By Bill Furlong, CEO
When traveling around the country visiting with vacation rental managers, I hear from time to time about the impact from overseas visitors renting vacation homes. So I thought it would be interesting to see how big a factor that is for vacation rental companies by looking at what the data says across tens of thousands of bookings done using EscapiaONE.
The answer -- overseas guests are a surprisingly small percentage (at least compared to my expectations). Then again, what the story is depends partially on how you look at things. The first takeaway is that during the first half of 2008, only 2.8% of guests staying in U.S. vacation rentals are from outside the U.S. --that little sliver of red in the adjacent chart. Now, certainly some managers see a much higher percentage. The data here is from hundreds of companies with thousands of bookings from coast-to-coast. Still, 2.8% is pretty small.
But when you look at the year over year change, you see a different story. The percentage grew from 2.2% in 2007 to 2.8% in 2008. That's pretty healthy growth. If fact, if you really want to get frothy on interpreting the overseas growth, consider that an increase from 2.2% to 2.8% equals a 27% growth in international share in a single year.
Despite that, not enough visitors are coming to America -- at least in the eyes of the Travel Industry Association. According to TIA data, fewer overseas visitors came to the U.S. in 2007 than in 1997.
The culprit? Well, the cost is certainly not one of them. In fact, for most non-U.S. travelers, America is a great way to stretch your travel budget. 
Consider the graph on the right of the exchange rate between the Euro and the U.S. Dollar over the past two years. The Dollar has gotten almost 30% cheaper for Europeans since late 2006 -- which means that the place they stay in American has gotten 30% cheaper, too.
Outweighing that cost savings, according to the TIA, is the perception of an unfriendly reception at U.S. customs and immigration posts as well as sense that getting a U.S. visa is time consuming and difficult. And the past few years haven't been particularly kind to the U.S. "brand" in the eyes of the rest of the world.
The TIA feels that more work (and spending) is needed selling the U.S to potential overseas visitors. One part of that is launching a web site promoting travel to the U.S. You can check out the new U.S. web site at www.discoveramerica.com.
Comments