by Bill Furlong, CEO
A week ago we released January data from Escapia Research showing that vacation rental bookings trended down 19% versus a year ago.
Now, we'll take a look at how those trends varied by whether a destination was a "drive-to" or "fly-to" destination.
January data supports the anecdotal evidence that agencies with rental units in destinations that require getting on a plane are feeling the greatest pain from the recession. As the chart below shows, agencies in "fly-to" destinations -- dominated in our sample by Hawaii and the Rockies -- have seen dollar bookings decline by 33% from a year ago.
As expected, agencies who rely more on renters located within a drive of their location fared "better" in January (if you can call it that), with bookings dropping by 18%. Interestingly, the best performers in January were agencies who have a balance of people flying and driving -- for example agencies in Lake Tahoe or northern Florida -- who limited the slide to 9%.
The data also shows that agencies in the "drive-to" areas have seen the biggest relative decline in dollars per booking. While the percent decline in price was bigger for "fly-to" areas, price declines were a bigger share of the overall drop for "drive-to" areas. While it is impossible to be certain, it is at least interesting that the group of agencies who appear to have been most aggressive on price saw a lower overall booking dollar drop.
Comments