Archive for the ‘Comment’ Category

HomeAway reveals selected stats and figures

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

In a recent article in Travolution by Linda Fox HomeAway’s CEO Brian Sharples reveals updated stats and figures on HomeAway:

  • inquiry growth increased 40% in the past year with 45% of business now coming from Europe.
  • addition of 10,000 - 15,000 new properties to its sites every month
  • HomeAway’s sites account for 470,000 properties. According to Sharples that is approx. a tenth of the properties being rented in the US and Europe

Read the full article at: http://www.travolution.co.uk/articles/2010/03/30/3368/homeaway-to-slow-acquisition-strategy.html

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SaveOnResorts.com partners with LeisureLink’s ABetterStay.com

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Edited Press Release

ABetterStay.com, a vacation rental website owned and operated by LeisureLink, today announced that SaveOnResorts.com has joined its affiliate program. SaveOnResorts.com expanded their offering of discounted stays by including ABetterStay.com properties.

abetterstay.com logo

abetterstay.com logo

“SaveOnResorts.com reaches a unique audience of frequent travelers looking for value-priced lodging. Our properties are a perfect fit for that audience, since they offer spacious accommodations, kitchen facilities, and family togetherness at low per-person prices. We expect this to be a valuable partnership for both companies and our respective customers,” said Erik Hovanec, CEO of LeisureLink, Inc, parent company of ABetterStay.com.

“Since we focus on vacation travel, ABetterStay.com is a natural partner for us. Their inventory supports our core mission of providing affordable vacations that are tailored to the individual traveler. We are always looking for ways to broaden resort choices for our customers, and our partnership with ABetterStay.com adds a wide variety of new properties,” said Kevin Schneider, Chief Executive Officer of SaveOnResorts.com.

“We are already hard at work with the SaveOnResorts.com team to add special promotions and packages that will provide real value to their consumers, while bringing new guests to our client properties,” Hovanec concluded.

ABetterStay.com properties went live on SaveOnResorts.com as of March 13, 2010.

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HomeAway receives $8.2m funding

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

The Austin Business Journal reports that vacation rental web site operator HomeAway Inc. closed a $8.2 million round of financing that’s related to one of its recent acquisitions.

According to a March 12 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission HomeAway received the funding from two investors.

To read the full article click here: http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2010/03/15/daily8.html

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VacationRental.org’s answer to HomeAway’s TV advert campaign

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

Comment

VacationRental.org responds to HomeAway’s national marketing campaign, which was announced 2 weeks ago. The response comes in via a TV spot, which is still unusual for the emerging vacation rental industry due to the high production and distribution costs.

You can watch the ad here:

We welcome this step as it indicates that not only industry giant HomeAway has the marketing muscle to stem a professional TV ad production.

If want to read more about it have a look at VacationRental.org’s dedicated page for it.

It would be interesting to see the increase in website traffic on vacationrental.org. Brian Sharples, CEO of HomeAway previously said that HomeAway got more than 1 million page views immediately after its ad was broadcast. Unique visitors to the site were 700 percent higher than usual levels.

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Interesting Findings on Vacation Rental Market by Phocuswright

Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Comment
The blog of travel research company PhocusWright revealed interesting findings in a post on The PhoCusWright Analyst Forum at the Grand Hyatt New York held on June 9, 2009.

PhocusWright Blog

PhocusWright Blog

I summarized the key findings:
  • Two thirds of vacation rental guests do their research online, while at the same time only 27% of vacation rental owners list their properties online.
  • The web accounted for 15% of all vacation rentals in 2008, out of which 25% was booked through an intermediary. Personal offline marketing still is most important marketing channel.
  • Vacation rental market only has a 1% dissatisfaction rating
  • Rising trend to view vacation rentals as a part of the travel industry, as opposed to a real estate investment.
  • Lack of awareness is the main reason most people don’t consider vacation rentals.

Click here to read the full blog post.

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Holidaylettings.co.uk with a minor facelift

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Comment

UK’s leading holiday home website Holidaylettings.co.uk has recently undertaken some little facelift of its website design. The extent of the redesign, however, was kept to a minimum:

 

new look of holidaylettings.co.uk

new look of holidaylettings.co.uk

 

old look of holidaylettings.co.uk

old look of holidaylettings.co.uk

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Yield Management for Vacation Rentals

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Comment

Interesting video of a presentation by John Suzuki, VP of Sales at Escapia at the VRMA seminar in Portland, Oregon on the benefits of yield management for the vacation rental industry.

About Escapia:

Escapia develops web-based vacation rental management software and online marketing solutions.

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Vacation Rental Manager is Fastest Growing U.S. Travel Company

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Miscellaneous

US Entrepreneur magazine Inc. published its “Inc. 5000”, an annual list of the fastest growing private companies in America. Interestingly, Brindley Beach Vacations, a small vacation rental management company, made it first in the Travel category with a revenue growth of 542.5% for the past 3 years. Brindley Beach Vacations manages 226 vacation houses in a resort on the northernmost coast of North Carolina. According to Inc., the company achieved this strong growth rate because it has taken market share from its competitors in a mature market by guaranteeing same-day response to all requests.

Inc 5000 List

Inc 5000 List

Compared to the other travel companies in the ranking, however, Brindley Beach Vacations appeared fairly small, with a revenue of USD 2m in contrast with an average of USD 77m revenue by the top ten companies in the list. Let’s wait how that will change next year …

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