Escapia Blog - Vacation Rental News and Trends

Managing Your Business From 36,000 Feet

By Bryan Boice, National Sales Manager

You've heard us talk about the virtues of web-based computing and Escapia's "access   anywhere" model. Today I found out how true that is. I'm currently sitting on a Delta flight back to Seattle and with onboard internet can access Escapia and our websites at a speedy clip. Everything I need to run my business - reservations, contacts, reports, accounting, marketing and distribution - is available. I've spoken to clients before who've been able to run their business from anywhere (Starbucks, a hotel room, VRMA convention floor, on vacation, etc.) but at 36,000 feet? Amazing! Have any great web-based access stories? I'd love to hear them!  

Blogging VRMA: Measuring Online Success

by Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

At this year's VRMA show in Washington DC, I got the chance to attend some great educational sessions throughout the week.  One of my favorite sessions was "Measuring Online Success: Following the Metrics the Matter" presented by Mark Randle and Rebecca Lundregan of Visual Data Systems.



In the session Mark and Rebecca discussed how to measure your company's website success by looking at the nine metrics that they feel matter the most.  Here is a rundown of the metrics that matter according to the presenters:

1. Average Time on Site: What is the total time for all visits when divided by the total number of visits?

2.  Average Pages per Visit: What is the total page views divided by the total number of visits?

3. Bounce Rate:  Bounce rate represents the percentage of initial visitors to your website who see a single page and immediately leave to a different site. Also known as 'hit and run' visits, and not to be confused with 'exit rate.'

4.  Exit Percentage: This is the percentage of visitors leaving your website from a particular page.

5. New Visits vs. Returning Visits:  This shows you data for new visitors compared to returning visitors and is determined by a tracking code and not by an IP address. 

6. Goal Conversions:  Setting up goals on your site is a great way to measure if your visitors are navigating through your site as you'd like them to.  An example of goals to set up would be getting visitors to a 'contact us' page, the booking page or the 'email a friend' page. 

7.  Paid Traffic vs. Organic Traffic: This is the overall visits brought to your site by either your SEM (search engine marketing) pay-per-click efforts versus the traffic brought to your site by SEO (search engine optimization) organic efforts. 

8.  Map Overlay:  The map overlay is a great way to see where your website visitors are coming from by geographic area.

9. Google Custom Search Statistics: Google Custom Search creates a customized web search on your site with results from your website pages.

Blogging VRMA: Consumer Travel Trends

by Bill Furlong, CEO

Peter Yesawich, President and CEO of the Ypartnership, the PR agency used by the VRMA,  gave a very informative and entertaining presentation on how the consumer travel landscape is changing.  The following were his main points:

...Travel is down from the peak
- 55% of households took 1 trip/year75 miles or more from home.
- That number has dropped from a peak of 66% in 1999 and 63% as recently as 2007.
...the Web is the dominant way people are planning travel
- % of households with web access has increased from 11% in 1996 to 80% in 2008 and 2/3 of that access is high-speed.

How do people plan and purchase travel:
- 61% use the Internet exclusively
- 24% use a travel agent and the internet
- 7% use a travel agent
- 8% use neither
(sample base is leisure travelers using airlines and hotels in 2009)

- % of people using the web was 53% of people in 2002.  That number has increased to 66% by 2009.

...and the % of people using the Web to book travel is also a majority
- 35% used the Web to book travel in 2002.  56% of people used the web to book by 2009.  BUT, the % using the web to book has been flat from 2007-2009.

... what do people think is important on a Web site
- 87% lowest fares and rates
- 74% easy booking
- 72% photos
- 46% user reviews

...the next generation of search is meta-search sites like Kayak that search a large number of travel sites for rates, availability and more and let people compare
- only 5% of travelers use meta-search today.

...Meta-search powered price shopping will make it more important to build equity into a brand
- But consumers today care less and less about the brand. 
- A survey asked people when they fly whether they prefer to use a legacy carrier that they have used before, a low fare carrier or had no preference.  21% said a legacy carrier; 29% said the lowfare carrier; 50% said they had no preference.  So half of consumers didn't care about the airline brand.
- A survey asked people how important the lodging brand name was.  57% said the brand name was very or extremely important in 2006.  That number has dropped to 44% in 2009.  So brand importance is dropping for hotels.

... blogs and advisory/review sites are increasingly important.
- 19% use blogs and advisory sites today to plan travel.
- 1/3 of next generation, younger travelers use them.
- What do they use?  42% use YouTube, 33% use Facebook, 30% use MySpace, 27% use TripAdvisor.

Google Places and Search 3.0

By Bill Furlong, CEO

A few weeks ago, I wrote here about the battle for Search 3.0 -- the phase of search where the underlying content itself on the search engines gets rich, detailed and structured for filtering.

Last week, Google launched Google Places -- an enhancement to Google Maps that fits squarely into the Search 3.0 strategy.  In their own words... "A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it.  By every place, we really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world."  Could those places also mean vacation rental homes?  I think so.

In fact, type in Seattle real estate into Google, check the box for "rentals" and you get the following:

Yes, each of those little dots is a place to rent in Seattle.  But with Google Places, they've now taken one step further.  Click on the "more info" link next to the listing on the left and you get the following:

It may not be pretty (Google rarely is), but that sure looks like a rental listing to me.  As you can imagine, this has big implications for vacation rental managers and vacation rental directories alike.  For managers, having the richest, most accurate data in Google's data source will be critical.  And for vacation rental directories, the question is whether there is value in vertical search if Google covers the category with a Place page.

Of course, what also matters is how much visibility Google gives to this within Google.  And that is also becoming a controversial question as this post from TechCruch indicates.  When Google had Google Base, the content gained little visibility from web serches and thus little value to those who listed.  Time will tell whether Places takes a different path. 

Vacation rentals and the battle for Search 3.0

By Bill Furlong, CEO

As any of you who have attended Escapia's vacation rental breakfast seminar series know, we talk a bit in the session about the future of search and how it impacts vacation rental managers.

Search has gone through two major evolutionary phases over the past fifteen years.  We are on the cusp of a third.  Search 1.0 -- which was dominated by Yahoo! was about directing people to sites that covered the topic they were interested in.  Much like a card catalog in a library, it was a manually maintained directory of web sites.  In fact, you can still see that directory today.  Here's what it looks like for vacation rentals, which are indexed under Directory > Business and Economy > Shopping and Services > Travel and Transportation > Lodging > Vacation Rentals

 

As content on web sites exploded, it became clear that directing people to the site that covered the topic the searcher was interested in wasn't good enough.  Instead, search needed to match the topic to the underlying content on all those sites.  And in came Search 2.0.  While Yahoo! certainly evolved from the directory approach to the web page search paradigm, Google swept in and took leadership of search.  And so search results began to look like the following:

  

During this whole period of search, I was working at Microsoft which, sadly (at least for me) hadn't figured out a way to take a leadership position in search.

And that brings me to where we are today -- the battle for leadership in Search 3.0.  The search gurus will tell you that there are a lot of angles on the next evolution of search.  Those who are enamored with Twitter and Facebook updates will point to the amount of real-time content being created and will say that the big evolution ahead is real-time search (i.e. how does a search engine show results to a search of "Lake Tahoe vacation rentals" that include things like a Twitter tweet written five minutes ago that says "we just stayed at an incredible home in Lake Tahoe.  Here's the place www.blahblahblah.com ").

More important to vacation rentals (in my opinion) is the thread of Search 3.0 that says that what a search engine should do when you ask a question isn't point you to a site that covers that topic (Search 1.0) or to web pages that have a lot of information about that topic (Search 2.0) but instead should provide the information you want as directly as possible.  In a recent interview with TechCrunch (alasjdfla), Google CEO Eric Schmidt basically said this is where Google wants search to evolve -- to providing answers, not just pointing to where you can find the information: 

"So I don’t know how to characterize the next 10 years except to say that we’ll get to the point - the long-term goal is to be able to give you one answer, which is exactly the right answer over time. Okay, you know, the question I’ll ask today, how many Americans have - what percentage of Americans have passports?…The Google’s answer was a site, which was somebody who had attempted to answer that question and had multiple answers. It’s quite interesting actually to read…So you go to a very good definitive site. And what I’d like to do is to get to the point where we could read his site and then summarize what it says, and answer the question…Along with the citation and so forth and so on."

In vacation rentals, Google has already begun doing so in selected places.  Take Honolulu vacation rentals, for example.  When you do the search, Google gives you a link to a page with the following listings...not just links to pages of listings but the listings themselves...

 

So what is the looming battle for Search 3.0?  As you may have read, those scrappy guys in Redmond are trying to claw their way back into the search game with the recent launch of Bing.com which has been pretty well received.  Their pitch to all of us is that Bing.com isn't a search engine, it is a decision machine.  One of the top categories where they are trying to show what they mean by that is travel.  Their acquisition a year ago of Farecast gives them the tools to provide rich information in the results themselves -- not just pointers to where you can find the results.  Here's what a Honolulu hotel search result looks like in Bing.com:

 

Yes, it looks more like Expedia or Travelocity or Kayak than it does like Google.  And therein lies one of the big Search 3.0 bets that Microsoft is making.  Their view is that consumers will gravitate to a search experience that comes closer to providing answers, not just pointers to where you can find the answers.  Based on Eric Schmidt's comments and the experience Google provides for Honolulu vacation rentals, they generally agree with that assessment.  And that will make for one interesting battle for leadership in Search 3.0.

Our belief at Escapia is that, regardless of who wins that battle, vacation rental managers are best positioned for this next phase of search with a web hosted software solution that is optimized for distributing content, rates, availability information, guest reviews, promotions and for facilitating online bookings.  That's a big driver in our R&D efforts as we continue to make our vacation rental software richer and richer.

The New Word of Mouth

By James Sells, Dir. Client Services & Implementation

I had to grin when I saw this the other day.

Whether this is HomeAway’s way of supporting a cause they believe in (Livestrong), or it is a strategic marketing campaign with a celebrity endorsement. Or a bit of both, the effect is still the same.

The old adage goes that happy customers tell three of their friends, while unhappy customers tell eight. But in the digital age happy and unhappy customers tell hundreds of their friends (or followers) in 140 characters or less. Or in this case over 1.6mm of their friends and followers.

Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace may all be passing fads but people will continue to communicate and share ideas and opinions online. And thanks to these sites as well as e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay, user reviews are now more powerful than “professional” reviews. At least to those online.

This also goes to show that providing guests with a great (or not so great) experience reaches much farther and much faster, than it ever did before.

Here’s another idea; once a year donate a stay at one of the homes you manage to a local or national charity. For either an off-site retreat for their management team or volunteer staff, or as part of a charity auction. Don’t do it for the potential exposure, do it because you believe in the cause. But who knows how far your generosity will reach?

Oh, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Bing.com - From Search Engines to Decision Engines

By Steve Murch, Escapia Chairman


In 2006, I delivered a keynote presentation at the VRMA annual conference that included several predictions for the future.  One of the first on the list was that Search Engines would evolve beyond serving up 10 blue links to structuring the search and delivering answers.

Bing.com, from Microsoft, went live on June 1.  While it took a little longer than I predicted to get to this milestone, I believe continued structuring of the search experience is inevitable and benefits consumers, suppliers (and in turn Escapia) greatly.  Bing's launch will necessitate competitive responses from Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines, and their response will in turn garner a response from Microsoft, each trying to outdo the other in helping consumers make decisions. Over a period of the next few years, this competitive dynamic will meaningfully shift the search experience on the Internet and have profound long-term impacts. 

Bing.com represents the beginning of a gradual but major shift, where results can be filtered and displayed before handing off to third parties. 

Here’s a commercial that gets at the change:

Let’s look at the way people search for vacation rentals today.  If you’re looking for a Maui vacation rental, chances are, you’re going to start by launching your browser, and Googling “Maui vacation rental”, “Kihei vacation rental”, etc. 

But here’s the thing.  You’re probably very uninterested in seeing any Maui vacation rental option that won’t work for you. 

This may include:

• Spots that are already booked for the dates you want to go
• Those that aren’t in your price range
• Those that don’t have any photos
• Those that aren’t in the specific neighborhood or location you want
• Those that don’t have the bedroom configuration or amenities you want
• etc.

You don’t want to waste time firing off dozens of emails to property managers asking questions, and then wading through the results.  Chances are pretty good you want to narrow your search down to just those that are right for you.  Should you really have to waste time wading through all those bad results to get to the one you want? 

The search engine that doesn’t waste your time is the one you’ll continue to go back to.

Bill Gates has described it this way:  “The future of search is in verbs, not nouns”.  In other words, he’s saying that when you go to a search engine, it’s usually because you’re trying to do something.  Like decide on which car is best for you.  Or what to cook with leftover chicken.  Or decide where to go on vacation.  Or find the best vacation rental that meets your desires and constraints.  Perhaps the two biggest constraints in vacation lodging decisionmaking are dates of availability and pricing.  These are items that, in the professional property manager world, reside only on the backoffice system; going any other place for this information with most systems can result in an answer that is wildly wrong.

For the consumer, the pages and pages of blue links are just a means to an end. 

The question Microsoft now poses is:  What if that end could be more quickly surfaced for you?  Don’t believe Google’s feigned indifference here.  Google and Yahoo! as they exist today in 2009 will continue to change, and get closer to delivering answers and insight for those trying to make decisions.

In the lodging segment, I see this eventually evolving as search engines actually placing availability filters and structured filters right on the search page, and then (optionally or not) showing you the search results in condensed form before handing you off to third parties.  You’re starting to see this with Bing Travel. 

For instance, try a hotel search for Las Vegas, and here’s what you get before you even leave Bing.com:

Let’s apply that to vacation rentals.

What is required for search engines to answer the availability question right on the search page?  Well, for starters, it requires accurate answers to the query posed. 

Therefore, it requires that it can connect into platforms that provide availability, pricing, and amenity information.  Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! don’t want to be in the business of writing to multiple third party platforms or kludgy screen-scrapers to get this data – they’ll want a standard.  (I think it’ll eventually evolve as an adoption of an Open Travel Alliance (OTA) or some other industry XML standard, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.)

At Escapia, we’re committed to supplying that electronic pipeline, and advocating for this kind of change at the major search decision engines. 

Regardless of how it happens, it’s a future that’s great for consumers and property managers alike.  Onward!

Yield Management - Its Time Has Come

By Steve Murch, Escapia Chairman

"Yield management is the single most important technical development in transportation management since we entered deregulation."
    – Robert Crandall, former Chairman/CEO, American Airlines

Yield management, now a pervasive and accepted practice in nearly every segment of the trillion-dollar worldwide travel market, has recently generated considerable interest and varied opinions within the vacation rental industry.

I wanted to take a minute to share some of my thoughts on why we here at Escapia think it’s such an important topic, and why, even though we've got a pretty good lead in the industry for yield management tools today, we'll continue to invest and innovate in for you.

What Is Yield Management?
Yield Management, broadly defined, is the practice of influencing consumer behavior, generally through pricing, in order to maximize the overall profit (or yield) from a fixed, perishable resource over time.

Wikipedia notes that three critical ingredients for yield management to work are:

• Fixed resources
• Perishable inventory
• Customer willingness to pay different rates at different times

For all practical purposes, I'd add a fourth:

• Tools to easily manage rate changes and updates throughout the distribution channel and product lifecyle – from the internal backoffice through all sales channels used. 

This is because it's simply not manageable to constantly adjust rates based on supply/demand without some degree of automation.

We've certainly got the first three elements in the vacation rental industry.  And with EscapiaONE's IntelliRate engine, you have the fourth.

I believe the stage is set for more sophisticated yield management to start gaining more and more adoption in the vacation rental industry; this is due to a variety of market factors.

Consumers Expect It
From the consumer’s point of view, it’s become not only logical but expected that the  premium beachfront lodging on Maui booked for April should carry a premium, especially if it's the last one left.  And it's also expected that the inner cabin on a cruise that’s only 60% booked and sailing tomorrow should be a steal of a deal.  It's expected that those rates can (and often do) change, right up until booking is confirmed.

Even in most grocery stores, it's expected that seafood is more expensive when it is fresh off the truck than when there are too many to sell-out and they are nearing their perish-point.  At hotels, deals are expected when occupancies are low, and premium pricing is expected when demand is likely to outstrip supply.   (The Hotel Marketing Association's perspective on yield management indicates that they, too, believe its time has come, as indicated by their widespread adoption of REVPAR, revenue-per-available-room, and not occupancy, as the primary financial performance statistic.)

In fact, yield management is now so common in the travel industry that the converse -- that is, static pricing for airline seats, rental cars, or lodging throughout the year, regardless of demand or availability -- now would seem somewhat absurd.  Can you imagine United Airlines issuing a yellow-pages-thick printed directory of their prices every January?

These consumer expectations carry over into the vacation rental industry.

Yes, there was a time, last seen about the time JFK was in office, when static pricing ruled the day in all segments of the travel industry.  But even when it was the norm, I'd argue that it wasn't because it was the best economic strategy to maximize profits and also customer satisfaction; it was simply a product of necessity. 

Today, those constraints are gone, and new opportunities are presenting themselves.

Yield Management Webinar - Next Week!

 

By Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

Last week we wrote about the Yield Management presentation we hosted at the VRMA West show in Portland. 

As the presentation in Portland was such a huge success, we'll also be hosting a webinar on May 26th at 12 pm PST for those of you who were unable to make it to the session at VRMA.  During the webinar, we'll be discussing ways to maximize occupancy and booking revenue by adjusting your rates based on the supply of inventory relative to demand, lead times, last minute deals, premium pricing, and other factors.  Based on the great response from attendees at VRMA West, we can ensure you this will be a very beneficial webinar.

To sign up for the webinar, click here.  We look forward to seeing you online!

Twitterpated!

By Kris Lande, Product Marketing Manager

The Urban Dictionary defines the word 'twitterpated' as "being completely enamored with someone/something."  You might recall from a popular Walt Disney cartoon, when Bambi learns from the wise old owl that springtime makes everyone get 'twitterpated.' That said, I am officially 'twitterpated' for Twitter, the social networking service that lets you micro-blog your thoughts and updates 140 characters at a time.  And I'm not the only one - Twitter is everywhere lately.  It seems to be all the rage on the Today Show, Fox News, CNN, the John Stewart Show...and the list goes on and on. 

I've 'tweeted' (aka: used Twitter) personally for about a year, and recently ventured into tweeting for Escapia.  I've been pleasantly surprised and impressed with all the great networking and the instant circle of vacation rental industry tweeters I've been able to connect with.  So many companies in the industry are tweeting, it is great to see everyone's updates and links to great and valuable vacation rental industry information. 

The other day I attended a webinar hosted by Blizzard Internet and Resortquest on 'Marketing Vacation Rentals on Twitter.'  It was a terrific opportunity to learn more about how vacation rental managers are using Twitter to market their rentals by promoting specials and engaging their audience.  I've also been reading many articles on using Twitter effectively.  Based on what I've learned over the past few weeks as I've started tweeting, here are some Twitter tips I'd like to share with you:

1. Follow interesting people/companies: I've began 'following' a lot Twitterers I find interesting (ex. vacation rental directories/companies, social media experts, etc.). By following them I've already been introduced to lots of interesting articles, studies and tips/tricks that they've posted.

2.  Follow interesting people/companies: Okay, yes I realize this was also #1.  But another reason to follow interesting people is that by following them, they may in turn follow you - getting your updates in front of them.  Great exposure for you!

3. Share a mix of information with your Twitter community: I view Twitter as a great place to not only feature blog posts and company updates, but also to share your company's personality.  Many companies on Twitter only tweet 'new blog posts.'  While sharing blog posts on Twitter is great, I encourage you to share more - such as what you're doing, what you're reading, and what you're working on.  I've enjoyed putting 'fun' company pictures and updates on Twitter as well.  The key is to be personable, yet professional.

4. Engage your Twitter following: Watch the conversations happen on Twitter, and chime in to respond and help as needed.  For example, if you see someone tweet "looking for a vacation rental for 10 people somewhere along the California coast in June," engage with that person if you can point them in the right direction. By the way, below is an actual tweet I saw, and there are tweets like this all the time - potential customers for YOU!

 

5. Use Twitter tools to make it easier on yourself: Twitter can be addicting and a time-suck, so use tools available to make posting, following and searching easier.  I came across a great list of '10 Twitter tools that help you work smarter' - check it out.  These tools can help you integrate your blog, search for keywords, create auto-updates, and broadcast your tweets to your other networks such as Facebook. 

You're feeling a little twitterpated now too aren't you?  If your company is not yet on Twitter, you should definitely see what it's all about. Twitter can be another way to create your own online community to engage, interact and share your company's information.  There are lots of vacationers on Twitter looking for that great rental!

Oh, when you're there be sure to follow us. :)