Escapia Blog - Vacation Rental News and Trends

Blogging VRMA: Guest Reviews - Experiences and Tips from the Top Users

By Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

Over the past week we’ve blogged about sessions at VRMA presented by a range of industry experts. Escapia was honored to be chosen to present four sessions at the VRMA conference.  The first session Escapia participated in was “Guest Reviews:  Experiences and Tips from the Top Users.”  Bill Furlong, CEO of Escapia, led the session along with TJ Mahony of FlipKey.  Bill and TJ were also joined by a panel of vacation rental managers who shared their experiences and advice with guest reviews.

If you weren’t able to make it to this year's VRMA conference, we’ve included a video of the session below as well as the slides from the presentation.

Blogging VRMA: Customer Service

By James Sells, Dir. Client Services

Jodi Taylor Refosco from Taylor-Made Deep Creek and Denny Honsey from Catalina Vacation Rentals gave a great talk at the VRMA conference on Customer Service called  “From Yelling at You to Boasting About you: How to Deal with Difficult Situations and High Maintenance Owners and Guests”.

They shared many great tips and humorous examples (the cockroach story was great) during their session. Some of the things they covered that I thought were really great ideas and reminders to those of us in the Customer Service world are:

• Assume responsibility for misunderstandings
• Stay Positive
• Listen to the guest carefully, let them vent, and read between the lines
• Use the 2 Person Rule – if you are the second person to talk with a guest, take charge of the situation and resolve it.
• “I want to help you with this situation” – always use the words “We” or” I”.
• Anticipate needs/volunteer necessary information
• When you are discussing the situation give the guest 2 choices (always make the one you want them to choose more enticing)
• Have a specific goal when negotiating. For instance if you are negotiating a discount, make sure you know the maximum you are willing to do.
• Keep Track – once a problem occurs, record it
• Do not find the nearest exit when you see an angry guest come into the office

Do not let someone determine your behavior. When you are around behavior you do not like is the best time to exhibit behavior you want.

L- Listen attentively without interrupting, encouraging the guest to voice all of their concern

E – Empathize – Let the guest know you “understand how they feel”. It may be appropriate to acknowledge that you would also be upset in their situation

A – Apologize – Sometimes a simple apology is all guests really want. An apology is not necessarily an admission of fault, but an acknowledgment that the intentions were good.

R – Restate the options/Resolve the Problem. When a guests complain they want results. If their request is directly in conflict with policy, offer alternatives. (Avoid  actually saying “policy” to guests)

N – Never Try to Prove Guests Wrong. Sometimes guests may offer undue criticism; you might even determine the guest actually caused the problem themselves. However, attempt to prove guest wrong never leads to satisfactory solutions.

Blogging VRMA: 25 Top Web Sites for VR Managers

By Bill Furlong, CEO

Trent Blizzard, founder of Blizzard Internet Marketing, presented his list of 25 Web sites that every VR manager should know.  Trent's presentations are always lively and packed with info.  And best of all, they are very practical with some tips and/or sites that present opportuunities for VR managers to improve their online marketing.

Oh, and if you're counting you might note that Trent admitted that he fell a couple sites short of the 25.  But there should be more than enough below to keep you busy.

According to Trent, links drive 66% of Google's search results.  Metatags drive 0% of Google today (still drive Yahoo search results, but Yahoo search will switch to Microsoft's Bing under the recent deal between the two companies).

Social Networking faves:
- Facebook: Good for search engine results saturation.  But you can waste a lot of time.  A lot of people are doing it wrong.
- Twitter: All about last minute stuff.
- Linked In: All about your business.  About business networking and not guests and bookings.

SEO Faves:
- DMOZ.org: submit your self
- PRWeb: for distributing press releases.
- Best of the Web:  Nice listing and link that helps in search engines ("SE"s)

User Gen Content faves:
- Flickr: upload your pictures.
- YouTube: Second biggest search engine in the world.  50/50 split in the audience of how many managers are using videos on their web site.  Consider Wistia.com for hosting videos.  More customizable if you are putting it on your site.  Tubemogul.com will push videos out to multiple sites at once (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
- CommunityWalk:  Create maps.  Good for search engines.  Especially local SEs.
- Google MyMaps:  Ditto above.
- Google Earth (keyhole):  Ditto above.

>> Tip:  Put full contact info with address and phone not just link.

Review Faves:
- FlipKey
- Yelp
- Judy's Book
- Google Local:  Take ownership of your listing on Google Local

>> Tip:  Try and get reviews in a lot of different places.

Yahoo Faves:
- Travel.yahoo.com
- Local.yahoo.com
- Yahoo Biz Directory: $299/year

>> Spending 10-20 hours can pay off.  Sites are below the radar for a lot of people, so you can do well.

VRM Faves:
- Postlets: Upload homes.  RE and VR site.  Very time consuming to upload by hand.  Free.
- Besttraveldeals.net:  Helps Google page rank as well as passing traffic.  Completely free.

Learn to Fish!
- SEMRush: Most exciting tool on Internet.  Searches Internet phrases and what keywords you rank for.
- Yahoo Site Explore: Top links to your site or your competitors'.
- SEOMoz Juicy Link Finder:  Fee-based tool.  Rich tool set. 

Yield management hits the slopes

By Bill Furlong, CEO

Escapia is a big believer that vacation rental managers have a terrific opportunity to embrace yield pricing/dynamic pricing/revenue management/variable pricing (pick your favorite term) to vacation rental management.  So we are particularly pleased when we see the same basic principal introduced in a similar space by people equally dedicated to innovating to help grow revenue for their clients as we are.
>As the attached blog post explains, Liftopia (www.liftopia.com) is introducing variable pricing to ski lift tickets with very positive results.  As we've seen with vacation rentals, while it takes time for the idea to be embraced, those who do so see benefits and the idea spreads to other companies.

As with Liftopia, Escapia's software platform lets vacation rental managers adjust prices on a real time basis to take advantage of consumers who are motivated by great deals when they book their vacation.  On our consumer site, ClearStay.com, we have a collection of offers where consumers can save if they are booking at the last minute.

We wish the Liftopia team well and are excited to see their passion for helping bring advanced pricing and promotional tools to a part of the travel industry that hasn't yet benefitted from them.

Update Your Owner Agreements

By John Suzuki, Escapia VP Sales

Here's the whole ball game:  If your commission is 20 percent, and you have to offer a 30% discount to win a renter, does that mean you walk away since you'd otherwise be under water for that rental? If the answer is yes, you need to update your owner agreements.

If you believe as we do that, like hotels and airlines, dynamic rates based on supply, demand, and timing offers a big competitive advantage, your owner contracts need to be set up so that discounts and marketing fees you pay to various OTAs (Online Travel Agent) should be shared with your owners, and not solely paid out of your commissions.

Using the above example, let's say you have a $1,000 rental and are paid a 20% commission. If you have to discount the unit by 30%, your commission should not be minus $100 (i.e. $1,000 times your 20% commission less 30%). Rather, it should be $140 ($1,000 less 30%, times your 20% commission). In other words, because the world of vacation rentals is following the path of hotels and airlines with yield management pricing, you need to accommodate the fact that your rates are going to become as inconsistent as sunny days in Seattle. Here's why:

Yield management and dynamic rates enable you to maximize occupancy and minimize revenue leakage. While traditional rate structures offer different rates for various reasons (i.e. high/low/shoulder seasons, weekends, holidays, etc.), Escapia lets you take your rates to a whole new level with rate rules that are easy and automatic:

• Last minute deals
• Premiums/Discounts based on occupancy
• Holiday premiums and discounts based on time to arrival
• Weekday and mid-week discounts
• Promotions with free or discounted nights.
• Premiums and discounts based on source of booking.
• Legacy guest pricing
• Rollover pricing into next year
• Premium pricing based on "non-typical" stays.
• Guest-type premiums and discounts

In this new world of smart rate management, the entire financial burden of marketing your vacation rentals should not and cannot rest on you alone. After all, in today's economy, everyone is shopping for deals and if you can't give them what they want, they'll find someone else who will. So here's the question to your owners for 2009: Isn't a little bit of somethin' better than a whole lot of nuthin'?

Remarkable is a Choice.

By James Sells, Dir. Client Services

A very thought provoking article from the great Seth Godin. (Who’s blog you should read religiously if you are a business owner, marketer, manager, or decision maker that values innovation, emerging trends, and insightful commentary.)

The two points that jump out to me the most are;

      “You’re probably boring on purpose.”
     “Remarkable costs time and money and effort…”

What are the areas that you are boring in and how can you get un-boring?

Is your staff boring? (How do they answer the phone, greet guests, write e-mails?)

Is your company boring? (Do you specialize in anything? Is there something that you do or offer that no one else does?)

Are your units boring? (Are they like every other home in your area? What is unique about them? How can you draw that out in the pictures and descriptions on your website?)

Is your pricing boring? (Is it the exact same as every other agency in your area? Do you offer discounts for last minute bookings? Partial stays? Do you offer special promotions?)

Is your website boring? (What does it communicate? Professionalism? Fun? Luxury? Or does it look like your 16 year old nephew designed it?)

Are your services boring? (Do you offer services that no other agency does? At lower costs or better value?)

“If people aren't discussing your products, your services…there's a reason.”

Keywords Aren't the Only Way to Unlock Rental Bookings

By Parag Vaish, Vice President Consumer Marketing

With competition in the vacation rental industry always increasing, there’s been a lot of focus on which “key” words most effectively attract renters.  But now, some insiders say we should go back in the opposite direction – instead of simply listing several brief, attractive terms to snag attention, we should expand the terms into longer (sentence-format) descriptions of the actual experiences they evoke.  This automatically generates strong imagery which will distinguish your rental from those that require imaginative effort on behalf of the traveler.

To grasp the gravity of the difference that focusing on experience makes, imagine for a moment that you are the renter looking for a vacation home to share with a few of your friends.  The first ad you come across simply lists its amenities, which are indeed impressive:

Ocean view
Beautiful natural stone patio with outdoor furniture
Gas BBQ grill
Close to fine wine shops

But the second ad you come across draws you into the experience and gives you images of how you will enjoy utilizing the amenities; it says:

Step out onto your beautiful natural stone patio on a warm, breezy evening and fire up the gas grill.  Indulge in a glass of fine wine from one of the many friendly local shop owners and enjoy a delicious outdoor meal with your friends as the sun sets over the glimmering ocean in front of you.

Both ads boast the same amenities, but the latter makes them sound like true luxuries rather than clear-cut commodities – and in this waning economy and increasingly competitive market, renters want the most luxurious experiences they can get for their dollar.  The bottom line, as property owner Jon Ludwig puts it, is that putting a little more time and thought into your rental advertisements is the key to making a real impression on your renters and unlocking those extra bookings.

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. Mahony 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.

Maximize your revenues with properly structured Owner Agreements

By John Suzuki, Vice President of Sales

It's time to get your Owner Agreements in line with the new world of Yield Management in vacation rentals.

Traditional owner agreements include commissions based on “published” rates which, depending on the market geography and services provided, range from 10 to 50 percent. For example, if your commission rate is 30% on a $1,000 rental, you would make $300 and the owner would make $700.

But who pays for the discounts and/or online marketing fees when you discount the unit or rent it through online booking sites? Traditionally, you do. Thus, if the cost of marketing for that $1,000 rental was $100, that cost would come out of your commissions with you netting $200 instead of $300, while the owner retains his $700 income. Is that fair to you? We think not, especially these days, and here's why.

Enter Yield Management
If you implement Yield Management as hotels and airlines do (i.e Setting rates based on supply and demand), then it stands to reason that your rates must stay aligned with changing business conditions. What does that mean to your Owner Agreements and your commissions? Big bucks to you. The following is a simple example illustrating the difference

Traditional agreement:
    Rental Income:                                $1,000
    Your 30% Commission                       $   300
    Less Marketing Costs:                    - $   100 
    Your Net Commissions:                     $   200

Yield Management Agreement:
    Rental Income:                                   $1,000
    Subtract Marketing Costs off the top:  - $   100
    Total Rental Income:                           $   900
    Your Net Commission (30%):                 $   270

Multiply the difference of $70 by 100 bookings, and you end up with $7,000 more on your side of the balance sheet. Multiply it by 1,000 bookings and you end up with $70,000 more to you. Thus,our recommendation is to negotiate Owner Agreements with your commissions calculated AFTER marketing costs have been applied. It really does make a difference, and if you play your cards right, your owners will go along.

One thing that’s worth noting: It is inevitable that some of your owners will not to play, and when you ask them if they’d rather have a little bit of something or a whole lot of nothing, some will answer “a whole lot of nuthin’. That’s okay, because if you decide to let them continue with the traditional program, you’ll have the chance later on to show them how much better your other owners are doing with the new program.

Yield Management in vacation rentals is here and will quickly become the standard across the industry. Make sure your Owner Agreements are in alignment with how you manage your rates.

Making the Most of SEO - Part 2

By James Sells, Dir. of Client Services

Part of making the most of your Search Engine Optimization efforts is getting the most return on your dollar. There are plenty of SEO "consultants" out there that will tell you that they will guarantee page 1 rankings on all of the major search engines for merely several hundred dollars a month, and use plenty of buzzwords to convince you that they are as good as they say they are.

iMedia recently published an in depth article (here) on several things to look out for when working with an SEO consultant. And if you've hired an SEO "expert" recently, this is a must read.