Vacation Rentals Community

I noticed that many vacation home owners have their own website.  Is it cost efficient to have your own domain and advertise the website yourself on search engines, instead of listing it on vacation rental portals?

Having a website for your vacation home is highly recommended.  With your own personal website you can show the potential renters more details and photos of your property (including many extra details that vacation rental portal websites don't allow).  A personal website will save you time and money in the long run.   However, it is not a substitute for advertising on portal websites.  Online marketing is complicated and can become quite expensive trying to compete in rankings with portal websites. 

You may benefit from having a standard listing with portal websites (ex. buy the minimum amount of photos) and then placing your own personal website on the listing to provide more photos and details (make sure the portal website allows external links).  This strategy will allow you to bring plenty of potential renters to your vacation home website, spending a fraction of what it would cost you trying to bring the same amount of visitors to your site from search engines and directories (portal websites spend thousands of dollars in marketing). 

If you are still not convinced just try bidding on some vacation rental terms in google or yahoo!

It's totally worth having your own vacation rental Website. When I first started looking for a great customizable solution I searched all over the place, until I talked to a friend of mine in California who turned me onto the TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software system. When I contacted them, they were really nice and the price for the software was right (it was only $29/month and $99 to get setup). They even customized the design and threw in a bunch of cool features. I can manage bookings, my calendar, get renters to login to their online account and sign their online contract, showcase 15 images, etc. They're definitely worth taking a look at.

Hi Markgold,

 I think you have a nice product for vacation home owners....but in the future try to post products or services for owners in the 'Vacation Rental Suppliers' forum located at: http://www.vacationrentalscommunity.com/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=16

 Good luck with your business!

Yes, absolutelly, it is worth!

With Your Own Website You Can:

    * Show customers unlimited photos of your property at their full size.
    * Send people directly to your property ... and only to your property.
    * Advertise in the newspaper with a three line text ad directing people to your own web site of your property.
    * Add Google maps and other interactive components.
    * Provide multiple contact points allowing interested parties to contact you immediately.
    * Add engaging slide shows with audio.
    * Include Guest Comments and Photos.
    * Print your site to a Flyer and post it around town.
    * Have your own Domain Name and use it on brochures, business cards and newspaper ads.
    * And so much more...

I would have to agree, but it depends what you are going to do with it. Just creating a poorly designed site, hosted on a shared service is almost pointless. If you are going to do it, then you will have to do it properly. Then you can get cards printed with your website address, and promote it to guests, friends, and family.

You won't really get any traffic from search engines as the directories have stolen all the top spots. So, you will either have to pay for adwords, or other advertising streams.

I think that travelers care more about detailed information such as pricing, photos, property and location details rather than graphics, logos, etc...  Unless you are vacation rental manager or a vacation rental company I would not worry too much about the design part of a website.  Regarding hosting your website, I don't recommend a dedicated server as it will be much more expensive, more complex to manage and provide very little benefit for a simple website.  There are many great hosting companies that would provide great shared hosting solutions for less than $20/month.  I could provide hosting for a simple vacation rental website for just $5/month (this includes emails and a 100% guarantee that the website will never be down).  If you are interested please email me at: http://www.vrwd.com/contact.php and select 'General Inquiry' for the Subject line.

I definitely would advise having your own website.  It is a great way to keep in contact with potential repeat guests.  Besides that it helps you brand your home.  Make sure it's cost effective and try to choose a good URL. 

I would agree om having your own site.

Thanks to John and other research my site is showing high on the rankings when key search phrases are used. We are starting to get bookingsdirectly from our site which never happended last year.

Having your own web site is a must.  However, it will not get you instant results.  Its a labour of love or an investment for the future.  Also, its only part of the marketing picture.  Our site on Orlando Vacation Rental Homes is a good example.  I get between 40 and 100 visitors per day but it has taken me 18 months to get that amount of traffic from organic search (as opposed to web advertising).

For me, the most important things are:

1.   Get a good site with pages optimised for your market.
2.   Promote your web site - get links from other sites on the same theme (see above for the correct way to put in a link for the keywords "Orlando Vacation Rental Homes")
3.   There are many ways of doing this and generally speaking, you can do it for free.
4.   Like others have said - use every way you can think of to get people to visit your site but better still, just talk to them and they'll buy from you!
 

I hope this helps you. Please bear in mind that it is important not to rush and to get the basics right from the outset.