I was interested to read the media reports about Barrack Obama and family being without power in their Hawaii vacation rental over the festive period. Apparently the power went off for 11 hours, and despite a generator (or two) being swiftly delivered, the president elect chose to remain in the dark and enjoy being powerless for a short time, something he won’t be experiencing in the future.
This got me thinking about a couple of things. Since we had just had a ‘celebrity’ staying in our cottage too, I wondered about the impact all this media coverage might have on the vacation rental industry as a whole. Will an Obama endorsement have the same impact that fires up millions to buy a product that is mentioned on Oprah? Could this be the catapult we have needed to open the eyes of the vacationing public to the joys of renting a holiday home? I hope so.
It would be interesting to see some statistics of hits on the rental listing sites during the week Obama was on vacation since most media reports were using the keywords ‘vacation rental’ or ‘rental home’ in their headlines. Celebrity endorsements can boost sales of products enormously, and can also direct attention to new trends which may be the impact of all this hype.
Spookily enough, our rental cottage was also hit by a power outage this week. Our guests were probably affected more than the Obama family, as I bet they didn’t have to trudge down to the lake in 2 feet of snow to collect water to flush the toilets. Our rental clients stuck it out for 6 hours and then decided to bail out a day early. Probably for the best because the rainfall on top of the snow at the weekend created 3 kilometres of ice rink on the cottage road which made it impassable the following day. Oh the joys of vacation rental!
Yesterday we dealt with a half dozen situations where the power was out in properties and guests had to be relocated to alternative accommodation. Those owners lost on average $1000 for the 3-day New Year booking although the cottage owner who invested $3000 last year in an automatic generator, didn’t lose his guests to another property. He kept his rental money and probably a lot of goodwill from that particular rental group who may only rent properties with generators in the future. That’s a powerful thought (pun intended!) and I’ll be covering the subject of generators early next week.
I’ve been a little behind in posting this week so will probably work overtime and get in another post or two today to wrap up the year. Stay tuned folks, for my year in review, coming along a little later today.
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I am in the vacation rental marketplace and when the power goes out on one of our many vacation rentals in Lake Tahoe the phone rings instantly. Renters usually want to get it fixed ASAP. Why the president was “powerless” is interesting because it just goes to show that even the best vacation rentals and owners cannot control every last detail. The president was quite the vacationer to just let it be… Good for him!
Kudos to the rental owners to have plan B for life’s unexpected situations. I admire Obama’s willingness to enjoy being “powerless”, and honestly, a little time of no distractions can probably serve all of us.