Being a Guest in a Vacation Rental

November 13, 2011

  I’ve stayed in several vacation rental properties this year and am now looking forward to my first visit to Costa Rica in February where we’ve rented Flying Toucans, an idyllic looking villa with a swimming pool and fabulous views of the Pacific Ocean. As I showed the listing to another friend yesterday and we [...]

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Going Green Can Create More Business

November 11, 2011

It was interesting to read this article from ABTA discussing sustainability in travel, and the growing number of tourists seeking socially and environmentally responsible travel experiences. The key points I picked up from the article are that creating and maintaining a ‘green’ policy for holiday accommodation not only benefits the environment but also appeals to [...]

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Capture off season bookings with niche marketing techniques

November 1, 2011

I took up stand-up paddle boarding this past summer. It’s a cross between surfing and kayaking and I am hooked on this sport. When we were in Dallas a few weeks ago, and staying on Grapevine Lake in an RV park, I met up with another enthusiast and as we paddled out for an hour [...]

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Washing bedding in vacation rental homes

October 24, 2011

   How often do you wash the bedding in your vacation rental property? I don’t mean the sheets and pillow covers that are more likely to come into direct contact with guests’ skin – I’m also referring to blankets, comforters, duvet covers, mattress and pillow protectors. Should they be washed after each rental? When we [...]

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Vacation rental lessons learned on an RV road trip

October 20, 2011

  We are still on our road trip travelling through Texas, and stopping at RV parks along the way. While the big difference is that we are hauling our home behind us, there are a lot of similarities between vacationing this way and renting a vacation home and this year, as in previous trips, we’ve [...]

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7 Tasks for October

October 11, 2011

I’m on vacation in Texas for the past few weeks and have been deep in the woods camping for the last two of them, using the welcome ‘down-time’ to get some writing done. We were without any internet connection for most of the time so its been a good opportunity to do some reflection on [...]

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Why I Like Review Sites

September 16, 2011

I realized recently how much I use review sites for anything from checking out movies on IMDB; books on Amazon; RV Sites on RV Park Reviews and of course vacation rentals on Trip Advisor. My son & his wife have just climbed Mt Kilimanjaro and been on safari in the Masai Mara with an Africa [...]

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Vacation Rental Savings in the Stores Now!

September 4, 2011

Craig White is my business partner in CottageLINK Rental Management; good friend and mentor. He wrote the following for our owners group site, but it deserves a wider airing so he agreed to have it published here as a guest post. For me, the Labour Day weekend always brings with it a wealth of mixed [...]

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Try Before You Buy – A Vacation Rental Loss Leader Strategy

September 1, 2011

Capturing bookings for the low season is tough with a lot of properties competing for a smaller market. There are a lot of promotional initiatives you could test but the ‘Try Before You Buy’ idea may be one that could work for most owners in areas where guests have a shorter distance to travel. The [...]

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A New Vacation Rental Niche Market – Stand Up Paddling

September 1, 2011

I’ve been writing about niche marketing recently and keep coming up with new markets that would lend themselves well to a vacation rental promotion. In fact most interests that get people outside and into the countryside are ones that owners can target with specific campaigns. Lets kick off with my new favourite sport of stand-up [...]

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