Whether you plan to use a property manager or if you plan to charge by owner, with the right road map, you can simply and successfully rent your vacation home. The key is to teach you before pitching in. Here are a few quick bits of advice: 1) Create a business plan demarcation your goals and objectives. When incoming into any new effort it's vital to have clear idea of where you set and where you're headed. Before you start renting your home, start objectives and create a plan for achieving those objectives. 2) Don't undervalue your vacation home. Look at the other rentals in your area for a test on how much you can charge for a stay in your home. Make sure that your property is competitively priced. You don't want to overcharge and miss out on possible renters, but you don't want to undercharge and lose income either. 3) Display cases your vacation rental's best side with great photos. When a guest stumbles upon your listing, you have 30 seconds or less to grab their attention. Will they rent your vacation home or move onto the next ad? It's a simple: The better photos you have, the more interested a renter becomes, and the more expected they will request about your home. 4) get prepared. It'll make your life much easier in the long run. Keep complete records of all communications and bookings on a database and maintain a good filing system on your computer. 5) Get the most from your paid listings. Put up 12 quality photos, write descriptions that really sell your vacation home, and use the rental rates, review systems, services tables. You're not going to get as many inquiries and bookings if you’re listing are incomplete or fast thrown together. http://www.thinkrentals.com/
Great Advice...Especially like your comments on the importance of quality photos. Good photos that show your property well will sell your vacation rental to a prospective renter. Florida Vacation Homes
I certainly agree with Kenny. On the low end you can use free programs such as Photobucket or RockYou to put together a great slideshow. It really is as simple as point and click. Advantage Vacation Homes also uses 360 virtual tours as well. It all depends on where your budget is.
Property owners can also use google maps and communitymaps.com to build a informational map of their property with details about places to eat and of points of interest located near the property.
You see a sample at Orlando florida vacation homes and go to maps. The community map can me let guest see the location and move the map around to see beyond the property.
I hope this is helpful.
Brian
Hi Brian,
The community maps look great on your site. What is the cost for using these community maps? What about the text for each community... where can I get that information?
Thanks.
I certainly can agree with Brian. CommunityWalk is a great source for mapping. The question is does the owner have the time or is willing to invest the funds to keep the map ad free?
I would advise to use Google Earth on the low end side for the budget minded owner. It is a free application and with a little bit of trial and error will do just fine!
Hope this helps!
Orlando pool homes - 3 Bed Luxury now through Aug 31, 2008 for $779 per week at Advantage Vacation Homes!
The Community Walk website appears to use the Google maps api, so you may aswell use Google maps directly.
For customizeability, and cost, then there is no other option apart from Google maps. We use it on our website, and the owner just has to put their co-ordinates into the appropriate box, when filling in the add a listing information. It's really easy to use - giving the browser location information that is easily understood.
One thing that has really helped us is to use all the free Google tools that are available. It is amazing what kind of products they offer for free. Their analytics system is awesome for seeing how people are getting to your site, how long they are staying on, what states they live in etc. It gets all the way down to telling you what OS they are using and their screen resolution. Once you get into that there are tons of other free things that Google offers and they are all really marketing focused:)
They also have some decent videos for newbies in the marketing arena
Brett AllredPelican Hills - A St. George Vacation Rental Resort