VACATION RENTALS FOR PROFIT by Joe Godar

10 Steps to Vacation Rental by Owner success!

Posted: 05/22/2008

10 Steps to Vacation Rental Success     After working with thousands of vacation rental owners, we have put together a list of items that seems to be consistent with successful owners.  Owners ask all the time, “What does it take to be successful in the business?” well here it is.  We put together this list as these items seem to be what the most successful owners are ALWAYS doing.   1)      PROPERTY.  The best thing you can do is to buy the right property from the start.  There are no shortcuts in this area.  If you are in a coastal area, people want to be as close to the beach, ocean, or water as possible.  Guests want access to a pool.  They want great views in the mountain areas etc.  They want a nice clean updated or new place to stay.  Buying the cheapest home on the market may cost you in the long run.  Be sure to research where you are buying and make sure your vacation rental offers as much as possible for your area.     2)      BOOKING SYSTEM.  Having an online booking system or software like www.ivacationonline.com lets your guest know you are serious about your business. Add the online credit card processing to this and you will attract more guests.  We have surveyed hundred of guest and they want to pay online with a credit card. You need to put the odds in your favor.  One survey revealed that over 41% of the guest surveyed told us that an owner taking credit cards influenced the buying decision.  Why send 41% of the market down the road to another owner?  Take credit cards online and supercharge your business.     3)      PHOTOS.  The most successful owners we work with have the most and best photos easily available.  In years past, 3-5 photos online would bring in the business.  Now you need hundreds.  We highly recommend PICASA by Goggle. It is a free online web based album service.  It lets you showcase not only your property but also your community and town. This way you can “sell” the entire vacation experience.  Guest love to see photos! Give them that option. They are really buying your photos once you think about it.  That is the only way they know what you have to offer until they arrive at your location.     4)      PRICING.  Too many owners think their properties are worth more than they are.  The normal guest has thousands of options to pick from. They all look alike to the guest! There are millions of very nice vacation homes on the market.  The chance that yours is the best is extremely rare! So price it accordingly.  If you see your market is getting $1200 a week for a prime week, you need to be at $1195.  This keeps you in the market and priced “right”. Trying to price it at $1500 to “see what happens” is a sure sign NOTHING will happen.  Guest can shop too easy. Price it right, book it up and be thankful for the success.   5)      DISCOUNTS. Once you are priced right, you may have times open that you need to discount. This does not mean you are giving time away.  It is simple a “marketing” strategy to increase your booking ratio.  If you have 3 weeks booked and you have one week that is open, offer a discount. Taking a $200 discount may mean the difference between a $1200 booking and $0.  $1400 would have been nice, but $1200 is better than $0.  The higher ratio of bookings you have, the more likely you will be in the “black” at the end of the year.   6)      DOMAIN NAMES.  Successful owners understand that the guest wants to book online as fast as possible.  Taking them to other web sites and then to your online booking site, increases the chance you will lose them.  INTERNET sales 101, less clicks the better! Period! So buy a URL that applies to your area/property, like this one, www.bluetides411.com and point it to your online booking site.  The faster and easier you can get a guest to your site and book online, the greater your closing ratios, the greater your gross income.  More examples: www.destinpalms.com  www.sugarsands411.com  www.waves411.com www.bajaretreat.com www.beachclub411.com  These are all pointing to the owners’ online booking site and the owner can take a booking in a few clicks!   7)      ADVERTISING.  VRBO is not enough!  This is one of the biggest problems we see.  Many owners think that if they advertise on VRBO alone, they can be successful.  That is no longer true.  You must set up an “umbrella of advertising” as we say.  Search your location and find advertising sites that come up in those searches.  Joining 5-10 sites is not too many! You need to spend $1,000 to $1,500 a year to properly advertise your property.  Anything short of that and you will simply not get the calls or emails needed to be successful.  This is the difference in getting a few bookings and being totally booked solid. YOU NEED TO ADVERTISE!   8)      UPDATE PROPERTY.  Most successful owners update the property almost every year.  Guests want to see that the owner is taking care of the place and putting some money back into the property.  New linens, furniture, fresh paint all make a difference.  Have a policy in place that each year you look for the worn out items and replace some or all of them.  It will keep the repeat business coming back!   9)      ANSWER CALLS.  Most owners get plenty of leads but do not get back to the prospect in a timely manner.  The guest is online right now, looking for a place to book.  They call or email you, and then you take 24 to 48 hours to return that call or email.  During that time they have booked someplace else.  Calling or emailing them the second they respond is the best policy.  If you can not get to that till later in the day, call or email as soon as possible.  Time is money! Your Money!!  Call faster than the other owners and get more bookings. Simple!   10)  STAY IN TOUCH. Make sure you stay in touch with guest after the stay.  Having to market all over again next year for all new guest makes it hard.  If you can get your repeat business up to 30-40%, running at 90% booked is now a possibility.  More business gets more business! They bring a friend and so on.  Having a plan in place to stay in touch, so when they want to book again the next year, they think of YOU!  Not staying in touch and sending them back online to find another property is a waste of resources.  They found you once, stayed with you and now trust your business and property.  Do the proper marketing to them and they will stay with you for a life time!     These simple techniques are proven over and over again to bring in more business.  It is battle tested.  How does your style or business measure up?  Are you booked 90% of the time?  If not, make some changes.  These all take time.  Many owners simple do not run their business like a business.   Make sure you do it right from the start.  Once you set up these items in place, they will work for you and you may have years of vacation rental success.  Good luck!   Joe Godar

Domain Names for your Vacation Rental by Owner

Posted: 03/13/2008

Domain Names for Vacation Rentals by Owner Having a private domain name for your listing on ivacationonline.com is a great way to "brand" yourself and it will help make your business a more personal transaction between you and your guest. We have created http://www.ivoldomains.com/ for this reason. You can buy a domain name here and "point" it to your listing on ivacationonline.com. This will help you when you are talking to a guest or emailing them back. Here is a great example: http://www.bluetides411.com/ This owner has his domain "pointing" at his listing, so it looks like his private web page. He also has it "masked" so the prospect has the URL, http://www.bluetides411.com/ on the page. With all the tools we provide on ivacationonline.com, there is no reason to send them anywhere else. Many owners are shutting down old websites and using the domains they have had for years and now pointing them to the listing on ivacationonline.com . If you get a call from a prospect, or an email, you can respond by saying/emailing, just go to my site, http://www.bluetides411.com/ and you can see my slide show, guest book, Google Map and book it online. That way the guest can easily find your listing and not have to navigate to it. Once on your site, they can view the photos, and book it now. The less "work" you give your prospect, the more likely you are to get the booking. Sending them to the site where you do the booking makes the most sense. If you still have a regular website, consider shutting it down, saving the hosting fees and "pointing" your domain to your listing on ivacationonline.com. This will not only save you money, but it should increase your bookings as they have less to navigate to book your property. If they have to find your regular site, look around, then find your listing on ivacationonline.com, there is some chance they may not make it there and not book with you. Less clicks, the better! Buying a domain, if you have never done this is, very easy. Go to http://www.ivoldomains.com/ and start an account. Then search for a domain that you like. Then buy it. It is only $8.99 per domain. Try to keep it as short as possible. Try to use words that are easily spoken on the phone. They have to easily understand what you are saying and be able to type in in their computer. So the shorter the better! Once you purchase a domain name you can add "domain forwarding" (it is free). You just copy and paste your URL on ivacationonline.com into the space that will re-direct someone when they type in your new domain name. I would also suggest the "masking" (also free) so they do not even see they are on ivacaitononline.com. You can add keywords too. This all helps in the search engines. After you have your domain name you can start a FREE GOOGLE ANALYTICS account and then you can track the traffic on your site. This is a great service too! It will show you what search terms the public is using to find your site. It shows you where and how they find you. The information it provides is endless. The combination of a private domain and GOOGLE ANALYTICS is a powerful way to run your vacation rental. Just go to GOOGLE and sign up for the ANALYTICS account. Then enter your private domain name to be tracked. They will give you some code that needs to be entered into your description on your ivacationonline.com listing. You will need to use the SOURCE button on your description to enter the html code. It is invisible to you and me, but GOOGLE will pick it up and track your traffic after that is in there. Here are a few examples of listings that are using this service: http://www.tobagosun.com/ http://www.bluetides411.com/ http://www.waves411.com/ The domains are only $8.99 a year and everything thing else we spoke about is free! We have set up the domain service to be as reasonable as possible. Try it! I think you will like having a more personal approach to your business! Let us know if we can help in any way!

SEO for Your Vacation Rental

Posted: 03/13/2008

SEO for your Vacation Rental by Owner Trying to drive traffic to your vacation rental by owner is the goal of every owner. We all know that the best way to get out on the market as fast and as efficient as possible is by joining the most productive web portals that are available to you. That being said, what can you do for the long term SEO, or Search Engine Optimization of your vacation rental. There are a few things you can do that are very reasonable in cost and can help bring natural, "free" traffic to your listing. We spoke on the last blog about "branding" your listing and having your own personal domain name, like, http://www.bluetides411.com/ This is still a great idea and an easy way to communicate to your prospects how to get to your online booking site and listing on ivacationonline.com. What we will address here is more to do with SEO than "branding". Using http://www.ivoldomains.com/ you can buy a domain name for SEO reasons. After doing some research on what terms may benefit you and your listing, you can search to see if that domain is available. Here is an example of the process from start to finish. I found a term that had a good amount of searches but was not that competitive in the market. We use tools from Yahoo and Google to establish what terms are being searched and what terms are being advertised. We decided to use " destin florida vacation house" as our SEO term. We then take that term and create a natural amount of it into our description on our listing. You can view the listing here and read the description to see how it is used: http://www.destin-florida-vacation-house.com/ We also where able to buy the URL and point it to our listing on ivacationonline.com. That is why when you click on the link above, you land on my listing on ivacationonline.com. I also have the domain name http://www.tobagosun.com/ pointing there too. These are for different reasons. I give my prospects the URL, http://www.tobagosun.com/ and I created http://www.destin-florida-vacation-house.com/ for the SEO of the listing. I use the dashes to let the search engines see what I am trying to convey to them. destinfloridavacationhouse.com is not as easy read by the syders as http://www.destin-florida-vacation-house.com/ The other things that need to be done is the terms, "destin florida vacation house" has to be entered into the "title" of my listing on ivacationonline.com. I have also put these as the keywords on my account with http://www.ivoldomains.com/ and make sure I represent it in the description too. So now the combination of my URL has my search terms in it, my "title" has that term in it and my description mentions it more than once, should bring me up nicely in the search engines. The reason this will help you is you are going after a selected term and you are showing the search engine everything it is looking for to decide if this term applies to this site. If it is in your domain, your title, your description and your keywords, the search engines have no choice but to show this page as something that this person searching must see. So you have to make sure the term applies to your listing. This will take time. At least 30 days before you may see results. But for the cost of the domain, $9 and I also recommend the TRAFFIC BLAZER at $17 at http://www.ivoldomains.com/ it is a no brainer! Once I submit it thru the TRAFFIC BLAZER on http://www.ivoldomains.com/ and the search engines spider the site, I will start to see natural results for my terms. The main concept on choosing a term is to find one that is searched but the competition is low. Try to optimize for "vacation rentals" is a HUGE task. Basically forget about it. Find a term that applies to your property, has some level of searches online and take the large piece of the small pie. In the search engine world, it is called "grabbing the low hanging fruit". If I can get 10 to 30 extra clicks a month, for free, and the search they performed is a "dead" match for my property, then I will stand to increase my web presence. Adding this to your arsenal of marketing is a great long term way to establish your business online. Please contact us at anytime for help in using this concept. Here are a few owners URLS that are now doing this: http://www.destin-florida-home-rental.com/ http://www.destin-florida-vacation-house.com/ http://www.destin-florida-rental-home.com/ http://www.gulf-shores-duplex.com/ http://www.pet-friendly-gatlinburg.com/ Good luck!

Pricing your Vacation Rental by Owner right!

Posted: 02/06/2008

Pricing your Vacation Rental By Owner for Profit Pricing any type of real estate in the long run can spell victory of defeat. There are so many factors that go into "how to sell" or "how to rent" real estate or vacation rentals. In this blog we will concentrate on PRICING! Pricing is king! Anyway you look at it, pricing in almost any industry drives the market. So how does this effect us in the vacation rental business. That is easy! Supply and Demand. If there are plenty of 3 bedroom condos for rent at $1000 per week and you are priced at $750, you will be 100% occupied but also you will be missing out on real income. On the other hand, if you are priced at $1200 a week, you may not be getting bookings due to your pricing being too high. You may get some left overs, as the other units get booked up, the SUPPLY goes down and the last minute guests are only left to book your higher priced condo. So some owners mistake some bookings as "they will pay my price" but they are really missing out on the majority of the market. The idea is to be almost 100% booked. With 90-95% occupancy you are running at optimal pricing. Any less and you may be too high, any higher you may be too low. Again, this is taking into consideration JUST pricing! Now this does get a little harder to figure out as you have different units. Condos are easy to price as they are really close to being the same. Look online at comparable units. If you have a 3 bedroom home near the beach, do not comp it out with homes ON the beach. Be realistic. One mistake owners make is thinking their unit is "the best" one on the market. Chances are it is not. Be honest and realize that there are MANY nice homes/condos just like yours. Now comp them out to see what they are getting in rent. Comp out the market and see what everyone else is doing and come in AT the market! It does no one any good to UNDERCUT the market. Here is why. If everyone is at $1000 a week, price yours at $1000 a week. If you go to $900, the next guy goes to $850 and so on. Now you may all be giving away income! If the market will pay $1000, stay there. Then your job is to "out market" and "out service" the competition. If you are using the online booking software, ivacationonline.com, you will have a big advantage on the competition already. You can take a booking in 30 seconds, and your competition will take 10 days to get a lease back with a check. Who do you think the guest wants to book with? The owner who accepts credit cards and has an online booking system. Also make sure you have your photo albums set up on your listings. Example: SLIDE SHOW Now that you are priced at the market, and you are out performing your competition, you should be running at an optimal level. That is the whole concept. Keep your prices at the market, but work harder than the market to get MORE than your share. It works! Try it! SPECIALS. Running specials or offering discounts is totally different than low ball pricing. Once you have researched your market, found your optimal pricing structure, stick to it and market your vacation rental. As time goes by, you will get the business you need to keep your unit booked. Then if a week does not book, as they sometimes will not, or if you get a last minute cancellation, you can offer a SPECIAL or DISCOUNT to try to get that time booked. The online booking system ivacationonline.com has a COUPON system in place to handle this situation. Many listing sites have "specials" you can run to get the word out quickly that you have a "offer to good to pass up". The idea is to offer something to entice the guest to find you! Give them $100 off, save 20%, anything that makes you stand out. The concept is your month is 3/4 booked, you have one week left that has not booked, you run specials or discounts for that week and the guest responds to those ads. Now you are 100% booked that month. With proper , marketing and placing ads or changing your "titles" on the ad portals, this is a great system of marketing to employ. Here is an example of a "title" I would run on say, VRBO, to help book a last minute cancellation: " Oct 7-14 now OPEN, save $150, Call today". This targets a guest that needs that week, then they see the special and they click on your unit instead of the other 100 on that page. Now they view your spectacular photo album, you provide online booking and credit card processing and you get the business. That is how it works. Fast clean and easy! Try this concept. You will enjoy the results! Remember to have your "system" in place to take the booking, then market, advertise and bring in the prospects. Pricing is one of the most important parts of the puzzle. Do your research and price your unit RIGHT! Good Luck!