Great idea, just impractical execution.

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John’s last blog post..Choosing Long Beach Air Conditioners

I certainly agree that not every second-home owner is suited to offering their property as a vacation rental/holiday let. And I was interested in what you said about groups with multiple properties being most successful with online booking. I’d imagine that “condotel” companies over here will have similar success with this approach.

I just don’t think that online booking will be accepted by most vacation home owners. And, at the risk of veering off-topic, apparently 55% of vacation home owners in the U.S. do *not* use a property management company. This is according to the much hyped PhoCusWright study due out directly.

Here’s the (ugly) link: http://www.phocuswright.com/research_publications_buy_a_report/546

Best,
Alfred

I my experience from our website in Edinburgh, we’ve found that the properties that do best on online booking (which is the whole concept around the way we work) are the groups with multiple properties.

I would definitely not say that they were plain but I think they could more closely related to a hotel suite.

For owners of short term/self catering lets that are effectively letting out a second home, they tend to feel uneasy about online booking. As though they are then letting strangers into their home. These properties (and property owners) are not so suited to online booking.

The ones who are suited to it, are so far doing really quite well.

Cheers – Gareth

I’d like to toss a frosty bucket of cold water on this idea. For the past few years, the Holy Grail for online VR listing companies has been “point, click, book.”

These companies promote that concept as “something that the public wants because it makes booking a vacation rental more like booking a hotel room.”

What they don’t say is that “point, click, book” enables them to take a piece of the rental income.
It is my understanding that HomeAway, the largest listing network, has indicated that it plans to implement some form of online booking eventually. As the world knows, in its latest round of venture capital funding (November,2008) HomeAway raised a breath-taking quarter of a billion dollars. I believe that there is a direct connection between these two points.

In my opinion, as an alleged “expert” in the VR field, “point, click, book” is antithetical to the whole concept of “vacation rentals.”

This approach might work for owners of plain vanilla, cookie-cutter condos. But it will never work for owners of cherished second homes. I’m really not certain that HomeAway and its competitors quite understand this.

I believe that anyone with a truly special property to offer will insist on either screening prospective renters themselves or engaging some trusted property manager to do so on their behalf. Such owners are simply not going to open themselves up to anyone with an Internet connection and a credit card.

Best,
Alfred Glossbrenner, co-author of *How to Make Your Vacation Property Work for You!*
http://www.fullybookedrentals.com

I think the idea of feeding to Expedia & Co. works really well for certain types of properties. Specifically the ones that are in quite direct competition with hotels. They need to be on a level playing field with hotels in order to compete.

Properties that are more unique (and in my experience tend to by run by the owner, who owns just a few) may do better by building their own brand. They probably won’t do so well on Expedia.

Just my thoughts.