For those of you attending the VRMA Eastern Seminar in Myrtle Beach this week, don’t forget to stop by our booth and say hello!

There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal written by Shelly Banjo which discussed the power of blogs for small businesses without large marketing budgets.

Excerpt from WSJ Article:

“Businesses of all types and sizes are focusing on the power of bloggers as opinion shapers. But harnessing that power is particularly important for small-business owners who don’t have the money to create name recognition with big marketing campaigns. By connecting with the right blogs, small businesses can generate buzz around their products and services and increase sales dramatically.”

Leveraging Existing Blogs

The article notes that creating your own blog isn’t the only way to leverage the blogosphere. The WSJ article suggests rather than trying to create an established blog with dedicated readership, you take your product to a reputable blog and have them write about it, putting you directly in front of their readers.

Here is a quick example of how a property management company could creatively leverage existing travel blogs to increase exposure of their product:

1. XYZ Property Management in the greater Boston area reads Arthur Frommer’s online blog today and notices his mention of spending a summer vacation at Harvard - a four week summer school for all ages.
2. XYZ Property Management contacts Frommer’s blog to inform them of a “Harvard Summer School Special” - offering select vacation homes close to Harvard at a discount for attendees of the four week program.
3. Frommer’s finds this supplementary story interesting and relevant and writes a brief post about XYZ Property Management and their unique “Harvard Summer School Special” offer.

Presto - your company is mentioned on a site that attracted over 600,000 unique visitors last month according to compete.com.

Starting your own blog is also an excellent option and can be free and easy on websites such as wordpress.com and blogger.com. However, to make your blog relevant and useful to readers, you will have to be dedicated to writing consistent and relevant articles. In the meantime, consider how to use existing blogosphere resources to market yourself and your services to a wider audience.

HomeAway has created a bit of a buzz in the industry with their recent decision to start including banner advertisements on their Web properties (vrbo.com, vacationrentals.com, et al). The decision has left a sour taste in the mouth of many rent-by-owners, as evidenced in various online forums.

While it is widely accepted by most Internet consumers that advertisements are par for the course on “free” Web sites, there has always been a much larger debate about advertisements on “paid” sites.

Comment left by a HomeAway Subscriber:

“I guess it was inevitable. Banner ads have started appearing on all the HomeAway sites (including VRBO and Vacation Rentals. com). So far,I’ve encountered ads for Verizon, Apple, and Nationwide Insurance.

On the plus side, by giving HomeAway another revenue stream, it may help to forestall a price increase for those of us who list our properties on these sites. I just hope they keep the ads to a reasonable number. They are sure to be a distraction and will often lead prospective renters away from our vacation-rental listings and off to buy phones, computers, and other products.”

To date, HomeAway has slowly rolled out its display ads and has limited the displays to select pages. The only real risk to the introduction of display ads, as highlighted in the comment above, is the potential adverse effect on inquiry rates. I’m sure HomeAway will be keeping an eye on this - as will their subscribers.

In September we wrote about Kayak - a meta search engine that helps people find the cheapest flights. It was recently announced that Kayak would merge with SideStep - the #2 travel meta search engine.

Meta Travel Search engines are different than Expedia and Orbitz. Expedia and Orbitz are what are called Online Travel Agents (OTAs). OTAs have direct booking capabilities, so you can search, choose and book your flight. Kayak works differently. Kayak simply searches all other OTAs and carrier direct sites (e.g. delta.com) and returns the cheapest flights for your desired itinerary. Kayak then lets you click the flight you want and forwards you to delta.com, expedia.com, cheapflights.com, etc.

Greg Saks of Compete.com wrote an extensive analysis on the implications of the merger between Kayak and SideStep. An interesting finding from the analysis highlights the percentage of user traffic Kayak attracts from ‘other travel sites’.

Nearly 45% of Kayak’s visitor traffic is acquired from “other travel sites”. Kayak has achieved this volume by providing “widgets” any travel site can feature on its site. The Kayak widget allows a site; let’s call it tomsvacationrentals.com, to copy a small piece of code into their site. People who then visit tomsvacationrentals.com looking for a vacation rental can now also search Kayak for a cheap flight to get to Tom’s homes. To thank its partners, Kayak will pay for every user that uses the widget. This way TomsVacationRentals not only provides a useful tool for its visitors, but also makes a little extra money for helping them find the best flight.

If you are interested in adding the Kayak widget to your site click here to learn more.

The FlipKey Team is taking a bit of down time and will return to its normal blogging schedule next week. We’re looking forward to an exciting 2008 to share with all of you. Cheers!

What can I say? I’m a sucker for cool websites. I recently came across TripIt.com and it definitely met my requirements for COOL.

In short, TripIt helps you organize your travel plans.

How it works:

• You set up a free account (takes two minutes)

• As you receive itinerary confirmations from airlines, hotels, car rental companies, etc. you simply forward them to TripIt (takes two seconds)

• TripIt then identifies your email, parses your itinerary and then automatically saves it in an easy to read format. As you send your various travel plans it intelligently blends your trip into one integrated itinerary.

Here is a view of my Colorado trip I just forwarded from my Gmail account.

Why I won’t use it
Although the service is cool and ported my itinerary with 100% accuracy, I just don’t know why I need this service. I, like so many others, get a little stressed before trips. I like having the original itineraries to PROVE to the airline/hotel that I have a reservation. We have all checked into the Marriott at some point in our lives when the dreaded, “I’m sorry sir, I don’t seem to have a record of your reservation in the computer” conversation is initiated.

In addition, there is a sense of craftsmanship in taking notes, stapling multiple itineraries together, printing out to and from maps and placing all needed documentation into a Trip Folder. I understand that this process is so “pre-internet”, but some things were simply never meant to be automated.

Like so many others, TripIt forgot about vacation rentals
Like 99% of the travel sites on the market, TripIt doesn’t really address the vacation rental market. To be fair, it would be near impossible for them to do so. TripIt can only parse standard emails, thus its system works for the standard confirmations generated by major airlines and hotels. However, TripIt does allow a user to manually enter additional details of their trip, but unfortunately doesn’t even recognize the existence of vacation rentals. Notice how “Hotels” is the only option provided to me as I try to add my ski house rental.

I think TripIt has done a great job with a limited idea. I will likely not use it, but if they were to include a link for Vacation Rentals in their next release I could be won over.

On Thursday the FlipKey team will exhibit its ‘coming very soon’ service at the Central Florida Property Managers Association Conference & Tradeshow in Orlando.

Whether you have been following our progress or haven’t heard about us at all, we are looking forward to demonstrating our service to the top property managers in Central Florida.

If you are attending the conference, please stop by our booth and say hi. We’ll be happy to take you through a quick demonstration of FlipKey. We’ve had over 100 property managers sign up as a beta members and will be accepting new charter members at the conference.

If you are unable to attend the conference, check back in with the FlipKey blog next week for a recap of the event.

Many of our readers have contacted us asking, “so what is FlipKey and when will your service be available?”

We’re happy to announce that we are getting close. In fact, we’re so close that we will be presenting at the VRMA Showcase in New Orleans next week. Please stop by our booth and we’ll be happy to demo the FlipKey service and explain how you can join our trusted network of vacation rental homes.

To help you find us, here is a photo of the team on top of the Green Monster in Fenway Park - home of the soon to be World Champion Red Sox!

Carl, Jeremy, and TJ

We are busy at FlipKey, but we also enjoy getting out and meeting people. Over the next few weeks we will be attending a number of industry events, so if you’re in the area, please come by and say hello.

What’s the hottest ticket in Boston this month? Nope - not the Red Sox. Surprisingly, it’s the Tech Cocktail Boston Party on September 6th (tomorrow night) at Tequila Rain in Boston. If you were one of the lucky few to get in, drop us a note and we’d love to meet you.

Next up is Dave Beisel’s Web Innovator’s Group of Boston on Monday, September 10th. The WebInno has been a great way to showcase early stage self-funded startups in the Boston area. Unlike the Tech Cocktail Party, there is no cap on attendance. Tickets are free, just make sure you register.

Finally we will be attending and presenting at the VRMA 2007 Conference and Showcase in New Orleans this October 13-17. We will be there with booth in hand, finally ready to answer the question “So what exactly are you guys doing?”

We started FlipKey to help expand the vacation rental market by providing a platform to highlight professional reputation and trust. There are 6.5 million vacation homes in the U.S. and less than 10% are rented to travelers looking for a great place to stay. This means over 5 million secondary home-owners are foregoing the economic benefits of renting their homes when they are not occupying them. We are convinced there are simple solutions to help bridge this gap.

The FlipKey Blog is our first contribution to the rental community. The founders of FlipKey are passionate about the internet and how it can improve the home rental marketplace. We have industry-leading research, insightful observations and opinions we want to share.

The humble goals of the FlipKey Blog:

• Encourage more owners to rent their homes and more guests to rent vacation homes.
• Provide free access to premium research that has never been available to the vacation rental industry.
• Cultivate a sense of community and thought leadership among property managers, listing services and owners to expand the vacation rental marketplace.

FlipKey’s core service is still in development and will be launching this Fall. If you are a property manager, homeowner or are involved with the vacation rental industry and would like to be included in our service launch, please contact us at chartermember@flipkey.com.

Enjoy the Blog and we look forward to your thoughts and comments.