The Blog

In a recent article on Blizzard Internet, Carrie Hill proposes an interesting question: Do you have a Reputation Management Plan?

Carrie’s article highlights the value in having a proactive internal system to react to negative press when it manifests itself through various Internet properties. Services such as TripAdvisor and Yelp have begun allowing business owners to respond to negative comments. However, these services tend to cater to traditional lodging, activity, and restaurant categories.

The vacation rental industry is faced with a much different challenge – establishing reputation. The fragmented nature of our industry has discouraged larger community and travel services from providing a useful platform to cultivate and manage reputation.

As a result, there are few property management companies and/or independent vacation rental operators that have been able to create a public reputation that encourages a visitor’s conversion from “looking” to “booking”. In fact, a recent FlipKey study of 300 vacationers who stayed at a vacation rental found that only 16% of guests are even asked to share their experience publicly.

As an industry we are constantly challenged by consumer confidence in our product. Is the property as advertised? Does the home exist? What happens if something goes wrong with the house? How do I get the keys? What if I lose the keys? If there was ever a travel category that needed a robust reputation solution, it is the vacation rental industry.

For those that joined us at the VRMA event in New Orleans, you were able to see the reputation service that FlipKey is soon launching that singularly focuses on this key issue. Carrie Hill is right, you are well served to actively manage your reputation. FlipKey will soon provide you with a mechanism to do that.

If you are managing rental properties click here to sign up for our beta service. It is completely free.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Reputation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.