Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Link to Vacation Rental Owners Blog |

At A Glance: January News For Vacation Rental Owners

Posted: 28 Jan 2014 09:00 AM PST

Sydney Morning Herald || The hottest travel trend of 2014? We know everything about you

We’ve talked about different ways to connect with your guests and provide truly personal service, something vacation rental owners are in a great position to provide. But hotels are upping their game, too. In this article from Australia, industry executives say they're focused on details—from remembering a guest's preferred room temperature to buying personalized gifts inspired by their social media posts.

Vacation Rental Marketing Blog || 4 vacation rental guru predictions for 2014

Will 2014 bring more competition or more opportunity for vacation rental owners? Likely a good dose of both, according to the four vacation rental pros interviewed for this predictions post. From new initiatives by big brands to the need for better systems and more comprehensive marketing, our industry is poised for significant growth and change over the next couple of years.

Tnooz || Travelers will smile about service, but are irate over Internet

Free Wi-Fi isn't a perk, it's an expectation. Despite a beautiful location, great service and a bright clean room, Margaret Addy gave a hotel she stayed at recently just a mediocre review. "Why? I had to pay $22 per day for internet service."

Addy highlights a recent survey that shows that even when everything else is good—or great—a hefty Internet bill will wipe out a five-star review. That explains why some luxury hotels are taking steps to provide free Internet, too.

HomeAway | Expedia.com to showcase HomeAway vacation rentals 

While the collaboration to feature HomeAway's vacation rental properties on Expedia.com was announced last fall, the new venture is set to launch early this year and generating a lot of buzz. With demand for vacation rentals consistently on the rise, the increased visibility from this venture bodes well for our industry. And, as Jay William of Villa Marketers referenced in the predictions post linked above, it could signal moves by other big brands over the next year.

What news has caught your attention recently? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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Saturday, January 18, 2014

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Link to Vacation Rental Owners Blog |

“Living Like A Local” Made Easier with Travel Apps and Websites

Posted: 18 Jan 2014 09:00 AM PST

Once they decide where they want to go, travelers want to know what they can do when they get there, relying on the Internet and a sense of exploration to serve their needs.

However, new and emerging websites and smartphone applications are popping up all the time, many of them delivering information that's local, socially curated and—in some cases—highly personalized. And they require little if any extra work from you!

Pointing your guest towards resources like these can help make their travel research much easier.

Jauntful

Jauntful map unfolded on a table

Image from Jauntful.

On the MyVR blog, we’ve talked a lot about the value of local guides for vacation rentals and the fact that, even in our increasingly digital world, providing a printed version is a good idea. Jauntful is a new service—currently in preview mode—that pulls these two ideas together.

Through the Jauntful website, you create a list of your favorite attractions and restaurants. These are added to an interactive map of your community, which is not only easy to share online but also to print in a very clean and foldable format.

Jetpac City Guide

You can learn a lot from an image—including, apparently, what the local hot spots might be. Jetpac scans and filters images and locations on photo-sharing service Instagram to assess factors like which spots have the best views, where business travelers like to go, or the perfect haunts for foodies and wine lovers.

How does it curate this information without asking people to answer a single question? Jetpac analysis photos for visual clues like shades of lipstick, the white of smiling teeth, or blue sky; they recently used their filters to reveal Belfast as the happiest city in the UK. Accuracy, presumably, depends on the type of people posting photos to Instagram in a particular area. You can judge for yourself by checking out their top travel collections on Pinterest.

Jetpac on Pinterest - top travel collections screenshot

Check out Jetpac’s top travel collections on Pinterest.

Triposo

Triposo iPhone app

Image from Triposo.

Billing itself as "one travel guide for the whole world", Triposo is a smartphone app that provide ideas on the go. It uses a wide variety of data points, from photos to Wikipedia to scanning for keyword frequency in travel articles, to deliver recommendations that are tailored to a person's current location, time and weather in addition to their personal preferences.

Will it work in your area? It's not available everywhere, but they do have fairly broad coverage—at least by state if not specific location. The application is free for iOS or android phones, so the easiest way to test it is to install it yourself and take a tour.

Vayable

Vayable city tours - screenshotIf the curated guides and personalized information from the above sources isn’t enough, Vayable offers another option: it connects travelers with locals who are willing to offer themselves up as tour guides.

As you might expect, Vayable tours are largely focused in cities at the moment, but it's an interesting concept that's spreading

Other sites, like Couchsurfing, have played a similar matchmaking role in the past, but Vayable has a slight twist. Local tour guides are vetted, with interviews, background checks and references reviews before their suggested tours are made available.

Tours also come with a fee of $20-70 per tour; Vayable "charges the traveler a 3% fee and charges the tour guide a 15% fee."

Travelers are looking for a local experience; that's one of the factors that draws them to vacation rentals in the first place. Emerging complementary services like Jauntful, Jetpac, Triposo and Vayable make it easier for you to help your guests shape a vacation that's truly "living like the locals."

Do you point your guests toward any particular travel applications to use during their stay? Share your favorites in the comments below.
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Saturday, January 11, 2014

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Link to Vacation Rental Owners Blog |

Home Automation 101 for Vacation Home Owners

Posted: 11 Jan 2014 09:00 AM PST

Guest post by Karen Clark

Once you’ve addressed the vacation rental essentials—like price, convenience and cleanliness—the renters’ market, to some extent, becomes a battle of aesthetics and what’s in vogue.

If you’ve taken steps to automate your vacation home, you already have a leg up. Home automation has seen a massive spike in popularity. Homeowners are tethering their houses to their electronics, and there’s never been a better time for vacation rental owners to consider the smart home game.

Why automation? Why now?

"Home Automation" on Flickr, by Denis P (CC BY 2.0 from www.pallspera.com)Vacation rental owners are specialists in simplicity. With just a few pictures and some lines of text, you can sell an entire experience to tourists. It just goes to show that in the world of travel, easier is always better—and automating your home can bring both simplicity and efficiency.

Home automation has quickly ascended and is close to becoming an industry standard. According to SecurityCompanies.com, the home security and smart home spheres are quickly merging. It’s getting harder to find a home security service that doesn’t offer some type of home automation access and vice versa.

With the onset of automation features gracing so many products in today”s market – from security systems to toasters to sprinklers – it’s only sensible to give your guests the most hassle-free experience possible.

How to automate your vacation rental

If you’re looking to outfit a smarter vacation rental, you can go in a few different directions.

Some field experts suggest a complete kit from one of the major providers. These types of systems can handle everything from regulating your thermostat to locking your front door. You’ll see them as standalone items, security system integrations or even home entertainment modules.

If you’re interested in putting a little more effort into it, you can also piece together a home automation system on your own. There are plenty of individual components on the market that you can purchase separately and then combine on the back-end (it doesn’t hurt if you’re tech-savvy and handy with a few tools).

Regardless of whether your solution is pre-packaged or individually wrapped, it shouldn’t be a burden to turn your vacation property into a smart home.

In the meantime, here are a few techniques you can use to streamline your rental without breaking the bank or committing to anything too sizable:

  • Get some smart light bulbs. Automated LED bulbs aren’t terribly expensive, and they’re an awesome feature for setting the mood and even saving you money in the long run. If your lights are programmed on a schedule, you can potentially cut back on your electricity bills for all the time they’d otherwise spend burning up watts.
  • Upgrade your outlets. If you have older appliances, they might not have the most intuitive on/off switches. Thus, they may not be all that easy to automate. Try installing a specially-fitted device like the WeMo Switch rather than fiddling with wires and cables. An outlet switch lets you turn devices on or off from a remote location.
  • Download the right apps. The Internet is crowded with home automation apps—many of them free. Some are as simple as audio/video controllers. Others are a little more advanced, providing room-by-room navigation and weather alerts. Provided you have Wi-Fi on hand, you can encourage your visitors to download the same apps when they come to stay and give them control!

It’s a big, wide world when it comes to home automation, and it’s only getting bigger. Why not get ahead of the game and spruce up your rental with a few smart devices? Your guests will appreciate it, and you’re sure to improve their stay.

Image by pallspera.com via Denis P

Karen Clark is a freelance writer who covers technology and the home. Her work focuses on exploring how technology shapes our day-to-day, but especially the time we spend at home. She writes from San Diego, California where she resides with her husband and three children.
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Saturday, January 4, 2014

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Vacation Rental Owners Blog

Link to Vacation Rental Owners Blog |

Advice From A Vacation Rental Owner: Easy Guest Surveys Are Invaluable

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 09:00 AM PST

"Question mark" on flickr by the Italian voice (CC BY 2.0)When it comes to guest surveys, the old “K.I.S.S.” motto works best—”Keep It Simple” and you just might get a few insightful comments in response. Make it complicated and, like this 20 question survey deconstructed by Rafat Ali of Skift, you’ll risk irritating anybody who stops to consider responding.

Sandy Bayes, owner of Sandy's Cabin in Flagstaff, AZ, opened her vacation rental last March and has been surveying her guests since Day One.

“Especially as a new owner, I’ve tried to think of the places I’ve stayed and consider what would have been nicer," she explained. "But you can’t think of everything, and everybody is different. It’s been a real learning experience for me.”

How to write your survey

Inc. magazine offers some great advice about creating a customer survey, noting that there are five points you need to figure out:

  1. Have a goal for your survey. What do you want to learn?
  2. Write quality questions. For example, they should be easy to understand.
  3. Choose the best format. Should you email it, or leave a printed copy on-site?
  4. Work to get a great response rate. (While this advice from Inc. is less applicable to a vacation rental survey, there are still valid points. For example, if you email the survey, write a meaningful subject line so it doesn’t get flagged as spam.)
  5. Interpret the results. Be prepared to act on the recommendations wrapped up in the survey results.

Putting your survey in action—Sample Questions

Bayes greets her guests at the door when they arrive and asks them to take a few minutes to complete her nine-question survey before they leave. She leaves a printed copy at the cabin and has found that most guests do take time to respond.

"pencil and eraser on paper" on flickr, by Shawn Campbell (CC BY 2.0)What questions does she ask? The first few questions are formatted as multiple choice:

  • What was your favorite amenity offered? (Lists key amenities like wifi, quiet neighborhood, books.)
  • How would you rate the comfort of the bed you slept in? (Scale runs from “uncomfortable” to “excellent”; she also asks them to specify which bed they slept in.)
  • How would you rate the general cleanliness of the cabin? (Scale runs from “unclean” to “excellent.”)
  • How would you rate the ability to regulate the temperature within the cabin? (Scale runs from “impossible” to “easy.”)
  • Overall comfort level? (Scale runs from “very uncomfortable” to “very comfortable.”)

Asked why she asks so specifically about temperature control, Bayes says many of her guests come from Phoenix. "Coming to the mountains can be very different if they’re not used to it, because of the temperature difference up here. They can find it too cold."

Her final four questions are more open ended:

  • Would you stay here again? If no, why not?
  • Would you recommend the cabin to others?
  • What did you expect that wasn’t here?
  • Do you have any suggestions to make this cabin a better and more enjoyable place to stay?

Be prepared to act on suggestions

Sandy's Cabin in Flagstaff, AZ

Sandy's Cabin in Flagstaff, AZ. Used with permission.

"I’ve made some changes, a lot of little things: An alarm clock in each of the bedrooms, a recycle bin," Bayes said. "Someone asked for a toothbrush holder! I hadn’t thought about that. Most of the changes were inexpensive, just details."

The open-ended questions at the end have garnered unexpected responses, too. "I didn’t initially have a BBQ or a table at the back [of the house]," she said, noting she purchased both after someone asked.

"I also learned that the curtains in one of the bedrooms didn’t block out the sun enough, so I bought some lined drapes on sale and was able to darken that room. It makes it a nicer place to sleep."

On the whole, Bayes says the survey isn’t just a way to connect with her guests; the feedback itself matters. “To read these after people leave, it does my heart good,” she smiled. “It makes me feel good that they’ve really enjoyed their stay, got more for their money than they expected, and that they really enjoy certain aspects of the property.”

Do you have a survey for your vacation rental? What are the key questions you ask? Share what you’ve learned in the comments below.

photos by the Italian voice, Shawn Campbell
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