Archive for the ‘Company News’ Category

Interest in Vacation Rentals Remains Strong According to New HomeAway Report

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

usEdited Press Release
Marketplaces

Second home owners who rent their homes to travelers, on average, generate more than $35,000 in rental income each year, according to HomeAway – which released its quarterly “HomeAway Vacation Rental Marketplace Report.”

Vacation rentals vs. hotels

Vacation rentals vs. hotels

On average, second home owners are renting their properties to travelers 20 weeks a year, and the rental income generated is helping many owners offset mortgage and upkeep costs. In fact, the HomeAway report found 38 percent of owners generate enough rental income to cover 75 to 100 percent of their mortgage. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of owners earn enough to cover at least 50 percent of their mortgage. (more…)

Holiday Lettings introduces video display

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

usEdited Press Release
Marketplaces

Holiday home owners who advertise their accommodation through holidaylettings.co.uk can now showcase their properties full potential by including a video of their holiday home.

Video section on listing

Video section on listing

Introduced to provide a richer sense of the holiday experience that can be expected when staying at the advertised holiday home, videos are available on Premium Adverts, the site’s most successful advertising option. (more…)

Second Porch and CorporateHousingbyOwner.com Partner

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

usEdited Press Release
Marketplaces

Second Porch and CorporateHousingByOwner.com today announce a partnership to distribute and enable thousands of furnished rental listings from CorporateHousingByOwner.com to be seen and accessible via Second Porch’s integrated Facebook application and social vacation home marketplace.

CHBO logo

CHBO logo

Second Porch enables travelers to rent and recommend vacation homes with friends, and friends of friends, on Facebook. (more…)

Elliott Beach Rentals Uses Micro-Sites to Enhance Marketing of Resorts and Condominium Complexes

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

usEdited Press Release
Operator

Elliott Realty, a full service Vacation Rental and Real Estate company located in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina has announced the recent launch of their sixteenth condo or resort specific website. All of these condominium complexes or resorts featured in these ‘micro-sites’ are located in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and feature vacation rental properties professionally managed by Elliott Beach Rentals. (more…)

HomeAway launches real estate website

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Edited Press Release

Recognizing that buyers and sellers of vacation properties are increasingly looking for specialized information on the rental income potential of prospective homes, HomeAway is launching HomeAway Real Estate. The online marketplace dedicated to buying and selling vacation homes, HomeAway Real Estate offers an extensive database of more than 200,000 vacation and second homes for sale in popular travel destinations, as well as specialized information including vacation home occupancy, rental rates throughout the year, and destination information.

homeawayrealestate.com

homeawayrealestate.com

The Internet plays an increasing role in the purchase of vacation homes, with nearly a third (32 percent) of vacation home buyers first looking online for properties for sale, up from 22 percent in 2008. One out of four (26 percent) vacation home buyers found their home on the Internet, up from 21 percent in 2008.

“With more buyers looking to offset ownership costs with rental income, the HomeAway Real Estate platform uses HomeAway’s extensive knowledge of vacation rentals to help those buyers make better decisions about where to buy,” says Sharples, CEO of HomeAway.

Barefoot Technologies and Intelsys Announce Data Interface

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Edited Press Release

Barefoot Technologies and Intelsys Inc. are proud to announce a joint venture between their respective companies to establish a ‘data interface’ between Barefoot Technologies Agent 3.0c vacation rental property management software and Intelsys Inc.’s Status Tracker housekeeping management system. This interface will allow clients using both systems to automatically transfer information between the two programs, creating a synergism that will dramatically enhance the capabilities and user experience of both programs.

Barefoot and Intelsys team up

Barefoot and Intelsys team up

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to transfer information between Status Tracker and Barefoot Agent,” stated Ed Ulmer, Director of Business Development with Barefoot Technologies. “Our clients have been using Status Tracker successfully for quite awhile and had been requesting a way to share information between our two systems. This data interface will allow us to request the current housekeeping status of all properties from Status Tracker and integrate this into the Agent thereby consolidating property status information into one convenient location for non-housekeeping users.”

Barefoot Technologies and Intelsys Inc. Announce Data Interface Between Two Industry Leading Software Programs
The interface will also allow Status Tracker to transparently request a list of properties needing housekeeping attention directly from the Barefoot Agent. Seamlessly identifying these properties will significantly facilitate the housekeeping manager’s ability to automatically create all required housekeeping task assignments with a single button click.

“Providing the connection to systems like Barefoot’s Agent is the first step to integrating Status Tracker with vacation property management systems and will allow us to expand our market exponentially over the next 24 months,” stated Richard Winnick, CTO of Intelsys. “Implementing this information transfer between our two respective programs represents a significant step in facilitating our clients use of both systems.” Winnick further explained that this joint effort also demonstrates the commitment of both companies to creatively consider options and opportunities outside their own companies to provide the best services possible for their clients.

About Barefoot:
Barefoot is a provider of browser-based reservation and asset management systems in the vacation rental industry. It claims of being the first browser system in the industry, the first to provide online booking, tenant, owner access and to offer social media tools and is designed to be tailored to meet clients’ exacting needs.

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

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.

Swiss-based Vacando cooperates with vacation rental aggregator NextPax.com

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Edited Press Release

VACANDO, the Swiss-based Online Holiday Home Marketplace owned by Interhome has concluded a cooperation agreement with the Dutch operator NextPax.com. Thanks to this cooperation, VACANDO will be able to increase its offering to more than 100,000 holiday homes around the world. The available range is being greatly expanded in popular destinations such as Scandinavia and Croatia.

Nextpax Logo

Nextpax Logo

In order to fulfil its role as an online holiday accommodation marketplace with the most diverse possible range of accommodation, VACANDO also offers customers holiday accommodation from established agencies like Inter Chalet, Interhome and Sol og Strand. Well-known operators like Dancenter, TUI Ferienhaus and Villa Vacant will now be added to this listed, thanks to the collaboration with NextPax.com, thus increasing the number of holiday homes on offer to more than 100,000. Most striking is the growth in Scandinavia as well as in popular beach destinations in Greece, Croatia and Hungary.

The Dutch operator NextPax.com is bundling the product data from leading European holiday home operators and will update and provide these every day to business partners. At the present time NextPax.com has integrated the offerings from Bungalow.net, Dancenter, Interhome, Topic Travel, TUI Ferienhaus, VipHolidays, Villa Vacant and others into its system. The intention is to integrate more operators, such as Inter Chalet or Muchosol. “By working together with NextPax.com we can save ourselves the trouble of making direct connections with each of the individual operators and so we can offer our customers an even more comprehensive range at minimal expense,” explains Kilian Eyholzer, CEO of VACANDO AG. The holiday homes of the new partners can be booked online via VACANDO from now on.

Vacation Rental Facebook App Closes $1m Funding

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Edited Press Release

Today Second Porch, the vacation rental Facebook app, announced that it has closed a one million dollar Series-A investment, led by the Oregon Angel Fund. The investment will be used to continue the company’s expansion into the vacation home rental and home exchange markets, which are among the fastest growing segments in online consumer travel.

Second Porch seeks to harness two strong trends: the mainstreaming of social networking, and vacation home rentals, one of the fastest growing segments of online travel. Second Porch enables owners and renters to tap into real world relationships in order to rent and trade vacation homes, where trust between owner and guest is of paramount concern on both sides of the transaction.

Second Porch Facebook App

Second Porch Facebook App

Second Porch offers vacation homeowners an easy way to generate and manage high-value rental inquiries. According to the 2009 research report “Vacation Rental Marketplace: Poised for Change” published by travel research firm PhoCusWright Inc., homeowners who rent their own vacation homes reported that 73% of their inquiries come from friends, family, referrals and previous guests.

“Second Porch tackles the unsolved piece of the marketing opportunity for vacation homeowners by bringing an easy to use system to effectively and tastefully market to the best possible source of guests: people you already know and with whom you have some degree of trust”, said Brent Hieggelke, CEO of Second Porch, “The typical Facebook personal network comprised of ‘friends of friends’ reaches almost 17,000 people, all of whom can be vouched for by a friend in common. For a homeowner, this is an obvious opportunity to find prospective guests to rent to with a higher level of comfort and peace of mind. Second Porch also complements sites like HomeAway and VRBO, by giving homeowners the controls to integrate their existing calendars and even link back to their listings on those sites.”

Second Porch comes at an ideal time for the second home market. Due to the recession, many of the estimated 16 million second home owners globally who previously avoided renting or trading are now being forced into the market for an additional source of income. Second Porch provides a perfect entry point for travelers and owners who have hesitated to rent vacation homes due to trust concerns: renters can choose to view only homes owned by friends, and owners can choose to limit visibility to only friends only.