We are excited to announce the release of online booking functionality on FlipKey.com.  Vacation rental guests will now find our Online Reservation widget in the right-hand column of any vacation rental property accepting online bookings on FlipKey.com. Properties not offering online bookings will continue to feature email reservation forms and phone numbers that will allow guests to contact the reservation manager.

Why we are excited: 

The combination of guest reviews + online booking functionality is the holy grail of establishing trust in the vacation rental industry.  FlipKey guest reviews help prospective guests learn from the experiences of past guests, so they can select the right home and feel comfortable and confident in their decision.    Once the guest has found the perfect home, the booking process is straightforward and as simple as booking a hotel online.   Although many guests may prefer to call your reservation number or send you an email inquiry, simply knowing that your operation offers the ability to book online helps the consumer understand the professionalism of your operations….

The powerful combination of guest reviews and online booking functionality has several tangible benefits.   Most relevant to FlipKey, is FlipKey’s RepScore (short for Reputation Score), a scoring system that determines promotional listing placement on FlipKey and TripAdvisor (coming soon!).   By simply offering online booking functionality on FlipKey we can determine a more confident user experience compared to a similar property not offering online booking, which improves your listing placement on both FlipKey and soon on TripAdvisor.

If your software company supports online bookings and you’re interested in (i) collecting guest reviews and (ii) accepting online bookings through FlipKey contact us at myreviews@flipkey.com for more information.

FlipKey currently accepts online bookings for property managers using any of Instant Software’s services (V12, PropertyPlus, First Resort, Entech) or Escapia’s online distribution service EscapiaNet.

Imagine your ideal vacation escape. For some this may entail hiking the Appalachian Trail in Asheville, for others standing atop Peak 9 in Breckenridge on a cold, sunny morning. Perhaps the perfect vacation for you is figuring out a way to see every sight in Disney’s Magic Kingdom, or making certain that you see nothing at all but the ocean and the sun. Those who find it easy to imagine the idyllic, but lack the desire to put their thoughts into words are now in luck. Hotels.com now provides a search process that appeals to the senses and allows vacationers to dream their way into vacationing with “The Visualiser“.

Through “The Visualiser,” travelers are led to what Hotels.com deems their ultimate vacation destination and hotel after self-selecting a series of photos, each depicting unique vacation activities and placed in separate categories.  For example The Visualiser asks the user to determine their desired style of restaurant, idea of a fun night, suitable room, nightlife, and with whom the traveler will be vacationing with- kids, friends, partner, etc.

The last step asks users to check their age bracket and select their destination city with cities represented from all of the world- Paris, London, Dublin, New York, or for the adventurous spirit, “Surprise me!”

Those who have used The Visualiser can quickly see that it is a faster alternative in hotel hunting than filling out vacation preferences manually or with drop bars. However I found the accuracy of finding your ideal hotel based solely on pictures is still a work in progress. With that said, it is a fun process and it adds an element of ‘discovery’ to what I have historically considered a canned process.

Given the unique advantages and availability of vacation rentals in many of the world’s most interesting travel destinations, the concept of The Visualizer would find a well-aligned audience with the vacation rental category. For instance, I would argue some of the examples provided in the introduction of this piece would be undeserved if the consumers were not able to discover available vacation rental accommodations in addition to the standard hotel options.

It’s a small world after all… In 2005 I attended a small party in Vail, CO to celebrate a good friend’s wedding engagement. There were 10 of us and we all decided to go in on a vacation rental in the heart of Vail. Among the group was a gentleman by the name of Michael McFadden – who I had not previously known. By the end of the weekend we had all had a great time and Michael and I had become friends.

Fast forward three years…. By pure chance Michael and I started two vacation rental services at basically the same time. I, of course, helped create FlipKey – a community driven travel site that helps consumers find trusted vacation rentals throughout the world, by providing real reviews of verified vacation rental properties – and Michael started TheSociety.

About the Society (Taken from thesociety.com)
At The Society, you’ll discover only the finest in luxury vacation rental homes in beach, mountain and desert destinations. Unlike typical online vacation search sites, The Society ensures that each vacation home meets quality standards established by experts in the luxury real estate industry. Also, members and guests of The Society have access to The Society-rated concierge information including the best golf courses in an area, nearest ski resort or popular restaurants. Planning an unforgettable luxurious vacation just got easier. The Society. A symbol of luxury.

As described in their company profile, TheSociety focuses on high-end luxury rentals. With a keen focus on high-end properties, TheSociety goes a step further by aggregating information on nearby golf courses, ski options and restaurant choices.

Recently, TheSociety announced a partnership with LuxuryRealEstate.com. As explained in TheSociety’s press release, TheSociety will be the exclusive provider of vacation rentals on LuxuryRealEstate.com. Click here to read more.

Congratulations on the progress Michael…. One question, the home we stayed in Vail three years ago was quite nice – would it have met TheSociety’s standards?

You know that list you keep of countries and travel destinations that you’d like to visit. Probably tucked away in your mind and pops up when you’re finally taking time to plan your vacation or someone has just returned from theirs and is telling you about their “trophy trip.” Instead of missing the next must-do destination and reading about it later in the NYTimes travel section, take a moment to check out a new travel service Global Basecamps (GBC).

I met with one of the founders a few months ago, and these guys are passionate about unique travel, having worked in high-end travel consulting for years. With Global Basecamps they have taken their accumulated knowledge and first-hand world travel experience and created an online service for discovering and booking unique accommodations. These are accommodations that have been hand-picked and verified by GBC.

Searching for a Remarkable Trip
This summer I am planning a vacation and looking to blend a little adventure with some high-quality getaway time. I know I’d like to be on the coast, so I begin by searching through the Coastal Basecamps on GBC. Quickly, it’s apparent that GBC has done their homework and ensured that the quality of the lodging options is top shelf. In fact, even though several features on the site are under development, it’s difficult not to linger on the site and enjoy discovering new destinations and adding to my list of pending vacation spots. Eventually, I settle on Little Palm Island, a private island reachable only by boat or seaplane.

Through GBC I get a nice editorial on the location and am able to check availability without having to leave the site. I also have the option of calling directly and working a GBC “travel specialist” to complete my trip.

Niche Marketing Opportunities
Travel is a massive and dynamic segment of the internet and niche services such as Global Basecamps offer niche marketing opportunities. Vacation homes are unique and often located in destinations where hotels are not an option. You probably don’t consider your properties as “basecamps” but think about your inventory and whether certain stand-out properties fit the Global Basecamp model. This could be an excellent marketing channel for you to reach new consumers in the wheelhouse of your target audience: travelers searching for unique lodging options.

As of today, FlipKey has opened its doors. Please visit our new homepage at www.flipkey.com and explore how FlipKey can help you collect verified reviews and manage your internet-based Reputation.

Why was FlipKey created?
After managing our own vacation rentals we discovered a lack of trust and consumer awareness among prospective guests searching for vacation rentals. Guests needed assurances that our vacation homes were as advertised and that we, as managers/owners, were legitimate business operators.

Fact is, the majority of vacationers LOVE vacation rentals. The experience is more personal, often more economical and affords a unique travel experience. The majority of our guests had a great time and would send us emails saying as much.

The Problem:
Despite evidence of the wonderful experiences of our past guests, browsing consumers were skeptical. Prospective guests assumed our testimonials were written by us and not actual guests.

In addition, guests were often confused about how we would resolve potential problems like lost keys or an unexpected maintenance problem. Were we onsite or did we live 200 miles away? Did we have experience renting our homes before?

To effectively attract, book and yield a top nightly rate we needed “verified” reviews of each home and a way for guests to understand the difference between a professionally managed property and a unit managed directly by the owner.

The Solution:
FlipKey was created to help managers of all sizes collect verified guest reviews to establish a trusted internet-based reputation. The FlipKey Reputation Manager allows managers to easily invite past guests to share their vacation rental experience. Guest reviews are collected by FlipKey, verified for authenticity and then published on your website, FlipKey.com and any other marketing channels you may leverage.

FlipKey allows managers to publicly respond to reviews to thank guests for their positive experience or to address improvements. All replies are posted to the original reviews, so you can effectively manage your reputation and communicate the full value of your service.

[Click Here To See an Example]

On FlipKey.com, we reinforce consumer trust by informing users whether properties are “professionally managed.” By helping educate vacationers on the security and predictability afforded by professionally managed homes, we help consumers evaluate the relative benefits of renting from a property manager versus directly through an owner.

Who is using FlipKey?

“FlipKey is the first Reputation Solution designed for vacation rentals. As a webmaster I love that FlipKey offers free tools to port verified reviews and reputation to my clients’ sites.” – Trent Blizzard, CEO of Blizzard Marketing

Companies collecting verified guest reviews through FlipKey include:

All-Star Vacation Homes (Kissimmee, FL)
Franconia Notch Vacations (Franconia, NH)
Escape 2 Florida Homes (Clermont, FL)
Surfside Realty (Myrtle Beach, SC)
Imagine Vacation Homes (Orlando, FL)
And more…

*Click company name to view their FlipKey Front Deskâ„¢

What’s Next for FlipKey?

• FlipKey will soon enhance its service and features by offering integration with property management software services. This will make it even easier to collect this invaluable marketing asset.
• We will continually improve and expand FlipKey’s suite of Reputation Tools helping you go beyond guest reviews to improve/increase your reputation.
• Provide managers that have established a strong reputation through FlipKey guest reviews the opportunity to be featured on large affiliated travel sites.

If you manage vacation rentals and would like to join FlipKey, click here to learn more and apply.

It’s not everyday that I’m genuinely excited about a new travel service, but Clear (www.flyclear.com) is an exception.

I first discovered Clear on a recent trip. I noticed a wide open security line at the airport featuring a blue Clear cube at the entrance Travelers were walking down the designated line, surpassing me in the standard security line, flashing a small card and then being escorted directly to the x-ray scan. For a brief moment I assumed these travelers to be foreign diplomats, Superbowl MVPs or some other form of social privilege. But NO, they were simply members of Clear.

About clear
Clear® is the fast pass for airport security. Clear members are pre-screened and provided with a high-tech card which allows them to access designated airport security fast lanes nationwide.

Clear’s first year price is $100 plus the TSA vetting fee of $28 for a total charge of $128.

How it Works

1) Find the Clear cube
When you arrive at the airport, look for the blue Clear cube that designates the Clear express lane at the airport security.

2) Very your iris or fingerprint
The Clear kiosk will verify your identity using your Clear Card and your biometric data.

3) Go directly to security
Once you are verified, you go directly to security. The Clear concierge will assist you in streamlining this process. Avoid the wait in the long security lines. The Clear sales rep I spoke with guaranteed a maximum wait of 4 minutes between entering the line and clearing security

I love this service. For a small premium, it helps frequent travelers significantly reduce the stress and wait times at the airport. The only negatives to the service are (1) a limited amount of participating airports and (2) a likely subscription bump in coming years.

Currently there are only 17 airports participating in the program, but Clear reps indicated that many more are coming online in the next year. In terms of the very reasonable annual subscription of $128, Clear has made it clear (pardon the pun) that the $128 rate is only applicable for the first year. It is unclear (ha, another pun) what their long-term pricing will look like.

Despite the title of this post, we are not suggesting managers constantly stay in contact with their guests – that would be annoying. Rather, we’d like to feature a useful email product that is available called “Constant Contact” (www.constantcontact.com).

A key component of vacation rental marketing is developing long term relationships will repeat customers. Families often travel to the same location each year, which calls for managers to stay top of mind as the calendar turns.

Managers have an assortment of techniques to keep guest records, but executing an efficient outreach campaign can prove challenging. This is where Constant Contact (CC) emerges as a useful tool. CC offers an easy to use email campaign tool. For as little as $15/month CC allows you to save your guest emails and send out well formatted, professionally composed emails during key promotional times. It’s easy, it’s inexpensive and it’s effective.

For example:
Acme Rentals has two key seasons – the summer and winter. Acme knows its guests tend to book three months in advance.

• Acme sets up two customer lists in CC. One is labeled “Summer Guests” and the other is labeled “Winter Guests”
• In May, Acme sends out a promotional email to its Summer Guests thanking them for their business and reminding them to reserve their home early before all units are booked. In the email they feature Summer events and “things-to-do” that guests may be interested in.
• Acme sets up a similar campaign in September for its Winter guests.
• Acme also sends an off season message to all guests highlighting new services (24 hour emergency number) and new homes they now offer.

Constant Contact makes this process easy and offers reporting tools to help you monitor who read your email and whether they clicked through to your site. Constant Contact is offering a 60-day free trial if you would like to give it spin.

*Note: FlipKey is a standard subscriber of Constant Contact, but has no formal business relation or affiliation.

A few months ago, I wrote a post on the potential of online video in the vacation rental industry, commenting on the impact online video services could have for vacation rental managers.

Since then I have discovered numerous niche travel websites where users share their travel videos with other travelers and watch informational guide videos to learn more about travel destinations.

Geobeats.com offers travelers high quality, informative travel videos, providing users with helpful information about specific travel destinations (mostly international) before they have to shell out the $$ to actually visit. Below is a screen shot and link to a video about the Beer Gardens in Berlin, Germany.

Emerging Video Services

Sites such as travelervideos.com and travelistic.com allow users to upload videos of their travels for other users to watch. Most of these services are ripe with ideas, but thin in actual content. For instance, travelervideos.com and travelistic.com have only acquired 5,859 and 5,348 videos, respectively.

Of course, we’d be remise if we didn’t mention YouTube, which, along with water skiing squirrels, also has a solid inventory of travel related videos. YouTube is the solution of choice for many, as it allows users to place videos directly on their own sites through YouTube’s extension widget. However, general travel videos tend to get lost in the cloud of YouTube’s +2.5B video inventory. For example, the first three results in a search for “Miami Beach” on YouTube result in: (1) a video by Marilyn Mason; (2) three girls in a bikini walking on a beach; and (3) Brittney Spears sunbathing. Not exactly the video content property managers can use to drive more consumers to their destination.

Another interesting service is Triporia.com which offers similar services to the sites discussed above. In addition to offering a social video sharing service, Triporia also encourages businesses to create their own promotional videos.

Why promotional videos about a Property Management company could be useful:

• Help emphasize professional management services offered (i.e. 24 hour emergency contact, on location recommendations, etc.)
• Increase consumer confidence and convert more consumers from looking to booking vacation homes
• Videos showing actual homes will give insight into what to expect from the vacation homes themselves

Triporia.com currently has less than 500 videos and very limited traffic, so its too early to endorse the service as a “must have” in the vacation rental industry. However, the idea of using this type of service as a promotional tool could prove to be an effective utility in building your brand, attracting more guests and ultimately driving more bookings.

On these pages we often discuss new services, both for the specific vacation rental market and the larger online travel industry. Today, we’d like to highlight what’s been happening with Farecast.com.

Similar to Kayak.com, which we wrote about several months ago, Farecast is a “meta” search engine. Farecast provides “Smart Travel Search” by searching flight and hotel information from other online travel search engines and aggregating this information for consumers. Then comes the special sauce: by analyzing historical airfare and hotel rates over the prior 90 days and future trends, Farecast provides predictions on whether airfare prices will rise or fall or whether a quoted hotel rate is a deal or not.

Farecast also has a number of tools to help you plan the best times to travel, and presents the information in a clean, consumer-friendly format. Currently, predictive features for airfare is available for domestic travel between 75 airports. Hotel rate predictions, still in beta, are available for 30 US cities.

Through a partnership with MSN, Farecast has an integrated flight search module on the MSN Travel homepage. Data from Compete.com indicates that in September, MSN Travel was responsible for 10% of Farecast’s estimated 630,000 unique visitors for that month. The graphic below highlights Farecast’s continued popularity and surging monthly visitors.

With these predictive tools, Farecast increases consumer confidence and eliminates some of the guesswork in searching for the cheapest flight for your travel. This is incredibly valuable for converting online consumers from browsing to actual booking. And vacation rentals? Hmmm, sounds like just the industry that could benefit from an online service that increased consumer confidence!

What can I say? I’m a sucker for cool websites. I recently came across TripIt.com and it definitely met my requirements for COOL.

In short, TripIt helps you organize your travel plans.

How it works:

• You set up a free account (takes two minutes)

• As you receive itinerary confirmations from airlines, hotels, car rental companies, etc. you simply forward them to TripIt (takes two seconds)

• TripIt then identifies your email, parses your itinerary and then automatically saves it in an easy to read format. As you send your various travel plans it intelligently blends your trip into one integrated itinerary.

Here is a view of my Colorado trip I just forwarded from my Gmail account.

Why I won’t use it
Although the service is cool and ported my itinerary with 100% accuracy, I just don’t know why I need this service. I, like so many others, get a little stressed before trips. I like having the original itineraries to PROVE to the airline/hotel that I have a reservation. We have all checked into the Marriott at some point in our lives when the dreaded, “I’m sorry sir, I don’t seem to have a record of your reservation in the computer” conversation is initiated.

In addition, there is a sense of craftsmanship in taking notes, stapling multiple itineraries together, printing out to and from maps and placing all needed documentation into a Trip Folder. I understand that this process is so “pre-internet”, but some things were simply never meant to be automated.

Like so many others, TripIt forgot about vacation rentals
Like 99% of the travel sites on the market, TripIt doesn’t really address the vacation rental market. To be fair, it would be near impossible for them to do so. TripIt can only parse standard emails, thus its system works for the standard confirmations generated by major airlines and hotels. However, TripIt does allow a user to manually enter additional details of their trip, but unfortunately doesn’t even recognize the existence of vacation rentals. Notice how “Hotels” is the only option provided to me as I try to add my ski house rental.

I think TripIt has done a great job with a limited idea. I will likely not use it, but if they were to include a link for Vacation Rentals in their next release I could be won over.