It’s the week before Labor Day and summer is coming to a close. What do you do if you’re a property manager looking at a calendar of unbooked vacation rental units for the next month?

• Slashing prices might bring in last minute renters. This is a popular choice among vacation rental property managers, with last minute discounts ranging from 10-20%.
• Offer free or discounted activities through local services and area attractions.
• Sweepstakes and raffle incentives.

Below we’ve included sample booking incentives that we’ve noticed, some of which are more appealing than others.

Twiddy (Outer Banks, NC): Rent for a Week and Receive a Free Jeep Rental ($800 value)

DeepCreek (Mt. Railey, MD): 20% Discount on Rental Price and Free High Speed Internet

LoonRes (Lincoln, NH): Stay a Week and Receive a Free Tank of Gas

SunRealtyNc (Outer Banks, NC): Free Fishing for 8 with Home Rental

GrandbyVacationHomes (Grandby, CO): Golf for 4 and Rafting for 8 with Week Long Vacation Rental

MountainChalets (Gatlinburg, TN): Book a Cabin - Win a Jeep (1 in 15,000 chance of winning)

FloridaSpiritVacationHome (Orlando, FL): Six Night Stay, Receive $50 Gas and $75 Grocery Coupons

If you have others to add to the list, please send them in via comments to this post.

Google Trends (trends.google.com) is a fun and useful way to keep tabs on the search volume of just about anything. Enter a term into the search box and see a graph of the term’s search volume since 2004. The real value comes when you compare two or more terms in the same graph - this provides a great view into the relative popularity of the requested terms.

The ubiquitous example in Boston is “red sox, yankees” - as you can see the two graph lines hold very close except in October 2004 when the Sox won the World Series.

However, this site is about vacation rentals, so we will spare you from our obsession of Red Sox nation.

What is more popular, vacation homes or vacation condos?

Google Trends: “vacation rental” vs “vacation home” vs “vacation condo”

As you can see, “vacation home” outpaces “vacation condo” by an approximately 2-1 margin. The generic “vacation rental” term makes a good baseline to compare the relative popularity of “vacation home” and “vacation condo”.

What popular vacation destination is the most searched for?

Google Trends: “outer banks” vs “cape cod” vs “lake tahoe” vs “vail” vs “myrtle beach”

A bit of an upset here - I would not have guessed “outer banks” to come in dead last. Myrtle takes the crown with the Cape coming in a close second.

How big are the large vacation rental specific sites compared to the general purpose travel sites?

Google Trends: “vrbo” vs “homeaway” vs “orbitz” vs “expedia” vs “travelocity”

Unsurprisingly, traditional travel sites like Expedia and Travelocity have established a clear brand presence compared to vacation rental portals.

While all of the above data is perfectly valid, it doesn’t give you much more than a crude directional metric. We suggest you use Google Trends as a fun exploratory tool, but avoid using it for anything beyond “oh, that’s interesting” based analysis.

The vacation rental market is suddenly a hot bed for new listing start-ups. HomeAway’s acquisition warpath has people all over the globe thinking, “I can build a better VRBO, charge less and still make a lot of money.”

The good news is that owners and property managers have hundreds of listing options at their disposal. The bad news is that it’s getting more difficult to determine where your marketing dollars are best spent.

Example - GoHideAway.com

GoHideAway (GHA) provides near identical functionality compared to VRBO, VacationRentals.com and/or any other listing service. GHA’s value proposition is simple, “we’re cheaper”.

On the surface, GoHideAway (GHA) appears cheaper, but let’s consider some variables.

• VRBO is still the most dominant property in-terms of natural search placement
• In the last year I would estimate I have received 200 emails for my Boston condo through VRBO
• A search for “Boston” on GHA yields 27 results. The first property featured is a nice little home in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. It’s fair to assume GHA will struggle to attract guests to my specific condo
• Let’s assume I give GHA the benefit of the doubt and purchase a listing. To be generous I will assume they will purchase key words for my property and will generate 40 email inquires over the course of the year for my property

A quick cost-per-inquiry analysis indicates that even with these aggressive assumptions, GoHideAway is comparatively more expensive than VRBO and HomeAway. In fact, you could reduce the number of inquires I have received from VRBO by 66% and it would still be a more economical service.

We highlight this analysis not to pick on GoHideAway, but to suggest owners and managers analyze the relative cost of each inquiry they receive. You are only interested in two metrics.

Cost-Per-Inquiry (CPI) = Subscription Cost / Inquires (email and phone)
Booking-Per-Inquiry (BPI) = Total bookings (via listing service) / Inquires

The goal is to minimize CPI and maximize BPI. CPI is your true cost and BPI measures the quality of your leads. It’s simple, but will help you evaluate which marketing channels are the most effective.

The Internet has slowly challenged the traditional pay per listing (PPL) model. Craigslist has nearly killed newspaper classifieds, and local services such as Yelp and CitySearch have begun replacing that gigantic directory that is tucked away in most kitchen cabinets (aka. Yellow Pages). However, the PPL model remains pervasive in the online vacation rental industry. The most popular listing services, such as VRBO, CyberRentals and VacationHomes.com, employ an annual subscription fee to each home listed on their respective sites. It is of no surprise to see some alternative models beginning to emerge. But - if not PPL, then what is the best pricing model for this industry? Similar to their American kin pickpackgo.com, the newly launched rentability.com is testing the pay per inquiry model (or ‘enquiry’, as they call it across the pond).

For the most part Rentability sticks with a tried and true formula when it comes to helping guests find rentals. Their property listings are searchable on a number of criteria and they also provide a map-based solution for browsing by location. In terms of design, Rentability goes for the simple clean Web 2.0 look with a handful of nifty AJAX features thrown in along the way. Rentability’s inventory is currently limited, but I’m sure it will grow over time. The major differentiator between Rentability and Pickpackgo appears to be their primary areas of focus - Rentability’s inventory is nearly 90% in Europe while Pickpackgo is almost exclusively US-based.

Rentability is an interesting service and has earned a spot on FlipKey’s watch list.

For the international crowd, renting a vacation property for your “holiday” has been a popular alternative to hotel and resort accommodations for decades. Over the last several years this trend has been spreading across the Atlantic and represents a growing segment of the US travel market.

And it’s not just families trekking for a weeklong vacation at a home rental on the coast. Here at FlipKey we have experienced first hand the growth of urban vacation rentals and the increase in travelers seeking alternative lodging in places not usually associated with vacation rental travel. Our personal rental units here in Boston are fully booked and have been since the Spring.

Maybe you’re planning a trip to Vegas? Why stay on the Strip? OK, we can think of a few reasons - but the rationale of the vacation rental holds true even in the hot desert sun: affordability, unique accommodations with more space, and the opportunity to escape the madness of the hotels and retreat to your own temporary oasis and private pool. Las Vegas Retreats - Castillo Estaban.

As vacation rentals become more popular, we expect inventory to continue to grow in all vacation destinations, not simply beach, mountain and golf locations.

Marketing vacation rental properties is more complicated than listing a property on a listing service and waiting for inquiries to come in. In many areas, property managers are competing against hundreds, if not thousands, of properties - not to mention hotels and B&Bs.

Compete released an interesting research report (see below) highlighting a $10 flight promotion by Skybus. Although Airbus has limited reach, you can’t beat a $10 flight. FlipKey sees an opportunity for property managers to reach out to past clients when promotions like this are released. There are several inexpensive email marketing services (ConstantContact, VerticalResponse, etc.) that can help you organize past guests by area of residence. When you see an Airbus deal to your area, email your past guests, let them know of the promotion, point them to an available unit, and watch the bookings come in.

Content about Skybus below is courtesy of Compete

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Skybus Airlines, a new low-cost-carrier in the US market, began flying on May 22nd. As part of their business model, Skybus has committed to having at least ten $10 seats available on each of its flights. The airline is launching with routes from its home of Columbus, Ohio to Los Angeles, Ft. Lauderdale, Seattle and others. To keep down costs, add-ons such as checking baggage, priority boarding, and food/beverages are subject to additional fees.
Skybus attracted over 800,000 U.S. unique visitors in May 2007, a 120% increase from April. Awareness of Skybus has flourished in the markets the carrier serves. A Skybus.com visitor cross-section by state indicates activity in locations where Skybus flies: Ohio accounts for nearly 40% of skybus.com’s traffic, followed by California (9%), Virginia (5%) and Florida (5%). The distribution shows an effective initial marketing push by the carrier.
Skybus’ $10 fares have succeeded in attracting budget travel seekers. Over a quarter of visitors to the site are clicking to learn about $10 fares and other promotions. In addition to promotional activity, engagement into the site’s booking funnel is strong, with 64% of visitors performing a search and 24% actually selecting a flight from the results. These figures rival many established airline websites.
Breaking into the U.S. airline industry is no small feat, and Skybus has demonstrated a strong first few steps, helped by the interest surrounding its $10 ticket offer. Ohio residents in particular are flocking to the Skybus website in the hopes of finding one of the cheap fares. While the routes serviced by Skybus remain limited, and only a few seats are available at the highly discounted rates, other carriers will need to pay close attention to how consumers respond to this new entrant.

One of our goals at FlipKey is to grow the industry through insight and community. Over the last two months, you’ve seen our insightful contributions channeled via the FlipKey Blog. Now, as our Blog traffic continues to grow, we feel it is time to start getting the community more involved.

We want to see more property managers, property owners, renters, travelers, and travel services sharing their thoughts. Whether you are an experienced blogger or you have never written a blog post in your life, we’re interested in you.

We are Looking for the Best Travel Blogs on the Internet

Have a favorite blog that you read daily? Tell us about it and help support them.

Run your own amateur blog as a side hobby? Here’s your chance to get it on the map.

Thinking of starting up your own blog? It’s easy, it’s fun, and we’re going to help a couple of you get going with some instant traffic.

Current Blogs on the FlipKey Blogroll

FlipKey has already included a handful of blogs on its blogroll. These are blogs we have come across over the last year and found useful. Some of the blogs include:

Trent Blizzard’s: Weekly industry research highlighting new marketing tactics and trends throughout the travel industry.

Mashable: Daily articles on new mash-ups - bundling open applications (e.g. Google Maps) into useful tools for consumers. We feel mash ups have a lot of potential in the travel space.

Search Engine Watch: Daily news on the evolution of Search and how to apply new strategies to improve your performance.

Slow Travel: A list of traveler blogs from around the world.

Criteria to be included as a FlipKey Preferred Blog

Our only requirements are that you fall under the “travel” umbrella, and that you post original content (i.e. no habitual blogspam). We are more concerned about the quality of the content and not how pretty it is.

How to Enter

Simple - e-mail blogcontest@flipkey.com and send us the blog link. Optionally feel free to include the blog name, the editor/owner name, the e-mail address they can be contacted at, and a short description of what you like about the blog.

What do the winners get?

1. A spot on our Blogroll
2. A post reviewing the challenge winners in which we explain why you were chosen
3. Our loyal readership

And as an added bonus - just for submitting an entry, all travel related blogs will receive a permanent link on our Travel Blog Index Page (as long as your blog stays active and relevant).

How to Startup Your Own Blog

If you’ve always thought about starting up your own blog in the travel space, here is your chance. We love fresh and new viewpoints, and thus we want to help you succeed. As mentioned earlier, we’re going to reserve a couple of blogroll spots for those of you just starting out. If you’re on the fence, rest assured that starting up a blog is easy - I would recommend heading over to blogger.com or wordpress.com. Either site is a popular and simple way to create your own blog in minutes. Let them do all the heavy Web site lifting while you focus on putting up great content!

The challenge will run until the end of August. After the challenge is over we will post a follow-up with all of the inductees!

FlipKey conducted a survey of 177 people who had recently evaluated vacation rental homes online. The results indicated that vacation home rental conversion is ~60%. Many people either chose to stay at a hotel or Bed & Breakfast, or they simply couldn’t find any type of accommodation that met their needs.

18 of our respondents indicated they were looking for a vacation home rental, but ultimately chose to stay at a more traditional venue (hotel or B&B). The primary cause of this defection centered on the difficulty of locating and booking an ideal property. 50% stated they had trouble finding an available unit and 60% were frustrated with the lack of date flexibility. The sentiment of those that were unable to find any accommodation (29%) followed a similar pattern.

These findings indicate a lack of central inventory search within the vacation rental market. Although HomeAway has consolidated much of the rent-by-owner listing services, the lack of efficient network search is frustrating users.

The lack of central inventory is challenging the full potential of the vacation rental marketplace. Luckily consumers have a robust appetite to stay in a vacation rental vs. a hotel, but we need to help them find the right properties to more efficiently increase occupancy rates.

FlipKey conducted an extensive study among vacationers, property managers and vacation home owners and will be releasing the results at the end of August. If you are interested, please contact us. We will also announce the study on the blog when it becomes available, so stay tuned!

A month ago we wrote about how PickPackGo was able to launch with a robust inventory of home listings. Based on experience with our personal listings on VRBO being poached by PickPackGo, we thought we had a good idea how PickPackGo did it (scraping VRBO and VacationRentals.com and somehow harvesting emails).

Looks like we might have been right and that we weren’t the only ones who noticed. HomeAway, the parent company of HomeAway.com, VRBO and VacationRentals.com, filed a lawsuit claiming PickPackGo violated their intellectual property rights.

Details of the filing are below. For more information follow this link.

HomeAway, Inc. et al v. Lin et al

Plaintiffs:	HomeAway, Inc., HomeAway.com, Inc., VRBO.com, Inc. and VacationRentals.com, Inc.
Defendants:	Felix Lin, Lunamira, Inc. and Pickpackgo.com
Case Number:	1:2007cv00531
Filed:	June 29, 2007
Court:	Texas Western District Court
Office:	Austin Office
County:	Travis
Presiding Judge:	Honorable Sam Sparks
Nature of Suit:	Intellectual Property - Copyrights
Cause:	28:1338 Copyright Infringement
Jurisdiction:	Federal Question
Jury By:	Plaintiff

This week HomeAway customers with listings that had been scraped and ported to PickPackGo received an email explanation from PPG, stating in part:

“your listing on PickPackGo has been removed from our website as part of a settlement of a legal dispute with one of our competitors, which felt that some or all of the content of your listing was improperly obtained without their permission. We cannot restore your listing, as all data we had has been deleted from our records.”

A recent visit to PickPackGo showed its inventory of home listings has plummeted since removing the HomeAway properties. At first glance this is a blow to the new start up; however, it’s not all bad. PickPackGo was able to get its service and brand in front of tens of thousands of HomeAway customers. PickPackGo’s no listing fee / pay-per-inquiry offer had to spark the interest of a fraction of HomeAway’s paying customers. It will be interesting to see whether any of these poached listings begin defecting to the new service.

A few weeks ago TripAdvisor launched a new social networking application - the TripAdvisor Travel Map. The Travel Map is basically a Google Map that allows you to place pins at locations you have visited. You then compare your map to your friends’ maps, and bragging rights ensue. It’s a simple, but robust concept ripe with potential.

It quickly caught my eye for a few reasons. First and foremost, I’m a proponent of expanding the online travel world through social tools. The best trips I have taken have been through the itineraries recommended to me by friends and family. Second, I like Google Maps applications - a lot. Third, I’ve thought about doing something exactly like this, so I was eager to see how a solid company like TripAdvisor would approach the idea.

The TripAdvisor.com Travel Map Review

The main interface is clean and simple. I’m offered a map of the world, a column of popular destinations, and a text box to add in new locations. Upon your first visit, a simple overlay tells you how to use the map.

I played around with various controls, adding a bunch of pins to the east coast (I own I-95!) and Europe. It was all easy enough, and there were definitely a few “wow - cool!” moments. My favorite feature is the “smart bubble” that pops up after clicking an area of the map. It picks the most likely destination areas surrounding the location you clicked on the map, and allows you to quickly pin it:

After 15 minutes or so of adding locations, I decided to stop and see what else I could do. I clicked “save and continue”. Besides an offer to invite more friends, there weren’t any other options. Bummer.

TJ was already in my network, so I went to go check out his map. Viewing another person’s map was very similar to viewing my own map, except I could not add pins to my friend’s map. One major shortcoming that immediately struck me was the inability to overlay his map on top of my own. I consider this an essential viral feature and assume TripAdvisor will soon build a useful ‘compare our maps’ tool.

What’s missing?

While the map was a solid first attempt, there are a few crucial pieces missing. My top three suggestions:

1. Better comparison with friends’ maps. As mentioned earlier, I need to see my map overlaid with my friend’s map. Assign a different color pin for each user on a map, and let me see it all at once. Theoretically, if I had 20 friends in my network and wanted to know who had been to Switzerland, the best way to do that would be to look at one map for everybody, not comb through 20 individual maps.
2. Encourage users to share the map url, and offer an embedded version (widget) that users can stick on their web sites. It is not immediately clear that I can send my map url directly to others. The url that does work is not very user friendly:
   (Click here for full Link) http://www.tripadvisor.com/MemberProfile? uid=A16F630174E76997A3695112E3883723&c=pt A non tech savvy user would never guess that goes directly to their map.
3. Give me more to do. Link directly into reviews from the map, allow me to rate the locations, show me who else has been to locations like me, etc, etc. I can think of 1001 cool things to do with these maps.

Social Travel Off to a Slow Start

Despite numerous attempts, nobody has really been able to crack the social travel network nut:

The lack of strong competition combined with TripAdvisor’s large user base could help enable them to grow into the premier social travel network on the Web. With a strong business based on reviews and lead generation, TripAdvisor can expand its share of travel mindshare by helping consumers make more personal connections through the service. TripAdvisor’s Travel Map is a simple step, but it’s a step in the right direction.