Barefoot Technologies Blog- Vacation Rental Industry News

 If you are using a Customer Relationship Managent (CRM) system there are many things you can do to make the most of the time and energy you put into it.  CRM is becoming more and more popular in today’s business.  No longer is the client simply looking for the absolute lowest price, they are now considering much more when looking into making a purchase.  So what can your company do to gain these clients?  The answer is simple if you read below

 Written By: Mike Mueller

As ed and I grind through another tradeshow, I am beginning to see trends.  Not long ago I wrote some tips for attending tradeshows and this blog builds off of that.  In that blog, I wrote about making the most of your time by attending classes, but what happens when the class is not a great one?  This blog will remain on the shorter side as it is late and has been a long day but when a blog strikes, one must write!

Customer demographics is a rapidly expanding practice.  It used to mean knowing where your customers came from, how old they were and other basic information about who your customer was.  Today, this data and its collection is rapidly evolving into a science that needs attention.  Are you aware that user’s of a specific phone platform were likely to spend more per night on a reservation.  The ever increasing “Apple Demographic” is becoming more and more relevant.  Recently, Orbitz has begun changing its presentation based on what platform the user is visiting from.  A mac user will spend up 30% more on a hotel room for a night than a PC user.  Yielding this knowledge, Orbitz has started showing more expensive rooms in the initial search results according to reports.  Now any user can still sort by price online but research has also shown that 90% of users will not get past the first page in order to book.

     With the holidays coming around some vacation rental companies are moving into their busiest time of the year, others are moving into their down time.  One thing that everyone is taking note of is the holiday travel trends.  No matter what rental season you are in, there are ways to turn more leads into reservations.  By knowing the trends that are occurring in the booking process, you can set your company up for success.

Last week Barefoot packed up and headed to Phoenix Arizona for the National Vacation Rental Managers Association Annual Conference.  Being relatively new to the Barefoot team and the industry, this was my first national conference.  Needless to say, there were some things that I learned and hopefully you can learn from them as well.  Some of them are specific to the VRMA conference, others can be applied to any conference or business trip so be sure to take it all in.

How well versed ar you at your job and how much experience did it take you to master?  We have seen a recent shift away from new hires and instead companies are "hiring" new software.  This recent trend has a few benefits that has the business world looking for alternatives to fresh faces.

     A recent article shed some light on a developing trend in today’s world.  Google has recently surpassed Microsoft as the second largest technology company.  Now this may not appear to be incredibly relevant to your business, but it speaks wonders for the trends that your clients will follow.  Google rose to a value of around $249.9 billion while Microsoft fell to $247.2 billion dollars.