It's the economy

Sometimes we speak to vacation home owners who are frustrated with the performance of their websites, listing services and property management firms. People will ask me to evaluate their respective strategy for the three or four pillars of their vacation rental business. In many cases I'm able to make suggestions about possible solutions however, sometimes the slow down in business is due to a poor economy which has been exacerbated by tight credit and high gas prices.

My recommendation is to be extremely conservative with your advertising and marketing budget especially with your listing services. Go to http://www.alexa.com/ to evaluate the traffic of the respective listing service. Many of the listing services will have reasons as to why they don't rank high on Alexa.com or perform as well as their competitors. They will site the short falls of Alexa.com and have many "good" reasons why Alexa.com does not represent reality as it relates to their listing service. In my humble opinion, you will be able to easily identify the top performing listing services by using Alexa.com as a tool to aid in your advertising decisions. Remember, keep it simple. If it does not work, stop using it and if it does work, use it. Your job is not to justify the poor performance of many of these "also ran and lost" listing services. Let the traffic and number of listings on these sites justify inclusion in your marketing buget.

Good luck,

info@homespunwebsites.com