1) Santorini, Greece
2) Cocoa Island, Maldives
3) Mount Desert, Maine
4) Capri, Italy
5) Kauai, Hawaii
6) Vancouver Island
7) Anguilla
8) Bora Bora, French Polynesia
9) Virgin Gorda, British Virgin
10 Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
Source: concierge.com
Accept Reality. Unlike a chain hotel, where your experience in one country may be exactly that as in a different country, with holiday rental homes, there are great differences between countries, the power circuits, imperial versus metric counting systems, rules and regulations, etc.. You have to accept that things are the way they are when you get there and discover that their TV doesn’t play your videos because of the PAL versus NTSC issue. So just accept things and deal with them, afterall, a holiday is a holiday.
Get the Facts. The key to finding the right holiday rental is to get the details and facts. Don’t assume anything. Many websites that display aggregate rental properties will list all the details for each rental, all the way down to whether or not beach chairs are provided. But a lot of these amenities, activities and facilities change over time, so while they may have checked off the box indicating that they have a toaster at the house, maybe the previous renter broke it and it doesn’t exist anymore. If there are key items you are counting on, based on what you read on the website, make sure you contact the owner via phone or email and get confirmation that the item still exists, or if it’s a facility feature like a pool or tennis courts, make sure it’s operational and not closed for repairs.
For DIY’ers (Do it yourselfers)… There are tons of websites that aggregate vacation holiday rentals from around the world. One of the best ones that we recommend, obviously duhh, is free-rentals.com. Why? Because first, Free-rentals is FREE for holiday rental owners to sign up and list their property, so you can be assured that they don’t pass down their marketing/advertising costs on to you, the renter. And second, because we encourage the owners to offer FREE DAYS of stay when you rent from them, some are happy to offer this.
Work with a professional. The best villa rental agencies are well aware of all the good, bad and ugly aspects of renting a holiday property. They know all the Gotchya’s, so if you are a first time renter, it helps to work with one of the pro’s to make sure you have a good experience.
Make a wishlist. Sure, how many bedrooms and who gets which is important and probably highest on your list. But check with all of the people you’ll be sharing the rental with to find out what their specific needs and requests are. Put together a master list. Have this list already compiled before looking up a vacation rental and or booking one.
Know yourself. The villa lifestyle is not for those who expect a lot of service, except the most high end of villa rentals. There’s no concierge, little housekeeping if any and no staff or restaurants onsite. It’s very much for DIY’ers, so make sure you understand these dynamics before you get into it.
Free-Rentals.com boasts the most affordable rates for listing your vacation rental… because em… we’re FREE!
We recently heard from a HomeAway.com customer who provided us with statistics of her vacation rental listing on HomeAway.com, here is her account verbatim:
I got my renewal notice today. I spent $299 for their premium year deal–I think it was 12 photos, 4 sites, 1 year. I had 22 inquiries in one YEAR. Out of the 22:
1: my test because nothing was happening
6: certain scammers
2: probably scammers
So, 13 real inquiries, NONE of who booked means I paid $23 per legitimate inquiriy, and got nothing back. Yikes! NEXT!
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think $23 an inquiry is a bit steep… about as precipitous as El Capitan to be exact.
On Free-Rentals.com, you don’t have to pay for your listing… it’s FREE. And when you get an inquiry… you STILL DO NOT PAY.
Now… if that inquiry turns into a paid booking…. well then… well then, you STILL DON’T PAY.
We ask you to consider a donation of $25 each confirmed booking, but we have no way of knowing when you get confirmed bookings, so we leave it to the honesty and integrity of vacation home owners to support us if and when we deliver results.
The HomeAway Inc. portfolio consists of the following properties; HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, CyberRentals.com, A1Vacations.com, GreatRentals.com, TripHomes.com, Holiday-Rentals.co.uk, HolidayRentals.fr, FeWo-direkt.de, Rentors.org and perhaps a few more.
Since the HomeAway Inc.’s inception in February 2005, they have received more than $200 million in venture funding, $160 million of which was raised in November 2006. The latest round of funding represents the largest financing of an Internet software and services company worldwide in 2006.
HomeAway is based in Austin, TX and is funded by leading venture capital firms Austin Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, American Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and Trident Capital
Free-Rentals.com was founded in July 2003 and has received $0 in venture funding. Revenues at Free-Rentals.com for the first quarter of FY07 are up to a couple hundred bucks and change.
Once your vacation rental website is up and running, you will want to visit it often, maybe each day, to check on new listings and do basic maintainence. Don’t just click on a shortcut to your rental website. Instead, go to Google (or whatever default SE you use) and then perform a search on keywords that SHOULD bring up your website.
Assume your website is for Tahiti. Here are possible search queries you should do:
Tahiti Vacation Rentals
Tahiti Rental Properties
Tahiti Holiday Home Rentals
Tahiti Vacation Rental Listings
Rental Accommodations in Tahiti
Tahiti Villas
Tahiti Condos
List of Tahiti Rental Properties
etc… Be creative.
Scour through the multitude of result pages until you find your website, then click it in order to visit your website. This should be your defacto way of entering your website each time you visit it. Because the process of doing this will gently remind the search engine that your website exists and furthermore, it most accurately matches your search query.
If you can’t find your website in the top 10 pages, then try another search phrase.
When you find your website, click it. And each day, continue to do the same query and then click your site in order to visit it.
Once you get your website to the #1 position per a given search query, then start using a different search phrase each time.
Never click on any other website when you do these searches, it only helps them with their page rank.. and they are your competition.. right? ;) The exact URL is listed in green below the description. Copy and paste that into a seperate browser window to view that website.
As a webmaster with your own vacation rentals website, making this your new routine has impacting positive effects on your page rank. And its a legitimate SEO/SEM tactic, because you are actually helping to educate the search engine to the serve up the most proper results.
