In their own words, Mermaid Cottages offers:

Whimsical, funky cottages, historic, classic homes, pet friendly, complimentary high speed and wifi internet, comfy, cozy, welcoming places to nest, relax, re connect and simplify. That’s what the Mermaid Cottage Vacation experience is all about.

With FlipKey Widgets, the Mermaid Cottages Vacation experience is being confirmed by their past guests.  Mermaid Cottages has a history of happy and enthusiastic guests and is a pioneer in leveraging FlipKey guest reviews to harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing and trusted guest recommendations.

Click here to see a great example of the guest reviews featured for Doodlebug Cottage.

By adding the FlipKey Property Widget across its website for individual vacation properties, Mermaid Cottages is able to let their guests promote the Mermaid Cottage experience.

“Thank you for having this great service, I’ve already had a couple of guests reserve homes because of the great reviews!!”

- Diane Kaufman, Owner Mermaid Cottages

FlipKey Widgets are provided as a free feature to all FlipKey users to help vacation rental managers easily add guest reviews to their website to attract and convert more guests.

• 78% of consumers indicate they are significantly more likely to rent a vacation rental if they can read reviews from past guests that stayed in the property. (Source: FlipKey / Compete, Inc. Vacation Rental Research Report – Issue II)
• Hotel websites have documented a 100% increase in online conversation rates when website visitors read a guest review.  (Source: TripAdvisor, Hayes & Jarvis Case Study)

The analysis took into account the distribution of how vacation rental guests have responded to the following rating scale:

As the chart below illustrates, consumers love the vacation rental experience.  Managers are often worried about “what happens when someone leaves a negative review”, but we found these instances are few and far between.   Specifically, 84% of guests recommended the home they stayed in, 12% had a neutral experience with only 4% of guests indicating they had a negative experience.

These findings are nearly identical to the historical survey-based findings we have cited in the past. What’s important to understand is that the above graph represents the ‘actual distribution of vacation rental reviews’. However, the only way to acquire the normal distribution of guest reviews is by inviting all of your guests to leave a review. If you require guests to self navigate to your site to leave a review, you are only going to attract the extremes (i.e. a select number of extremely happy guests and extremely upset guests).

To ensure you are fairly represented and yield the most from your guest’s positive comments, the FlipKey system is designed to invite all of your guests to leave reviews, so you can effectively attract new guests, at higher nightly rates, based on all the strong recommendations of your past customers.

To my surprise, Big Bear Lake features a vibrant summer community. Featuring a comfortable 75 degree breeze off the lake, I found many Palm Springs, LA and Ontario residents frequenting the area to escape the heat and bustle of “sea level California.”

I was able to secure a vacation rental home through Big Bear Vacation Rentals and spent the night sharing laughs and drinks with Nick Lanza and Cheri Scott (the owner and marketing manager of Big Bear Vacation Rentals, respectively). Within a few hours we had taken a boat ride around Big Bear Lake, enjoyed a wonderful meal at a local lakeside restaurant and then finished the evening with some games of pool and nightcaps at a neighborhood house party. When the night was over it was hard to believe that it was only Tuesday.

Big Bear Vacation Rentals:

I have since recommended the area to my family that lives in the Los Angeles area and have a new sense of appreciation for the year-round advantages certain vacation rental destinations maintain. I am looking forward to visiting Big Bear again this winter, but I’ll be sure to keep this in mind as a recommendation to friends and family for an excellent vacation spot anytime during the year.

Thanks again to my wonderful hosts at Big Bear Vacations… Click here to read my FlipKey review of my Big Bear Lake vacation rental experience.

Back patio of my Big Bear Vacation Rental:

This week Escapia announced its new blog at www.escapiablog.com.  The Escapia blog provides another source of insight and industry trends for vacation rental managers.  The vacation rental community benefits from increased communication and the sharing of ideas and we are excited with the addition of a blog written from the perspective of one of the industry’s leading software providers.  We’ll be adding Escapia to the FlipKey blogroll and look forward to future commentary from the Escapia  team.

Today Delta upped the ante by announcing they are raising their fee for passengers’ second checked bag from $25 to $50 in an attempt to combat record fuel prices.  Delta does not charge for the first checked bag, but does apply increased fees for items requiring special handling (i.e. golf clubs, surf boards and skis)   See the Announcement on Yahoo here

I typically try to avoid checking any bags when traveling, but an upcoming golf trip to Myrtle Beach will require two checked bags.  The idea of shelling out an extra $50 each way for my golf clubs is not appealing, but what is my alternative?  The fact is, we as travelers often need to check in luggage and the airlines need to find new revenue channels to off set their soaring fuel costs – the two “needs” were bound to meet each other.   For now, its safe to assume itemized luggage charges will become a norm in the industry, so rather than complain I’m going to figure out how to cram my 3 iron in my carry-on.

Given our interest and commitment to bring guest reviews to the vacation rental market you can imagine my delight when I recently came across a large compilation of statistics on the power of consumer reviews on the Bizaarvoice company blog.

Below I have compiled a few of the key statistics featured in the article I feel are informative and added my two cents below the stat:

• 71% of online shoppers read reviews making it the most widely read consumers-generated content – Forrester Research

It doesn’t matter if I’m buying a book, researching a vacation or evaluating a new digital camera – if I can not find a review I move on to an option for which I can.

• 82% of those who read reviews say their purchasing decisions have been directly influenced by those reviews – Deloitte & Touche

Not only are 7 out of every 10 people reading reviews, but 82% of those people are directly affected by what they read.

• Consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the 26,486 internet users in 47 markets who responded to a global Nielsen survey – “Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool”

The honest words of past guests are the most powerful marketing assets at your disposal for instilling trust and booking urgency amongst prospects.   A quality website, friendly reservation specialists and smart promotions always help capture conversion… but often a simple and honest story from a past guest can be the most effective sales pitch.

• Of merchants who adopt customer reviews, 58% said improving customer experience was the most important reason for adding reviews to their sites, following by building customer loyalty (47%), driving sales (42%), and maintaining a competitive advantage (37%) – eTailing Group, 2008

The ability to leave a review allows the guest to feel they have been “heard” - thus increasing their loyalty.  I personally enjoying leaving reviews of products and services I enjoy – it helps me a sense of empowerment beyond general ownership and use.

To read the very comprehensive list of over 100 statistics from a variety of sources on the bizaarblog, click here.

Thanks to Bizaarvoice for compiling such a powerful list of statistics from a wide variety of sources.

After a brief investigation I realized that I “should have” known who VirtualTourist was.

Summary of Observations:

Based on Compete.com statistics the site attracts ~1M visitors/month. I consider 1M visitors the qualifier for “I’m a major site.” I’m ashamed that I wasn’t aware of the site prior to the announcement.

I’m going to Asheville, NC for a wedding in August and figured I would see what VT had to say about it. I was surprised to find a significant amount of tips, tricks and photos of avid VT users who had clearly spent a ton of time reviewing the area. Although the site has some user experience quirks, the user generated content featured is robust and very useful.

I then decided to register and discovered why users spend so much time talking about the trips. VT actually ranks users based on the volume and quality of the content they post. Their user-community basically competes to have a high “VT Rank” and thus members go the extra mile to upload extra pictures, videos, tips and deals.

Although VT had some great content on Asheville, I did notice it fell short in many other vacation rental destinations.  For instance, a search for “Outer Banks” and “Grand Strand” yielded no results.   With that said, I found excellent content for a number of other vacation rental destinations.

VT allows you to register as a resident of your area and then allows people to contact you if they are looking for recommendations.   With 1M visitors per month on this site, managers would be well served to register, use their local knowledge to enter useful tips, photos of nearby attractions and highlight the availability and advantages of vacation rentals in the area.

To help our users maximize the impact of their guest reviews FlipKey offers free “Extension Tools” that feature our FlipKey Verified reviews directly on the manager’s website.

Mermaid Cottages of Tybee Island, GA recently added the FlipKey Reputation Widget to their ‘Questions?’ page.  The widget automatically updates (no coding required!) as Mermaid Cottages collects additional reviews through FlipKey.  Visitors who click the widget are taken directly to Mermaid Cottage’s FlipKey Profile where they can read specific reviews of individual properties.  With 150 guest reviews and an average star rating of 4.75, Mermaid Cottages is effectively leveraging their guests’ experiences to communicate their strong reputation.

FlipKey offers a number of different tools that allow our manager users to extend FlipKey Guest Reviews directly to their own site. We will report on additional examples and tools in future posts.

In the spirit of transparency we would like to share the good, the bad and the ugly.

(+) = Positive feedback
(-) = Critical feedback / feature request

(+)  Ease of use / Speed: Many users noted how easy and quickly they were able to get started and begin to collect property specific reviews.

(-)  Review Alerts: Although FlipKey offers automated review alerts when a low rated review is submitted, users have informed us that they also want to be alerted of the POSITIVE reviews!  We are working on new reports to help our users efficiently track all guest reviews – both positive and negative.

(+)  Owner Management: A surprising, yet consistent, point of feedback was FlipKey’s positive impact on Owner Management.   Managers are forwarding guest reviews to owners and finding the owners receptive to critical feedback that is supplied from guests.   (Note:  Owners are much less receptive to critical feedback delivered directly from the management company).   In one example the owner decided to upgrade the mattress in the master bedroom after multiple complaints over the “firmness” of the bed.   In a different example, an owner now has fresh water delivered to the home in case their water (drawn from a well) is not acceptable to the guest.

(-)  Property Detail Info: Some users have noted that the property detail info and calendar info on FlipKey is not always 100% accurate.    We consider this a top priority and are improving our content/data syncing systems, as well as partnering with a number of the industry’s leading software firms to better ensure content accuracy.   (Click here to read our recent partnership announcement with Instant Software)

(+)  Account Support: All FlipKey users are assigned, free of charge, an Account Manager who helps them get started with FlipKey and handles all support needs.   A direct quote submitted about one of our Account Managers:  “Bryan has been incredibly helpful!  Truly an asset….”

Don’t get any funny ideas Bryan… raises aren’t available until year’s end.

In the coming months we will work to publish more useful input and recommendations from our users. Thank you very much to all the people who contributed by participating in our satisfaction questionnaire.

Waiting out an hour delay to take the red-eye from San Francisco to Boston on Sunday, there was no excitement or enthusiasm in the terminal – no one was looking forward to getting on their plane. Yes, all signs indicated that air travel was no longer a luxury affair, but rather a necessary annoyance, like a long bus ride, to get where you’re going.

OK, so it’s the red-eye – no one is ever excited for the red-eye. Well, it appears consumer dissatisfaction and apathy for the airline industry is deeper than that. A recent report from the Travel Industry Association (TIA) estimates that 41 million trips were avoided over the past twelve months at a cost of $26 billion to the U.S. economy. Adding a bit more perspective to this figure:

Roger Dow, President and CEO of TIA said “ . . .more than 100,000 travelers each day are voting with their wallets by choosing to avoid trips.”

We’ve written about airline travel on this blog before, because dissatisfaction with air travel has implications for the vacation rental industry. Less trips means less guests booking accommodations. Although the study did not highlight figures for the vacation rental industry, hotels lost an estimated $6 billion due to these avoided trips in the last twelve months.

Consumer Satisfaction – It’s Personal
Has the core offering of air travel changed that much? Sure, the seats are smaller and security is painful but the main transportation product is the same: fly where you need to go in relative safety. Instead, consumer dissatisfaction grows from the erosion of all the little service touches that made air travel unique. Personally, I miss the small bags of roasted peanuts (food always wins me over).

The personal nature of vacation rentals is the industry’s advantage. With a unique inventory of homes and a highly personal product offering (guests staying in someone’s home) that differentiates itself from other accommodations, vacation rentals capitalize on high consumer satisfaction (generally above 90%) to drive return guests and referrals. As vacation rentals continue to grow as a larger segment of the domestic travel industry, please don’t forget to sweat the small stuff and embrace the personal service touches that make vacation rentals a wonderful experience.