Several months ago I wrote a few articles for the industry’s top vacation rental marketing blogs. They asked me to share my predictions of where the vacation rental market was headed for 2014, this was back in early 2014 / late 2013. I wrote a blurb for VRMB I called it “The Year Of The Giants“. Where I predicted a hostile takeover of the travel giants who’ll be busting into the vacation rental industry.
Alan Egan of rentmoreweeks.com asked me to elaborate on my 2014 predictions. I put together an article for him I called “The Vacation Rental New World Order ”
Now that we’re half way through the year I took the opportunity of this breaking news happening right now in vacation rental industry to check in on those predictions. So, was I right about the “Giants” coming? You tell me. At first I wasn’t 100% sure, I mean I didn’t have a crystal ball in front of me I just went with what my gut told me.
While others who were asked the same question played it safe and went with more obvious predictions, I went out on a limb and did something different from the rest. It was kind of a ballsy move to attempt to predict something so out of the box. I mean I was way out in left field by myself on this one, what if I was wrong? I’d look like an idiot! Right? Nah, after all I’m not the Long Island Medium I just made my best educated guess.
Plus I’m not afraid of looking like an idiot anyway, my wife does it to me all the time, because to her I’m always wrong 🙂 Anyways, this conversation really created some controversy between me and a few other vacation rental industry peeps.
Some said “that will never happen” “they’ve been saying that for years” Jay. If you want to see our little tiff go to the VRMB link above where we hashed it out. But today the proof IS in the pudding! I really hate being right on this one because I don’t necessarily believe that “hotelifying” vacation rentals will be good for the little guy but, admittedly I do enjoy the fact I could prove those who doubted, wrong!
I was recently reading a vacation rental news article about how Booking.com (owned by Priceline) just launched a new VR website called Villas.com. The new Villas.com website is designed specifically to rent vacation villas where as Booking.com is sort of a free-for-all of accommodations for rent.
A few months ago it was rumored that the travel giant Priceline was looking to acquire Homeaway but it appears, at least for now that those rumors have been to rest because they’ve built their own “Homeaway”. Some industry pros are suggesting that Villas.com will be the next Homeaway, what do you think? Will we soon see Villas.com TV commericals?
The Booking.com site inventory and functionality is mainly focused on hotels. If the company wanted to take a bigger piece of the vacation rental pie they needed to create an easier to use interface for booking vacation rentals because the latter was just awful for booking villas.
Make way for another Giant y’all…. Villas.com. This move is a sign of what’s to come. With a name like Villas.com they are going to come up in Google search results, likley bumping your listings down lower and creating more competiton in search results. In the debate I specifically mentioned Booking.com and the moves I noticed from them, which led me to believe they were coming into the VR market full steam ahead. Here is an excerpt from the blog in which I said:
“Booking.com is already making headway with booking rentals like hotels. They are doing so well they are expanding their VR departments you can see booking.com is hiring here” (I was right damn it!) You can read the full article about the launch of the new Villas.com website on Tnooz (love those guys)
I had also predicted an outcry from scared hotels and resistance in the form of new laws being implemented in the vacation rental industry designed to keep VRs in their place! It seems like everyday there is a new article about some ordinance being passed to suppress the growth of vacation rentals.
The players are lining up their game pieces and soon you will see that nearly all the predictions I made will eventually come true, even if I am a little ahead of my time on these predictions. One of the predictions I made was how more travelers will be moving to make bookings with property management companies over owners.
I wrote a blog with a simple tip to help owners keep their own power and leverage the power of their property managers for themselves. I’ll be publishing the tip this week. If you’re not signed up for our newsletter do it now, to get the updates as they happen! Are you prepared to handle the changes in the new vacation rental market? Let us help get you ready!
What do you think? Are we in trouble? Is this good? Bad? Or something else?
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I haven’t noticed Villas.com high in search results yet has anyone else? Did not try their new site but their booking.com site was awkward. Rentals didn’t seem natural on their site. Wonder how this site performs for rentals