By James Sells, Dir. Client Services & Installation
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
- General Eric Shinseki
“You don’t have to like change in order to take advantage of it.”
- Seth Godin
Both of those quotes hang on the wall in my office where I can easily glance up and see them throughout the day. The reason I need to be reminded of these points is because like most people, I don’t really like change. Change is often difficult, stressful, and unpredictable. And at least routine offers the illusion of control, right?
I also like to be reminded of these points as I interact with our clients throughout the day. I often get asked for ideas on enhancing their business, new streams of revenue, or discussing why something does or does not make sense.
Like it or not the game is changing and as the quote above says, you can either choose to adapt or choose to be irrelevant. But either way, you are making a choice.
To that end I thought I would share a few of the topics that I tend to discuss regularly with vacation rental managers. Take these thoughts and ideas, reflect on them, improve on them, and discuss them with your business partners, staff, and owners. But don’t choose to become irrelevant. Burying your head in the sand and hearkening for “the good old days” is the quickest way to get there.
The internet is here to stay:
That might sound silly, but I'm amazed at the number of companies and industry insiders that refuse to embrace this. Like it or not, the internet and online shopping, research, communications and transactions are not going to go away. In fact they will become more and more integrated into every aspect of our lives over the next few years.
A recent study shows that at home broadband access has jumped considerably over the last few years with the biggest increases in the 65+ age groups. (here)
And significant amounts of each group are booking travel online. (65% or higher for each group.)
This means that not only is SEO and driving traffic to your site important, but third party bookings are going to become a larger staple of your business. People are shopping around and comparing prices and if you can’t give them a competitive price or the most bang for their buck, they’ll go elsewhere. I know plenty of agencies that get third party bookings for guest’s that have stayed with them in the past. They’re shopping around and if you aren’t proactively marketing to them and they look elsewhere for their next vacation, you’ve lost their business and they are no longer your guest.
Ratings & Reviews are now the norm:
While it might be a relatively new thing within the vacation rental industry, eBay, Amazon.com, Netflix, and Expedia (and other travel sites), have all been doing it for a while now. Zagat has been doing it for even longer, though offline.
It’s funny how a review on Amazon is now more influential than a paid for professional review.
What this all means is that people have come to expect it and your business is going to suffer if you don’t have them. Don’t think so? Our data shows that the ratio of bookings for units with reviews is 41% higher than for those without reviews. Read that again. Then read it again. (*Data is based on agencies that use Escapia’s Ratings & Reviews.)
You cannot afford to miss out on this. Yes you will get a negative review or two, but we have found that in the vast majority of cases the negative reviews actually legitimize the positive reviews. (I.e. People get a little suspicious if you only have 5 star reviews.)
Social networking sites are your friend:
Not only can it contribute to your SEO efforts, but sites like Facebook and Twitter have become mainstream over the last year. Companies now use them as recruiting tools and people share opinions and ideas with their entire networks in 144 or characters or less. And being that each of these applications have components for all of the new phones (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.), people can update them from virtually anywhere.
When someone types “Having a great weekend at a house on the beach in NC” it instantly gets in front of hundreds of people. And inevitably someone is going to ask them where they’re staying.
This is the new way word of mouth travels. Embrace it. It’s free advertising. Create a Facebook and Twitter account and invite your prospects and guests to follow you. Post Last Minute Deals and marketing campaigns on your accounts that point back to your website and blog.
Integration is critical for saving $$:
This is nothing new but I’m still amazed at the number of agencies that manually update dashboards and websites or run on multiple systems. Their rationale is that it saves them money. But what is it costing you in opportunities?
You could be spending your efforts on pleasing your guests, updating your website content, writing a blog article, creating a marketing deals e-mail, growing your network, or any number of things that will potentially drive revenue or increase your market share instead of manually updating that third party marketing site because it saves you a couple of bucks each year.
Yes, change is hard and sometimes intimidating. But it also presents a great opportunity to grow your business and provide your guests with a better experience. And if you are one of the few that embrace the change early, you will also differentiate yourself from your competitors.
