Escapia Blog - Vacation Rental News and Trends

You're Not Alone: VR Bookings down 25-30% since October

by Bill Furlong, CEO

Many vacation rental managers we speak with have indicated that their business has dropped significantly since the economic crisis began in October.  We recently analyzed booking data and confirmed what most managers know -- rentals are very, very soft right now.

Using Escapia's new custom reporting module, I analyzed bookings by month for 2008 and compared them to 2007.  The sample size is large -- repesenting hundreds of thousands of bookings and hundreds of millions of dollars from vacation rental managers coast to coast.

As you can see from the chart below, bookings in October 2008 were 24% lower than they were in October 2007.  And through early this week, November is tracking at 30% below a year ago.

 

So, what is a manager to do in this kind of environment?  At Escapia, we're big believers in using technology to give you every advantage possible to increase revenue and reduce costs.  Here are a handful of ideas of what Escapia clients can do using their EscapiaONE platform:

• Distribute units as widely as possible:  If ever there was a time to go the extra mile to have your units as discoverable by as many travelers as possible, now is it.  Learn more. 
• Flexible rental policies:  Do you have a policy of a seven night minimum for bookings?  If so, take a look at the recent blog post by Melissa Yang, our CTO.  And keep in mind that the advanced pricing engine lets you automatically create rules such as reducing a minimum night stay requirement as the time left to rent a unit gets shorter and shorter.
• Yield management pricing:  We've seen that average rental rates are also declining as managers are reducing price to drive bookings.  Our advanced pricing engine lets you create those kinds of rules without placing an unmanageable burden on your team.  And those prices will be applied everywhere consumers find your unit including your phone reservationists, your web site and your online distribution.  Learn more.

• Leverage your good reputation:  With availability calendars filling up more slowly, consumers have more options than ever about where to stay.  If you haven't yet started collecting ratings and reviews from past guests, now is the time to use your reputation as a competitive advantage.

Decreasing Your Minimum Length of Stay to Generate More Bookings

By Melissa Yang, CTO and VP of Engineering

PhoCusWright recently completed a market research report on the vacation rental industry. They found out that RBO (rental by owner) in general required a longer minimum length of stay than professionally managed properties, which hurt their business.  To figure out user search patterns, I dug into EscapiaNET data.  EscapiaNET is used by both our own vacation rental consumer site, Clearstay.com, as well as over 30 network partner sites to provide functionality for searching and booking vacation rentals. 

The data below shows the number of queries per length of stay consumers searched online.  The result is based on hundreds of thousands of online queries this year.  More than 90% of users searched a stay of less than a week.  Interestingly, 6 night stays are very popular.  If a property manager requires a week as the minimum length of stay, they may miss out on a large number of potential bookings.

Of course, reducing the minimum length of stay involves some extra overhead such as housekeeping.  How to adjust the minimum length of stay to increase bookings while balancing with increased overhead is an interesting issue for vacation rental managers to consider.

Escapia presents at Travel Innovation Summit

By Bill Furlong, CEO

I spent the past four days at the annual PhoCusWright conference on travel and technology.  Attendees are a "who's who" of the travel industry -- from airline and hotel execs to the CEOs of Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz to the leaders in the online travel business.

This year, PhoCusWright kicked off the conference with a Travel Innovation Summit - a day where they invited 18 of what they see as the top innovators in the travel business to present.  Escapia was excited to be chosen as one of the "elite eighteen".  While we didn't win the award for the top travel industry innovator (that went to Interactive Mobile @dvertising LLC -- a geo-intelligent mobile content company).  But we were thrilled to be one of a small number of companies who made the "top innovator" list.

At the summit, I presented what Escapia is doing to provide vacation rental managers with the best possibile opportunities from the rise of online travel.  The format was limited to ten minutes and was required to be heavy on "demo" and light on slides.  My focus to the audience of online travel experts was on how Escapia is delivering three things that are common to online travel but not to vacation rentals: online distribution and bookings, yield management and guest reviews.

Customer Video: Why did you Choose Escapia?

By Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

Curious about Escapia?  Ask our customers! 

Over the past few weeks on the road, I've been filming Escapia customers on various topics.  The first topic was "Why did you Choose Escapia?"  See the video below:

Stay tuned to our website and blog for more customer videos to be released!

Vacation Rental Seminars in NW Florida and Gulf Shores

Bryan, Dylan and Kris of the Escapia Sales and Marketing team were on the road again last week hosting two great vacation rental seminars in Northwest Florida and Gulf Shores, Alabama.   The two seminars were a huge success bringing over 70 attendees from 38 local companies to Sandestin, Florida and Point Clear, Alabama to discuss the current trends and future of the vacation rental industry. 

Congratulations to our Sony DVD Player giveaway winners Jeanne Marie of Royal Beach & Golf Resorts and Carol of Island Properties of Perdido (below). 

Thanks to everyone who came to the seminar and thanks to our seminar sponsors CSA Travel Protection, Visual Data Systems and Ascent Processing. 

 
Left to right: Bryan Boice (Escapia), Brandon Besecker (Visual Data Systems), Regina Ebert (Ascent Processing), Dylan Peterson (Escapia), Kris Lande (Escapia) and Lee Hughes (CSA Travel Protection). 

Be sure to check our website for future vacation rental seminars in your area!

VRMA: Another Great Show!

By John Suzuki, VP Sales of Escapia

VRMA National Conference: 
We just returned from the annual Vacation Rental Managers Association in Phoenix, Arizona. In total, more than 500 vacation rental managers from around the country attended the three day conference to participate in educational sessions, meet up with various suppliers, and network with old and new friends.

New Capabilities:
We introduced and demonstrated many of our new capabilities including Dynamic Rates, Automatic Online Distribution, and Guest Ratings and Reviews. We also announced new capabilities coming this year including Custom Reports, Guest Reviews on customer WebPortal sites, Open Item Accounts Payable, and Rates by Occupancy.

Another highlight of the show was our “We FLIP for Escapia” giveaway of Flip video cameras. The really cool thing about these cameras is that they’re incredibly easy to use, fit in your pocket, connect directly to your computer, and uploads easily to YouTube and other video-sharing websites. Check out the video below (taken from a FLIP camera of course) and congratulations to the winners!

1. John Kelly, Bluewater GMAC
2. Thelma Coffone, Tica Cabins
3. Sharon Holt, Loon Reservations
4. Jessica Plimpton, Cabins for You
5. Jodi Refosco, Taylor-Made Deep Creek Vacation Rentals
6. Jennifer Murphy, San Carlos Agency
7. Steve Perkins, Deer Valley Lodging
8. Dick Davis, Oak Island Accommodations

We FLIP for Escapia! from Escapia on Vimeo.

New VRMA Board:
The VRMA has new members on the Board of Directors and a new Executive Committee. The new Board is as follows:

            Alex Risser, Outer Beaches Realty and VRMA President
            Jim Kempski, Specialty Resorts and VRMA Immediate Past President
            Steve Trover, All Star Vacation Home Mgmt and VRMA VP
            Ben Edwards, Waterstone Resorts and VRMA Treasurer
            Kyle Buehner, Navis, Inc. and VRMA Secretary
            Bill Bernier, Brunswick Plantation and Golf Resort
            Park Brady, ResortQuest 
            Alan Hammond, Holiday Vacation Rentals
            Betsy LaBarge, Cascade Vacation Rentals
            Maureen Regan, Seaside Vacation Rentals
            Cort Roussel, Fanconia Notch Vacations

Congratulations to the new Board members and our thanks to them for their willingness to serve, and special thanks to Pedro Mandoki, Zack Taylor, and Greg Coffone for their tremendous support of the VRMA.

The results are in! Guest reviews boost bookings; 91% satisfaction

By Bill Furlong, CEO

At the annual conference of the Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) in Phoenix, I shared the podium with T.J. Mahoney of FlipKey to discuss why vacation rental managers should use guest reviews to drive success in their agency and how to do so.  Thanks to T.J. for being a great partner in making the presentation and to FlipKey for being a great partner for EscapiaNET.

Vacation Rental Guest Reviews

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: vacation rentals)

Included in the presentation are a number of charts that showed what we have learned about guest reviews at Escapia after having collected 40,000 reviews.  Here are some of the key findings from our data analysis:

1. Guest reviews drive bookings:  We've always thought they would.  But now we can see it in the data from ClearStay.  The ratio of bookings to units on ClearStay for units with reviews is 41% higher than for those without reviews.  That's a compelling result that units with reviews get booked more often than those without them. 
2. Vacation rentals generate exceptionally high satisfaction:  91% of past guests said they would recommend the unit they stayed in to a friend.  And the average overall satistfaction score is 4.46 out of 5.  That is a spectacular result and significantly higher than the average ratings I have heard of for hotels. 
3. Great location; less great condition:  Escapia asks guest to rate their overall satisfaction and gets their rating on four specific factors -- location, service, cleanliness and condition.  Location gets the best scores; condition the worst.
4. Bookings happen for all units and all ratings:  One concern occasionally expressed is that units with a low rating will not get any bookings.  On ClearStay, we've seen that even units with low ratings actually do get booked.  In fact, units with a rating of 1, 2 or 3 out of 5 represent 30% of ClearStay bookings but just 13% of units.  My conclusion -- first, consumers sometimes have specific criteria that trumps the rating (i.e. they want a place with a hot tub and Internet access above all) and second that they understand a price/value tradeoff.
5. Ask and you will receive: I asked a number of managers at the VRMA show what response rate they get for the paper surveys many of them leave in the rental units or hand to guests at arrival or departure.  The typical answer was low single digit percentages.  Escapia has now asked over 100,000 guests to review their stay.  The response rate has been a very high 38% -- reflecting the enthusiasm people have for sharing their experience when it is made easy.  And of the responses, 75% include not only a rating but also a written comment.

If you are an Escapia client interested in getting started with reviews, please contact customer support.  If you are a vacation rental manager using a different software platform and are interested in incorporating reviews into your business my first piece of advice would be to consider using EscapiaONE software which incorporates reviews at no extra charge.  If using EscapiaONE isn't an option (for some unimaginable reason :-) , my second piece of advice would be to contact FlipKey.  They run a free and well desiged service and they can set you up regardless what software you use.

Get Ready for Great New Features!

This just in! Escapia is coming out with a number of great new features to be released on November 17th.  Included in the new release will be an advanced custom reporting module, open item accounts payable and expanded ratings and reviews.  All of these features will be previewed at the upcoming VRMA annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

Click here to read more details about the specific features to be included in the release. 

Another Quarter of Record Growth at Escapia!

Today Escapia announced record growth for the quarter ending September 30th - with sales this quarter tripling that of the same quarter last year. 

Congratulations to Escapia's team and clients that made these great results possible!

Click here to see the full press release. 

Attracting Special Event Travelers

By Parag Vaish, Vice President of Consumer Marketing

If you’re looking to fill offseason holes or increase vacation property rental year-round, don’t forget to reach out to special event travelers.  These travelers, who often make trips and attend events in groups, will be especially interested in the benefits of renting a vacation home.  Not only are vacation homes a better value for travelling groups, they offer a welcome alternative to over-abundant “no vacancy” signs.

If your area isn’t hosting the Olympics or the Super Bowl in the near future, don’t despair; don’t forget about more minor sporting events (such as the Fiesta Bowl), conferences, contests (such as fishing), trade shows, festivals, and fairs.  Sites like CitySearch.com offer a good snapshot of events in various cities.

You don’t have to flood your property description with event promotion to effectively attract event travelers.  A simple addition of “Available for [event]” at the end of your property headline is a tactful way to inform and remind without overpowering your ad. 

Give it a shot.  Previously overlooked events may just be your ticket to rental success.