Developments in the vacation rentals both locally and throughout the industry. 2016 has brought some of the most significant changes we’ve seeing in the vacation rental industry. For me personally, at the end of 2015 I was asked to represent Perdido Key lodging on the VisitPensacola tourism board which is responsible for all of the marketing and managing of the county’s tourism. So far it’s been great and I after each meeting I am both reenergized and filled with new ideas for marketing PKRM. The biggest change for the vacation rental industry this year came when travel marketplace giant Expedia bought HomeAway. HomeAway owns many of the largest vacation rental marketplace websites in the world; VRBO.com, HomeAway.com and VacationRentals.com to name a few. This undoubtedly will bring change to the way that Perdido Key vacation rental properties are marketed. The first of these changes is how listing results will be displayed on VRBO.com. Previously, those who paid more for their listing were placed higher in the search results however no longer will the cost of your listing influence your placement in search results. Instead, VRBO.com is moving to be a marketplace encouraging online bookings (like Expedia.com) so those who are most integrated with their site will be placed higher in the search results. This will likely impact rent-by-owners more than property management companies as we are able to provide a better connection with faster communication through the use of our property management software platform than someone responding manually. If ever, now is the time to sign up with PKRM to ensure that your property is well marketed online! 

The second change, and arguably more significant, came when HomeAway(remember they own VRBO.com) announced that they will be implementing a “traveler fee” on all reservations that they generate. This is a big deal, because that means that will be added on top of the rental cost and we all know that this cost will come out of the travelers’ budgeted amount for their Perdido Key vacation. It is not too far-fetched to presume that many other smaller vacation rental marketplace websites may soon follow suit. We in the PKRM rental office are planning to capitalize on this by offering a best rate guarantee in order to compel vacationers to book direct. All of the rental program properties are listed on VRBO.com and through HomeAway’s network of websites and soon we will be working to update the listing descriptions on those websites to include verbiage which says that we have a best rate guarantee when travelers book direct. In the past, HomeAway and other marketplace websites have stripped phrases like that out of our property descriptions, but we’re going to see if that happens again and will continue to be responsive to their changes.

In short, PKRM has been working hard to maintain and grow the exposure of the complex online while navigating through the changes in the both locally and throughout the industry.