments from any one who has used them, either as a holiday rental property owner or renter.

Abritel are one of the largest holiday rental sites in France and most of the visitors are French speaking, although they publish in 7 different languages. Although Abritel is very well known in France, although I had not heard of them until recently.

Initially, when I listed them on the COHR site, I was contacted by their very indignant marketing manager to point out that a) I had grossly underestimated their size and b) I had misspelled their name : they were Abritel not Arbitrel. However, I musn't be the only one who gets the spelling wrong, as I had a significant number of search engine hits to my website from browsers also looking for Arbitrel !

Regards,

Kevin

Profitable to run a vacation rentals site ?

2006-04-18T22:28:00.000+01:00

I've completed the article on the Vacation Rentals industry and published here :
http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/article-vacation-rentals-by-owner-business.htm

I would welcome any comments, particularly from anyone running a site themselves. I suspect there are many people our there who run FREE vacation rentals sites :the upfront costs are so low that it's an easy business to get into. Also, the prospect of getting an income from an online business that could be located anywhere is very attractive, and the downside risk is so low, why not go for it ? As supplemental income, it's all upside !

However, I wonder how many vacation rentals site owners can actually make a living from their vacation rentals sites ? To get an income of $50,000, you need to find 500 owners who will pay you $100 per year, above any marketing and hosting costs that you incur.

If you have a story to tell, whether it's a success story or otherwise, please let me know !

Regards,

Kevin

Vacation Rentals Sites : Are they profitable ?

2006-04-01T10:50:00.000+01:00

I am currently writing an article for Compare Owner Holiday Rentals about the vacation rentals business. What I am exploring is whether or not running a site it profitable and how the industry might evolve. There are so many vacation rentals sites out there, with new ones being formed almost on a weekly basis, it's hard to believe they can all make money.

I would be interested in anyone's views on the topic : feel free to post your comments here.

Regards,

Kevin

Villarenters Review

2006-03-31T12:30:00.000+01:00

I have published a review of Villarenters on the Compare Owner Holiday Rentals web site. You can find it here :
http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/review-villarenters.htm

Villarenters is quite unique in offering a pay-for-performance model for owners of holdiay rentals : basically, you pay 10% of bookings that they get for you. They also have a nifty system for managing your holiday rental bookings.

I would be interested in any comments from owners or renters who have used Villarenters .

Regards,

Kevin

Holiday-Rentals.com Review

2006-03-31T12:24:00.000+01:00

I have posted a review of Holiday Rentals ( Holiday-Rentals.com) onto the Compare Owner Holiday Rentals web site. You can find the review here :
http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/review-holiday-rentals.htm

Holiday Rentals.com is a well established site with owners of holiday rentals sites and , even though it is quite expensive, has many loyal owners who renew their holiday rental advertising each year.

I would be very interested in receiving comments either from owners or renters who have used the Holiday Rentals.com web site.

Regards,

Kevin

Reviews of Vacation Rentals by Owner Websites

2006-03-08T12:53:00.000Z

I have written a number of reviews of "vacation rentals by owner" websites. These reviews are designed to help owners of vacation rental property decide which sites are most suitable for advertising their own vacation rental property. You can find them here :

http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/reviews.htm

Best Regards,

Kevin

Articles on the Vacation Rentals Industry

2006-03-08T12:26:00.000Z

I have written a number of articles on the vacation rentals industry that you can find here :

http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com/COHR_Articles.htm

Let me know what you think about them.

Best Regards,

Kevin

Welcome to the Vacation Rental Forum

2006-03-08T12:07:00.000Z

Welcome to the blog for Compare Owner Holiday Rentals, the Vacation Rental Owner's Forum.

Please also visit our website at http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.com

You can find comparisons of all the leading vacation rentals sites, including more than 70 vacation rentals by owners sites from around the world.

Best Regards,

Kevin