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.
Barefoot has always had an eye out for scam trends in the VRBO and Rental Home market. We decided to make a checklist of 5 simple steps you can take to avoid finding yourself mixed in a scam.
We spent a lot of time getting you information regarding how your vacation rental properties ranked on Homeaway.com not long ago. In that blog we also told you about some upcoming changes that would be happening. Well those changes have come to fruition and now, software fed listings have the ability to purchase into higher subscription tiers. All of the methods we listed in our prior blog still hold true. By using those methods to maximize your visibility, you will now rank against those in your subscription tier. Again, there is classic, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum ranking tiers that you will be able to purchase a subscription for.
We have written two reports (here is the original and the follow up) on the passing of Bill SB 2089 in Hawaii. This bill is designed to enforce proper taxing of vacation home rentals through a mandatory representation through a local vacation rental manager. The idea behind the legislation was to help Hawaii collect on taxes that had been avoided by homeowners who rented out their homes on the island, yet did not pay the due taxes. Hawaii relies heavily on tourism, but with that tourism, comes increased traffic on the islands infrastructure and land. The taxes are designed to help the island pay its employees to maintain all of the areas that people love. We have seen similar cases in areas like Colorado where large VRBO sites have allowed room for people to dodge tax payments.
Does your company utilize a portal partnership? With lead and subscription based portals speed is the name of the game and every second counts. When an interested party sends an information request about a property through one of these portals, you as an agent must receive the e-mail, check availability, confirm price, and then reply to the prospect. Auto OTA letters simplifies all of this.
Tags: Barefoot, Vacation Rental, Property Management Software, Management Software, Competitive Advantage, Rental Software, OTA Portal, Rental Management CRM, CRM Tips, Boston
Barefoot has spent a lot of time building a portal system that allows its customers to take advantage of every possible business opportunity out there. Recently, some of our clients have been questioning their ranking and how others get ahead of them and how to get higher rankings on HomeAway.com. As a partner of HomeAway, we asked some tough questions.
The first questions was do Barefoot users get the same treatment as Escapia and Instant Software customers received in regards to rankings? We are happy to report that HomeAway does not treat any software solution different. Much like any successful business, HomeAway.com is dedicated to offering the best service to the consumer. If you have bought software, hoping for preferential treatment in portal systems then it may be best to re-evaluate. Portals, and HomeAway.com in particular, are striving to get the best homes to the right people.
The second question, how can Barefoot users get better rankings and what do they need to do? At this time there are 2 ways to influence how a listing is ranked. Software fed listings only have control over one of these methods, which is to have the best content possible. Having the maximum amount of photos is about the most helpful thing you can do to achieve better listings, Homeaway.com allows you to have 24 photos. Barefoot allows unlimited photos so be sure to take advantage of that. Also making sure you have a professional and accurate description that details as much as possible about the home, location, and other reasons to choose this residence will help your ranking. Homeaway.com uses an ever-changing algorithm that adjusts daily to rank the descriptions.
This made us wonder why HomeAway has tiers. Currently software provided inventory is not ranked by higher subscription tier, all software provided inventory is tied to their classic tier regardless of the system at this point. HomeAway will soon have the capability to offer tiered upgrades to software fed inventory, giving Barefoot customers the same opportunity as manually listed inventory
If you have questions on any of this information, your best option is to contact your HomeAway.co account manager and discuss how to optimize your listing for the best search results. They can tell you more specifically what you can do to get your listings ranked above others in your tier. Please share your input on our blog and we will continue to keep you up to date, but here are a few bullet points:
-You can put 24 pictures to Homeaway.com
-Unique descriptions regularly updated frequently
-Descriptions may contain up to 1,000 characters, use as many as possible
-keep calendars as up to date as possible
-Review your ad regularly and monitor those properties ahead of you, what do they do that you are not doing
-Make sure all fields that can be seen have data
-List local attractions and landmarks
With the struggling economy, our industry has been in a fickle situation. Despite the economy and leisure spending going down, vacation rentals have stayed relatively strong. We have had several ideas as to why this happened such as families traveling shorter distances, or pooling vacation plans with others to cut cost. If you would like to read more on these feel free to check out our blog on the topic.
