Escapia Blog - Vacation Rental News and Trends

Skydiving is like Escapia

By John Suzuki, VP of Sales

My son and I went skydiving the other day. For him it was the first time, and although he and I are both terrified of heights, he had listed "jumping out of an airplane at 15,000 feet" on his bucket list. I was most impressed that he and his best buddy didn't chicken out at the last minute like a dozen other friends did.

On the plane we went. As we approached the jump zone at 15,000 feet and got ready to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, I realized that my experience of falling head-first out of the sky and barreling toward my doom at 100 mph must seem a lot like how managers feel when they change software platforms:

1.  It's scary. But if I don't do it, I'll always wish I did.
2.  There's risk involved. What if the chute doesn't open? Is the ground really that hard?
3.  There's cost involved. Will this really be worth it? Can I afford NOT to do this?
4.  You sweat. Am I crazy? What am I doing? Did I make the right decision?
5.  You jump. OMG, did they pack the chute right? Is my support guy qualified?
6.  You're free falling. How do I open and land this parachute thing?

7.  Not to worry, your support guy is attached to you.
8.  Your chute opens at 4,000 feet and you glide down. Is this cool or what?
9.  Kiss the ground. With great support throughout the jump, we had the thrill of a lifetime.

Back on the ground my son and his friend both said "That wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be", and we did high-fives all around.

See? Great support can help make it easy; and we have great support. Too corny? Sorry. We had fun anyway. I now recommend looking at both Escapia and skydiving to every vacation rental manager I know!

Get to Know an Escapian - Edsel Moraleja

by Bill Furlong, CEO

Note: This post is part of an occasional series profiling the members of the Escapia team.

Realizing the promise of the EscapiaONE platform begins with getting the system set up and learning how to put the power of the platform to work for your vacation rental agency.

Edsel Moraleja is the member of the Escapia team responsible for managing the implementation process for new Escapia clients.  With a rapidly growing client base and ever more powerful features, that makes Edsel a very busy guy!  Fortunately, he is also a very energetic and enthusiastic guy.

In addition to hearing Edsel talk about what he does at Escapia, you'll enjoy hearing him dream about his dream vacation.

Get to Know an Escapian - Yessika Yoncee

 by Bill Furlong, CEO

Note: This post is part of an occasional series profiling the members of the Escapia team.

One of the three components of the EscapiaONE suite for vacation rental managers is EscapiaWEB -- our solution providing agencies with a world class web site of their own.  Yessika Yoncee is a member of the EscapiaWEB team responsible for designing and developing web sites for Escapia clients.  Examples of her recent work include:

• Sunset Vacation Rentals http://www.ssvr.com/
• LaQuinta Vacation Homes http://www.lqvacations.com/
• Clearwater Montana Vacations http://www.clearwatermontanavacations.com/

With six years of experience at Escapia, she has seen the company grow from a newly-minted startup to an established technology company with hundreds of clients.

Click below to hear what Yessika does, what makes her proudest about working at Escapia, and why her fondest memories at Escapia include holding her crying (and darling) daughter during company meetings!

Here's a Tasty Idea

By Bill Furlong, CEO

Many of you in the vacation rental business know Escapia's Chairman, Steve Murch.  Steve was one of the early pioneers of the online vacation rental world when he built VacationSpot.com.  His interest in vacation rentals has continued for over a decade now as he continues to provide terrific guidance for us at Escapia.

Steve's latest brilliant creation has been BigOven.com.  The product of many years of work, BigOven is a destination packed with cooking advice, recipes and a rich community of foodies.  Clearly, Steve is onto something since BigOven is ranked as the seventh most frequently visited web site from a Seattle startup -- and as many of you know, we pride ourselves for having a vibrant online startup community here in Seattle.

Steve just did a big redesign and update to BigOven.  One of the things he added not long ago was a way for BigOven users to create custom recipe books from their favorites on BigOven or their own personal favorite recipes.

So here's an idea.  Vacation rental guests love having access to a kitchen where they can cook a dinner for themselves.  So how about including in your vacation homes a cookbook with recipes that are typical of your area.  How easy is it?  Well, a search on BigOven of Hawaiian recipes brings up 221 to choose from; "Cajun" delivers 430 results.  And to make it even easier, BigOven offers a custom publishing tool where you can create a custom cookbook in just a few clicks.

Escapia Research: January toughest for "fly-to" markets

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.