FlipKey has officially outgrown its Cambridge office and is moving downtown to accommodate its growing staff. We are excited about the move and love our new location in the heart of downtown Boston.

We will be spending a good amount of time getting settled this week, so we are going to give the Blog the week off. We’ll be back first thing next week, so stayed tuned.

Don’t get me wrong, work is work, but I will admit that working in the vacation rental industry has its perks:

• The opportunity to visit various vacation destinations.
• Meeting property managers and their staff.
• Staying in the homes these companies proudly represent and professionally manage.

FlipKey’s most recent visit to Royal Palm managed by Surfside Realty was all of this and more, check out the full story and pictures of our stay here.

Despite the wonderful accommodations, there was one small hiccup I had when getting settled in the house. Specifically, I realized the shirt I was planning to wear to the conference I was attending was, lets just say… not as clean as I remember it being.

“No Problem”, I think to myself, I will throw it in the in-unit washer and dryer and be ready to go in two hours. At that moment I realized I wasn’t washing anything, doing any dishes or shampooing my hair without a quick trip to the local store to pick up some supplies that I overlooked when packing for my trip.

Following my stay, I left a note in the “My personal tips” section of my review on FlipKey to remind future guests to bring things like dishwashing detergent, laundry detergent and small kitchen and bath amenities. See below:

With this experience still fresh in my mind, I came across an interesting concept offered by Outer Beaches Realty, on Hatteras Island in NC. All homes managed by Outer Beaches Realty are provided with starter supplies of all of the things mentioned above in my personal tip and more!

Check out a screen shot from their website below:

I wouldn’t expect a rental management company to provide all their guests with full supplies of these items, but a starter supply… BRILLIANT! These small conveniences, which are often overlooked, further emphasize the advantages of vacation rentals and promote vacation rentals as predictable mainstream lodging options. FlipKey applauds Outer Beaches Realty for pushing the envelope!

Whether managing one, ten, hundreds or thousands of units, all managers invest in laundry. Over time the energy and water used in the processes adds up in cost and environmental output, which begs the question - how green is your laundry?

I received an email the other day from the Sierra Club (an environmental group) asking this various question and I was intrigued. The survey focuses on individual laundry habits; however, it highlighted the use of Energy Star qualified washers, which we felt was applicable to the vacation rental industry.

Cited from the Sierra Club
Energy Star qualified washers use at least 40 percent less energy than standard washers and roughly half the water (www.energystar.gov). If you’re in the market for a new washer, look for an Energy Star qualified model with the highest possible MEF, or Modified Energy Factor. The upfront expense may be greater, but more efficient machines mean lower operating costs. Dryers, by the way, are not Energy Star rated because there’s so little variation in energy use among the models.

If your machine hails from the avocado/harvest gold era, obviously, it’s time to find a replacement. In general, newer washers are more efficient than ancient ones. Age alone, however, is not a good gauge of your washer’s efficiency. That’s because the Energy Star program highlights appliances more efficient than the average of current models, so there are plenty of washers that fall short of the standard. Remember, too, that Energy Star washers range in capacity from 1.6 to 3.8 cubic feet, so tailor your purchase to your household’s size.

If you’re using a laundromat, don’t beat up on yourself. Many laundromats already use energy-efficient washers since the water-heating bills for all those machines do add up. In general, the side-loading models commonly found in commercial laundries are more efficient than top loaders.

Food for thought if you’re in the process of replacing your current washers. If you are interesting in taking the free quiz to see how green your personal laundry habits are, click here.

In October we wrote of new guarantees being offered in the vacation rental market. Ultimately we found these guarantees to be reactive and counter productive in driving consumer confidence. Reimbursement of a night’s stay and assistance in finding alternative accommodations - after realizing the home you booked does not exist - is hardly compensation for a disrupted and potentially ruined vacation.

Say hello to what we consider a more appealing guarantee. The Exclusive ResortQuest Snow Guarantee® is a proactive guarantee that gives guests the ability to relocate their reservation to another ResortQuest ski destination if snow conditions do not meet their expectations, without forfeiting any deposits.

Ski destinations offered by ResortQuest include:

• Colorado: Aspen, Breckenridge, Keystone, Snowmass, Steamboat, and Telluride
• Idaho: Sun Valley
• Utah: Park City
• B.C. Canada: Whistler

How It Works:

I discover my scheduled destination has poor snow conditions; I call ResortQuest (at least 7 days prior to arrival) and request to be relocated to a ‘like accommodation’ at another destination, with better conditions. ResortQuest changes my reservation and I’m all set to hit the slopes.

Pros of the ResortQuest Guarantee:

• I can book confidentially, knowing that if Mother Nature is not working with me I can select a more desirable location prior to my actual departure
• It’s free - no change fee

Cons of the ResortQuest Guarantee:

• Snow conditions tend to be fairly similar in common geographies. As a result, changing my destination to better conditions will likely require changing my flight. Unfortunately the airlines will likely not be as accommodating as ResortQuest
• The guarantee is contingent on ‘available’ units at a similar or lower nightly rate. (Correction: if an upgrade is required, the guest is not responsible to pay the upgrade fee.) During high seasons, it will be difficult for ResortQuest to change a reservation.

As the saying (kind of) goes, “nothing is guaranteed except death and taxes”. We like the ResortQuest Snow Guarantee and think it’s a brilliant marketing campaign, but in the end only a handful of people will be in a situation that is able to take advantage of the offer. Regardless, this is a creative and productive approach for encouraging vacationers to select a vacation rental.

Recent market-share reports indicate Google accounts for 68% of all search queries. We admit that Google is pretty darn good at organizing the web and helping us find “stuff.” However, we would like to highlight that there are alternative search engines that offer useful tools that you should consider taking advantage of.

Specifically, we would like to highlight Ask.com. Ask offers a graphically-heavy search service that goes beyond Google in several ways. Most relevant to this article is Ask’s recent inclusion of statistics in its search results. Similar to Google, Ask applies world-class search technology to help you find what you are looking for. However, Ask takes it one step further and augments its results with additional pieces of information.

Vacation Rental Example:

User: Jerry - a property manager in the Atlantic Beach region of North Carolina

Case: Jerry knows Search Rankings are critical to attract vacation rental guests, but he also knows that the overall traffic a site generates is more indicative of a website’s online marketing effectiveness.

Jerry goes to ask.com and enters “Atlantic beach vacation rentals”. It’s a general and broad search query for his area, but will help him quickly assess the competitive landscape.

Jerry sees that Twiddy.com, BlueWaterGMAC.com, villas2000.com and nccoastvacationrentals.com represent the top four results. Jerry knows that ranking high in search results doesn’t necessarily mean your site attracts traffic. For instance, villa2000.com’s headline reads “Florida Villas and Florida Vacation Rentals”. Jerry really doubts any one looking to go to North Carolina is going to visit this site despite the high ranking.

To better analyze the sites, Jerry scrolls over the binoculars icon and then clicks the ‘Statistics” tab.

Jerry quickly sees that Twiddy not only ranks high for the search term, but also attracts significant traffic. In January over 70K people checked out Twiddy.com. Jerry confirms Twiddy has an effective web presence. A similar ‘binocular view’ of villas2000.com confirms Jerry’s suspicion - only 10K people visit villas2000.com.

Jerry then performs the same quick analysis on BlueWaterGMAC.com and sees that BlueWater attracted over 50K visitors in May and July, but now trails Twiddy by 2x.

Finally, Jerry takes a look at nccoastvacationrentals.com. Although the site ranked 4th in the search results Jerry notices few people visit the site.

By using Ask, Jerry was able to get a better sense of not only how his competitors ranked in Search, but he was also able to determine the overall popularity of the site. To get a more comprehensive sense of the competitive landscape, Jerry entered in a number of different terms (”Atlantic beach nc rentals”, “beach rentals Atlantic beach”, etc.) to discover and analyze the breadth of companies competing for consumer attention in his market.

**Note: The statistics provided on Ask.com are provided by Compete.com. Traffic metrics are estimates based on Compete’s domestic click-stream panel. Click here to read more about how Compete.com estimates website traffic.

David Kaufman published an interesting article in the New York Times today about the soaring cost of hotel rooms due to an overall shortage of rooms. The article highlights that:

• NYC’s hotel room rates rose 15.4% last year with average room rates at a blistering $320.87/night
• In 2008, hotel rates are expected to rise by 5 - 8% in the U.S. and 12 - 14% in Europe
• Room rate increases upwards of 35% year-over-year have been observed from India to London to Dubai

[Correction: David's original article was published on January 20, 2008 in the New York Times]

* Click here to read David’s Full article republished today on Boston.com

The Times article highlights an opportunity for the vacation rental industry to promote its product as a strong alternative for guests that typically would have chosen to stay in a hotel room, but are being deterred by rising room rates. The combination of higher hotel rates with a faltering economy will likely deter travelers from traditional accommodations prompting the search for alternative vacation plans.

How rising hotel rates benefit the vacation rental market:

• With rising room rates across all lodging categories, vacation rental managers can increase nightly rates while maintaining a competitive and often a more economical alternative for consumers
• Depending on geography, managers can target aggressive ’shoulder season’ campaigns and promotions to lure cash conscience travelers from traditional accommodations
• Opportunity to expand vacation rentals beyond family destinations. Over occupancy in urban markets such as NYC, San Francisco , Boston and Chicago signal an opportunity for services to expand into city centers. (FlipKey has personal experience with managing vacation rentals in downtown Boston and can confirm that demand far exceeds supply in the downtown area - during all seasons)

The Times article sees the same opportunity for the vacation rental market and even provided a short plug:

Although they will be much harder to secure in 2008, savings will be available even in the highest-cost destinations for travelers willing to work for them. Henry H. Harteveldt, travel analyst with Forrester Research in San Francisco, suggested opting for apartments instead of hotels for stays longer than four days or for small groups. “They are far more economical and can feel much more like home,” said Harteveldt, who suggested using websites such as Condo.com and HomeAway.com. “This is something I actually did on a recent visit to New York.”

Our industry often focuses on competition between property managers and local rent-by-owners; however, its hotels that typically act as the primary competitive lodging alternative for many key markets. Rising hotel room and occupancy rates signals an immediate opportunity for the vacation rental industry to effectively promote itself as a mainstream lodging option.

FlipKey looks forward to working with active associations, local cambers of commerce and popular media channels to help promote the vacation rental category. The time is now!

Despite the title of this post, we are not suggesting managers constantly stay in contact with their guests - that would be annoying. Rather, we’d like to feature a useful email product that is available called “Constant Contact” (www.constantcontact.com).

A key component of vacation rental marketing is developing long term relationships will repeat customers. Families often travel to the same location each year, which calls for managers to stay top of mind as the calendar turns.

Managers have an assortment of techniques to keep guest records, but executing an efficient outreach campaign can prove challenging. This is where Constant Contact (CC) emerges as a useful tool. CC offers an easy to use email campaign tool. For as little as $15/month CC allows you to save your guest emails and send out well formatted, professionally composed emails during key promotional times. It’s easy, it’s inexpensive and it’s effective.

For example:
Acme Rentals has two key seasons - the summer and winter. Acme knows its guests tend to book three months in advance.

• Acme sets up two customer lists in CC. One is labeled “Summer Guests” and the other is labeled “Winter Guests”
• In May, Acme sends out a promotional email to its Summer Guests thanking them for their business and reminding them to reserve their home early before all units are booked. In the email they feature Summer events and “things-to-do” that guests may be interested in.
• Acme sets up a similar campaign in September for its Winter guests.
• Acme also sends an off season message to all guests highlighting new services (24 hour emergency number) and new homes they now offer.

Constant Contact makes this process easy and offers reporting tools to help you monitor who read your email and whether they clicked through to your site. Constant Contact is offering a 60-day free trial if you would like to give it spin.

*Note: FlipKey is a standard subscriber of Constant Contact, but has no formal business relation or affiliation.

I’m heading to Croatia this summer with a group of friends. Rather than bounce around from hostel to hostel we have decided to upgrade to a week-long boat charter. After a little online research, I submitted a request to a charter service and a boat broker quickly responded. He was very helpful, selected a perfect boat for the group and then asked me to wire $12K to the boat owner’s bank account.

Hold on - wait a minute. You want me to do what?

I had read enough international scams to smell on few fleas on this deal, so I kindly told the broker that if he couldn’t accept a credit card then I wouldn’t be able to reserve the boat. He insisted that he ran a legitimate operation and provided references of his past guests. I noticed one of his references was a professor at Babson College. A professor seemed like a legitimate reference, so I emailed him (email string featured below).

Professor X:

My name is Jeremiah Gall and I’m a Boston area resident. I’m a few months away from going on a trip to Croatia and considering renting a private boat charter. The company, a charter broker by the name of Navicular, gave your name as a reference. Our main contact, Manuel, said you rented the MS Eleganza and can verify the legitimacy of their business. We are being asked to wire $12K to the owner of the boat and are looking to verify this business and feel more confidence about sending this wire.

Please let me know if you can confirm and provide any information.

Cheers and thanks for your time,
Jeremy

– Response –

Jeremy,

I too was reluctant to wire the $15,000 up front, and had the business checked out by my son’s father-in-law who is Croatian. I had no issues with the final financial arrangement, but be sure to bring plenty of cash in euros as it is difficult to find cash on the islands. The experience we had on the Eleganza was fabulous, and my sons and their wives are pestering me to do it again. I can give the highest recommendation for Navicular from my experience with the captain, Lovre, he was honest, attentive and responsive. Have a great trip.

Professor X

The professor’s email satisfied my concerns and presto: I was converted into a wire transferring guest of the MS Eleganza!

Renting a boat charter requires the same level of trust, if not more, required to convert a vacation rental guest. How nice is the boat? How’s the crew? Is this a legitimate business? Where is my money really going? Add to these concerns an international element and only the strong of heart or those, like myself, who are provided the verified words of past guests will participate.

Trust is an international currency and it’s as difficult to find as a two dollar bill. Small lodging business operators (vacation rental managers, rent-by-owners, boat brokers, etc.) are all faced with the challenge of establishing trust with their end-customer.

Soon, FlipKey will open its doors and offer the industry the first dedicated resource to effectively establish and communicate trust to your customers.

A few months ago, I wrote a post on the potential of online video in the vacation rental industry, commenting on the impact online video services could have for vacation rental managers.

Since then I have discovered numerous niche travel websites where users share their travel videos with other travelers and watch informational guide videos to learn more about travel destinations.

Geobeats.com offers travelers high quality, informative travel videos, providing users with helpful information about specific travel destinations (mostly international) before they have to shell out the $$ to actually visit. Below is a screen shot and link to a video about the Beer Gardens in Berlin, Germany.

Emerging Video Services

Sites such as travelervideos.com and travelistic.com allow users to upload videos of their travels for other users to watch. Most of these services are ripe with ideas, but thin in actual content. For instance, travelervideos.com and travelistic.com have only acquired 5,859 and 5,348 videos, respectively.

Of course, we’d be remise if we didn’t mention YouTube, which, along with water skiing squirrels, also has a solid inventory of travel related videos. YouTube is the solution of choice for many, as it allows users to place videos directly on their own sites through YouTube’s extension widget. However, general travel videos tend to get lost in the cloud of YouTube’s +2.5B video inventory. For example, the first three results in a search for “Miami Beach” on YouTube result in: (1) a video by Marilyn Mason; (2) three girls in a bikini walking on a beach; and (3) Brittney Spears sunbathing. Not exactly the video content property managers can use to drive more consumers to their destination.

Another interesting service is Triporia.com which offers similar services to the sites discussed above. In addition to offering a social video sharing service, Triporia also encourages businesses to create their own promotional videos.

Why promotional videos about a Property Management company could be useful:

• Help emphasize professional management services offered (i.e. 24 hour emergency contact, on location recommendations, etc.)
• Increase consumer confidence and convert more consumers from looking to booking vacation homes
• Videos showing actual homes will give insight into what to expect from the vacation homes themselves

Triporia.com currently has less than 500 videos and very limited traffic, so its too early to endorse the service as a “must have” in the vacation rental industry. However, the idea of using this type of service as a promotional tool could prove to be an effective utility in building your brand, attracting more guests and ultimately driving more bookings.

As a new developer at FlipKey and a new member to this industry, I am excited to report on my first experience staying in a vacation rental. My friend and I spent the New Years holiday near Steamboat Mountain in Colorado on a snowboarding trip.

The trip was last minute, and as such we rolled into Vail without any reservations. However, we were lucky enough to find The Summit Resort Group had a two bedroom condo available in Dillon, CO. It was perfect! It ended up being more affordable and substantially more comfortable than if we had rented a pair of hotel rooms.

I was amazed at just how smooth the process was. Making the reservation, picking up the keys and an information packet at an after hours lock box, and finally finding the complex was a seamless process. The only trouble we did run into was finding the right condo unit and with one quick call to the 24 hour help number provided in the packet we were quickly in our vacation rental.

We enjoyed our very own kitchen, cooked our own dinner, washed and dried our snowboard clothes with the in-unit washer and dryer, and each had our own comfortable bedroom to sleep in. Although the weather attempted to wreak havoc on our vacation thereby adding unneeded stress, being able to relax in our very own vacation rental after a great day of snowboarding was exactly what we all needed. (click here to check out where we stayed)

The entire experience was much more personable than a hotel and the management company genuinely wanted to help our group enjoy our trip in Colorado. Count me as another satisfied vacation rental customer!