Vacation Home Expo Round Up - Travel Agents Steal Show
April 16th, 2008 by TJ Mahony tj@flipkey.comI was able to get down to Atlanta this weekend to attend the first ever Vacation Home Expo dedicated solely to promoting vacation rentals as a mainstream lodging option to vacationers.
Friday
A number of industry round tables and topical presentations were available on Friday for attending suppliers and local travel agents. I was actually a featured presenter and estimated about 75% of the session attendants were travel agents, which was an interesting new dynamic we haven’t observed at standard VRMA events. (This becomes an important point later in the story.)
Saturday
Saturday was the first day of the consumer focused show. I thought vacation rental managers and destination organizations did a wonderful job putting together professional and engaging booths. Many companies were offering free weekend giveaways and various knickknacks to engage browsing consumers. Overall - a solid and inviting layout.
In terms of consumer foot traffic I would estimate 2K consumers attended the first day of the show. Overall, consumer traffic was a little low; however this was offset by solid travel agent attendance (read on for more details).
Sunday
Consumer attendance was stronger on Sunday, and many property managers reiterated their positive feelings for the show. Specifically, the breadth of travel agents in attendance who made an invested effort to better understand the advantages of the vacation rental product was a big win for all participants.
Ultimately the vision of the Vacation Home Expo is to promote the entire vacation rental category. As such, influencing 100 travel agents is the equivalent of speaking with 50,000 consumers. Travel agents play a critical role in the travel discovery process and equipping them with the vacation home rental story lifts the tide for everyone’s boat.
We are looking forward to the next show in Chicago. If you are interested in more info visit http://www.vacationhomeexpo.com/.
Here are some photos I took at the show.
It wouldn’t be a show with out Disney.
The Show Floor was separated into geographies.
These guys got extra credit on their booth.
Steve of All Star Vacation Homes and Randy of Imagine Vacation Homes talk shop.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
TJ — You are spot on about the interest by the travel agents being so high. I was amazed when we asked the crowd during my lunch keynote what groups people represented (prop mgrs, villa mgrs, travel agents, etc.). Your 75% estimate sounds right. I heard a much greater openness to working with travel agents than I have in the past.
I think it makes a ton of sense as vacation rental managers and travel agents need each other. For non-hotel vacation lodging options to take off, trusted 3rd party sources such as travel writers and travel agents can be a great help in “validating” vacation homes as a great option for travelers. Conversely, travel agents have gotten squeezed by the Expedias of the world and need products to sell that show their know-how that can’t be easily replicated by a general purpose online travel site. It’s all about building confidence in the travel consumer so they try a vacation home for the first time. Once they experience it, the data I saw in one of the sessions validated what most of us know — when people experience a vacation home, they are very satisfied.
If you are interested in sharing the powerpoint I gave during the keynote on “How Vacation & Villa Managers get their Fair Share”, I’m happy to have you post or excerpt from it. It touches on some themes you’ve discussed here as well as a few other ideas. Just drop me a note. I had a lot of people ask for a copy after the session.
Finally a tip of the hat to Rick Fisher and Paul Muir for taking on the financial risk to put on this event at a time when the economy is tightening. It’s something the industry really needs IMHO.