Tripadvisor Annual Vacation Rental Survey

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TripAdvisor, who owns both Flipkey and Holidaylettings, recently announced the results of its fourth annual vacation rentals survey of more than 1,300 U.S. travelers. The survey predicts increasing demand for rental properties and has some useful information for vacation rental owners in how to get the best from their vacation rental property.

1. Increased Demand for Vacation Rentals

    According to the survey, nearly half (49 percent) of respondents have stayed or are planning to stay in a rental home in 2013, up from 46 percent in 2012 and 40 percent in 2011.

2. Vacation Rental or a Hotel?

Respondents cited the following factors as those most likely to sway them toward booking a vacation rental over a hotel:

 

1. Savings (82 percent)  
2. Last-minute deals (82 percent)
3. Traveling with a large group (19 percent)
4. More living space (15 percent)
5. Booking a trip for one week or longer (11 percent)

It is worth emphasising these benefits when promoting your vacation rental to potential guests.

3. Benefits of a Vacation Rental compared with a Hotel

Respondents said they like the following attributes best:

1. Access to a full kitchen and/or laundry room (31 percent)
2. More living space (27 percent)
3. Feels like home (10 percent)
4. More family-friendly (10 percent)
5. Low prices (seven percent)

 Again, stressing these points in your marketing / responses to potential renters may help you to attract more guests.

4. Demographics for Vacation Rentals

Families and group travelers are most drawn to rental homes, citing the above benefits as their biggest motivators. Of those surveyed:

Seventy-five percent indicate they have shared a rental home with family on past trips  

Sixty-two percent say they choose to stay in a vacation rental property when they are traveling with family or a large group

When traveling on a family vacation, 89 percent prefer to stay in a vacation rental

5. Best Luxury Features of Vacation Rentals

1. Private beach (25 percent)
2. Amazing view (18 percent)
3. Private pool (18 percent)
4. Large outdoor deck/patio (11 percent)
5. Personal chef (seven percent)

iContact and the COHR April Vacation Rentals Newsletter

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