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Why vacation rental managers want to help you save money

If you are looking at the ClearStay analysis and wondering why vacation rental managers provide great deals if you book a certain way, here's the answer.  It's not just good for the traveler, it is good for the vacation rental manager, too.  For someone who rents out vacation homes, getting some money for a hard-to-book period is a lot better than having the home sit empty.

Like the rest of the travel world, vacation rental managers are discovering yield management -- the benefit of using pricing to motivate renters to behave in a certain way.  You might have noticed that the ways to save money involve doing things that many other travelers won't do -- like booking offseason, arriving mid-week, staying a longer time or renting a larger home.  For someone who rents out a vacation home, getting someone to stay in the high season for three days over a weekend is a lot easier than getting someone to stay in the slower season for five days during the middle of the week.  If you are willing to do that, the manager is often willing to make it worth your while.

Many vacation rental managers don't provide those kinds of deals because the software they use to manage their business usually doesn't make it easy for them to do so.  ClearStay's parent company, Escapia, provides vacation rental managers with the most advanced software that lets them easily create pricing rules lowering the price when they think it will help them get a rental that they might not otherwise get -- and, yes, increasing the rental rate when you want the same home at the same time as the rest of the world.

So the thing that makes it all a win-win for the traveler and the vacation rental manager alike is that giving a great deal in certain cases lets the manager make more money when they might otherwise make very little.  And that lets the renter stay in a wonderful home at a great price.

Six steps to saving money on a vacation home rental

An exclusive analysis by ClearStay.com of over three hundred thousand vacation rental  bookings worth over half a billion dollars gives travelers a road map to getting the best price when renting a vacation home.

If you’re like millions of people, you’ve already discovered that renting a home while on vacation is a terrific value compared to staying in a hotel.  You can’t beat the space; you can’t beat the privacy; and you can’t beat the feeling you get from staying in a home of your own.

So how do you spend the least and get the most for your vacation rental dollar? ClearStay.com has crunched the numbers to provide the six key moves to getting the most out of your vacation rental dollar.  For each of the different ways to save, we’ve calculated the “Average 7-day savings” – the average amount that you can save for a seven day trip by choosing the least rather than most expensive option for each.

The buying tips can add up to hundreds or even a thousand dollars in savings the next time you book your vacation rental trip.

 
 

Wondering how to figure out the exact savings for you?  You can start by checking out the last minute deals on ClearStay.com.  Or use the ClearStay.com date search to get exact rate quotes for the dates you want to travel.  No web site makes it easier than ClearStay.com to play around with different travel options and see how the bottom line for you changes.

And all the vacation homes found on ClearStay.com come from professional vacation rental managers.  So you can book with the confidence that the home will be waiting for you when you arrive, check-in will be easy and a local vacation rental expert is nearby and ready to help when you need it.   Read more about the benefits of renting from a professional vacation rental managers.

Top Hotel Pricing Tricks to Beware Of

By Bill Furlong

For many travelers considering renting a vacation home, one tradeoff is deciding between renting a home or staying in a hotel.  Most people who are doing comparison price shopping will use the web to find out the price.  The problem is, many hoteliers (and, yes, some vacation rental owners and managers) make it tricky to figure out the total bottom line price.  This story from USAToday.com and SmarterTravel.com points out some of the top tricks to keep an eye out for:

• Mandatory add-ons like resort fees that you can't decline.
• Getting something "free" like a free meal at the hotel restaurant that is just bundled into the room rate.
• "Per person double occupancy" rates that make the price look twice as good as it is.

One of the things ClearStay.com does for travelers looking to rent vacation homes is provide real-time prices and full disclosure of the fees and charges.  Hotels, vacation rental owners and managers, cruise lines and more all have different approaches to pricing.  Some include everything in the rent and present a single price.  Others break out the costs for housekeeping, resort fees, housekeeping fees, travel insurance, damage waiver and more.  While neither approach is "right" or "wrong", travelers need an easy way to see the full story.  When you use ClearStay.com to book your vacation home, you'll always see the final bottom line cost on a rate details page like this one before you hit the "book" button.  We'll even give you a schedule showing exactly when each payment is due.  All part of making vacation rentals easy to book.

It's Time to Look into the Crystal Ball

By Bill Furlong, CEO

With the new year upon us, the trend watchers and surveyors are looking into their crystal balls and coming up with their forecasts for the year ahead.

Our friends at PhoCusWright have recently published an overview of their take on the 2010 hospitality market.  The bottom line isn't very cheery as you can tell from their final few sentences:

If your measure of recovery is "the point at which things stop getting much worse," then the sector may well be in recovery. However, the hotel industry will not regain strength until 2012 and will not "recover" to previous peak levels until well beyond.

Now, vacation rentals are not hotels.  The lag for adding supply in hotels is longer than vacation rentals because of big construction projects that continue even as the economy declines.  And a sharp decline in average daily rates (down 9%) for hotels has been more dramatic than for vacation rentals.  As we noted in our 2010 National Vacation Rental Report, vacation rentals didn't discount as sharply and appear to have rebounded much more strongly than hotels in the second half of the year.

The second study is from the investment firm DLA Piper.  While also somewhat bearish, the survey is not quite as pessimistic as the PhoCusWright forecast with survey respondents expecting recovery in 2011.

Gallup Poll Sees Continued Consumer Travel Gloom

By Bill Furlong, CEO

How readily will consumers whip out their wallets and spend on a vacation in 2010?  According to the super-surveyors at Gallup, 2010 looks to be another year when consumers and their money are not easily parted.

A year-end poll by Gallup on consumer 2010 travel spending plans suggests that half plan to spend the same in 2010 as 2009 and twice as many plan to spend less rather than more on hotel stays.

 
So that leaves two questions for vacation rental managers.  First, will consumer's opinions match reality?  Is it possible that they say they will spend less (who doesn't want to do that!) but they won't really act that way?  And second, will vacation rentals buck the trend?  Will travelers be willing to spend for the value they get when renting a vacation home even while spending less for a traditional hotel stay?

Help guests get flight fare refunds (or get them yourself)

by Bill Furlong, CEO

A little known secret of the airline world is that travelers are due refunds if flight fares drop after they have bought their tickets.  The good people at Seattle-based Yapta have built a business by helping people get the money due to them.  According to Yapta, their average member saves over $300 per year.  There are a few limitations to when and how you can get refunds...but it happens surprisingly often.

Yesterday Yapta announced a partnership with another innovative travel tech company, TripIt.  TripIt is a very smart travel itinerary web site.  If you or your guests want to have a single itinerary with their flights, car rental, vacation home address, places they plan to visit on their trip and more -- and have driving directions automatically created for each of them -- then TripIt is the tool to use.

So, now with the partnership between TripIt and Yapta you'll be able to create a custom itinerary for your trip and also let Yapta make sure you get the money back you are due if the fare dropped.

The Griswolds are Back!

By Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

(Image via HomeAway)

Today my day was made for multiple reasons.  In addition to the recent excitement surrounding last month's announcement of a HomeAway Super Bowl ad featuring vacation rentals; today HomeAway announced that the Griswolds - the famous family of the National Lampoon's Vacation movies - will be the reunited for the Super Bowl ad.  As a child of the 80's, an advocate of vacation rentals and a lover of the National Lampoon's movies... let's just say that 'ecstatic' is an understatement of how I feel about this! 

Here at ClearStay, we're particularly excited as our partnership with HomeAway will give our clients' properties a flood of exposure due to this advertisement that will reach more than 100 million people.  This is a reminder that if you haven't opted into HomeAway via EscapiaNET, now is a great time to do so!  Depending on where your vacation business is located, opting into listing homes with HomeAway is an easy way for you to take advantage of this fantastic marketing campaign by HomeAway. Opting into HomeAway is simple, and your properties will automatically and immediately be shown on HomeAway and ready to be booked by football fans and National Lampoon lovers alike. 

Blogging VRMA: TripAdvisor on Vacation Rentals

 

 by Bill Furlong, CEO

One of the biggest developments in the vacation rental industry in the past year has been TripAdvisor's commitment to the category.  With tab-level visibility for vacation rentals, home page promotions on TripAdvisor and creative approaches like their hotel/vacation rental price comparison tool, TripAdvisor is making a clear commitment to the category.

TripAdvisor's CEO, Stephen Kaufer, gave a talk at VRMA on TripAdvisor and their approach to the category.  Much of the presentation was focused on TripAdvisor itself; though there was some interesting information about how they see the challenges and opportunity in the category:

...TripAdvisor's overall focus in the category
- TripAdvisor is here to grow the vacation rental market by putting it in front of the millions of hotel eyeballs that they have already on their site.
- They want to bring the TripAdvisor reputation for trust and transparency to VRs.
- They want to remove the reasons why people don't try vacation rentals.

...Their perception of vacation rental challenges
- Awareness: only 10% of people have stayed in a VR.  TripAdvisor is addressing that by introducing vacation homes and giving them a high level of visibility.
- Confidence: TripAdvisor are facilitating guest reviews.  Photos are key; their stats suggest that more photos mean more bookings.  20+ photos lead to a 150% increase in inquiries.
- Trust in owner/manager:  37% are worried that they won't have an emergency contact.  TripAdvisor survey suggests that people will pay more for the reliabity that comes with professional management; of 177 people surveyed, 53% would rent from a PM even if it may cost more, 47% said they prefer to rent from an owner because it may cost less.

...TripAdvisor is helping differentiate VR managers from RBOs.
- TripAdvisor clearly labels a listing as being from a "certified owner" or a professional manager.
- The manager has an opportunity to present their brand, provide aggregate rating information, describe their company and have a link to their site.

...Repeat travel is huge
- 24% have stayed in a vacation home 10+ times.
- 14% stay in the same vacation rental property every year.

...Family focus is big
- 66% stayed in a vacation home because they can sleep more people
- 64% like having a kitchen for cooking meals.
- 60% like having more hang-out space.

Blogging VRMA: Consumer Travel Trends

by Bill Furlong, CEO


Peter Yesawich, President and CEO of the Ypartnership, the PR agency used by the VRMA,  gave a very informative and entertaining presentation on how the consumer travel landscape is changing.  The following were his main points:

...Travel is down from the peak
- 55% of households took 1 trip/year75 miles or more from home.
- That number has dropped from a peak of 66% in 1999 and 63% as recently as 2007.
...the Web is the dominant way people are planning travel
- % of households with web access has increased from 11% in 1996 to 80% in 2008 and 2/3 of that access is high-speed.

How do people plan and purchase travel:
- 61% use the Internet exclusively
- 24% use a travel agent and the internet
- 7% use a travel agent
- 8% use neither
(sample base is leisure travelers using airlines and hotels in 2009)

- % of people using the web was 53% of people in 2002.  That number has increased to 66% by 2009.

...and the % of people using the Web to book travel is also a majority
- 35% used the Web to book travel in 2002.  56% of people used the web to book by 2009.  BUT, the % using the web to book has been flat from 2007-2009.

... what do people think is important on a Web site
- 87% lowest fares and rates
- 74% easy booking
- 72% photos
- 46% user reviews

...the next generation of search is meta-search sites like Kayak that search a large number of travel sites for rates, availability and more and let people compare
- only 5% of travelers use meta-search today.

...Meta-search powered price shopping will make it more important to build equity into a brand
- But consumers today care less and less about the brand. 
- A survey asked people when they fly whether they prefer to use a legacy carrier that they have used before, a low fare carrier or had no preference.  21% said a legacy carrier; 29% said the lowfare carrier; 50% said they had no preference.  So half of consumers didn't care about the airline brand.
- A survey asked people how important the lodging brand name was.  57% said the brand name was very or extremely important in 2006.  That number has dropped to 44% in 2009.  So brand importance is dropping for hotels.

... blogs and advisory/review sites are increasingly important.
- 19% use blogs and advisory sites today to plan travel.
- 1/3 of next generation, younger travelers use them.
- What do they use?  42% use YouTube, 33% use Facebook, 30% use MySpace, 27% use TripAdvisor.

by Bill Furlong, CEO


Peter Yesawich, President and CEO of the Ypartnership, the PR agency used by the VRMA,  gave a very informative and entertaining presentation on how the consumer travel landscape is changing.  The following were his main points:

...Travel is down from the peak
- 55% of households took 1 trip/year75 miles or more from home.
- That number has dropped from a peak of 66% in 1999 and 63% as recently as 2007.
...the Web is the dominant way people are planning travel
- % of households with web access has increased from 11% in 1996 to 80% in 2008 and 2/3 of that access is high-speed.

How do people plan and purchase travel:
- 61% use the Internet exclusively
- 24% use a travel agent and the internet
- 7% use a travel agent
- 8% use neither
(sample base is leisure travelers using airlines and hotels in 2009)

- % of people using the web was 53% of people in 2002.  That number has increased to 66% by 2009.

...and the % of people using the Web to book travel is also a majority
- 35% used the Web to book travel in 2002.  56% of people used the web to book by 2009.  BUT, the % using the web to book has been flat from 2007-2009.

... what do people think is important on a Web site
- 87% lowest fares and rates
- 74% easy booking
- 72% photos
- 46% user reviews

...the next generation of search is meta-search sites like Kayak that search a large number of travel sites for rates, availability and more and let people compare
- only 5% of travelers use meta-search today.

...Meta-search powered price shopping will make it more important to build equity into a brand
- But consumers today care less and less about the brand. 
- A survey asked people when they fly whether they prefer to use a legacy carrier that they have used before, a low fare carrier or had no preference.  21% said a legacy carrier; 29% said the lowfare carrier; 50% said they had no preference.  So half of consumers didn't care about the airline brand.
- A survey asked people how important the lodging brand name was.  57% said the brand name was very or extremely important in 2006.  That number has dropped to 44% in 2009.  So brand importance is dropping for hotels.

... blogs and advisory/review sites are increasingly important.
- 19% use blogs and advisory sites today to plan travel.
- 1/3 of next generation, younger travelers use them.
- What do they use?  42% use YouTube, 33% use Facebook, 30% use MySpace, 27% use TripAdvisor.