We didn’t install solar because for the following reasons:

1) Depending on the weather, Solar isn’t 100% reliable.

2) Because Solar isn’t 100% reliable, an electric heater is still needed for “cloudy days”

3) The Solar heater has an effective life of several years, and the backup electric heater has an effective life that is also several years.

4) At the end of several years, when it is time to replace or repair both the solar heater and the electric heater, the energy savings realized for having installed and operated the solar heater didn’t make up for the added expense.

Put another way, it would have been less expensive to have only an electric heater and pay for more electricity use, than it would be to pay for fitting a solar heater as a primary heating method.

Our primary concern was that the Solar heating was not 100% dependable for all days.

It would be different if it was our residence. In that case, we could simply live without pool heat for a few days at a time, but we didn’t want to take the chance that our guests would arrive and that we couldn’t just “throw a switch” to make sure the pool was heated to an adequate temperature.

So, we use 100% reliable electric pool heaters instead.

How many hotels do you see using Solar heaters?

The value of a week when nearly any guest can travel, like Easter, is HIGH.

The value of a week when when fewer guests can travel, like the second week of September when children return to school, is LOW.

If you’re not pricing your home to earning the maximum possible for the varying values of different weeks, then you’re throwing money away and your chance for profit.

I’ve been told that my earlier link to the Wall Street Journal requires a subscription, so I’ll post some excerpts from this respected source:

“”There are as many people who are underpricing as are overpricing,” Mr. Sharples says. “It’s always been fascinating to me how the best properties are always booked a year in advance. In the summertime or at Christmas, if those people held out a bit longer and increased their prices a bit, would they increase their revenue? I’m sure they would.”

“Typically, owners should knock 30% off their peak rates for so-called shoulder-season rentals — those that fall between their high and low seasons — and as much as 50% off peak rates for low-season rentals,”

“Just before Christmas, inquiries slowed to a trickle for Amy Greener’s “Swaying Pines Chalet,” an 1,180-square-foot cabin she owns in the Great Smoky Mountains in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Ms. Greener, who advertises on six Web sites for the two cabins she owns, responded by cutting her price and posting the deal as a “Holiday Shopping Special.” That move yielded several renters.”

“In Cape Cod, owners generally slash their off-season prices to the point where a month costs about the same as a week does during summer, ”

“People with very young children are more likely to travel off-season, because they’re not constrained by school schedules,” she says. A high chair or a portable crib aren’t expensive additions, but can drastically increase off-season bookings,”

Referrals are very important to any business.  They’re especially important in the vacation rental business where many folks rely on the recommendations of people they know.

The problem is, people often recommend vacation rental homes verbally when they’re talking on the phone, or sharing a meal, or driving in a car.   I ask my guests how they heard about my website and they often say that they heard about us at work or at a social gathering.   The key here is that they *heard* about our website and remembered it.  They didn’t need a link.  They didn’t have to write it down.  They heard it,  they remembered it, and they typed it correctly in their Internet browser to find us.

So, when I create my website names (I have more than 100) I like to imagine that my goal is to *tell* the website name to someone who can’t write it down and have them effortlessly remember it.  In fact, I’ll often test my domain names with the non-computer people I know.   I’ll casually discuss with someone a domain name that I’m considering but I won’t specifically *ask* them to try to remember it.  Then, a few days later I’ll ask them, “Do you happen to recall the website name I was telling you about?”   If your friends, co-workers and customers can easily remember and correctly verbalize your domain name then they can help recruit potential guests for you.

Here are some rules I use when creating a domain name:

1) First, try to think of names that are related to the primary feature or  attraction of your home or your home’s area.   Is your vacation rental home on a lake?  Near a  beach?  In the city? Near some tourist attraction?  Make a list of these  words or short phrases as a starting point for a domain name.

2) The shorter the domain name, the better. Shorter domain names are easier to  remember, easier to say, easier to spell, and faster to write.

3) Strive for a .COM name.  While .ORG and .NET names are acceptable for Organizations and Networks a .COM name is still  the king of the hill.   If you choose any domain extension other than  .COM, it will only confuse people who naturally think .COM first when they think of any Internet web site.

4) Avoid Hyphens. Remember the idea about conveying the name in speech,  “Oh, I saw this great vacation rental home on the web, it was at, ‘my hyphen vacation hyphen villa hyphen by hyphen the hyphen sea dot com.”  See what a mess that is to say, let alone for anyone to remember?

5) Avoid plural words or words that can be pluralized unless you plan to buy all the derivative names.   Was the domain name “TennesseeVacationRental?” or was it, “TennesseeVacationRentals?”  if you don’t own both domains then expect to lose traffic to the guy who buys the other domain name.    It’s best to avoid the issue completely, if possible by using words in your domain name that aren’t typically pluralized.

6) Avoid words that are easily misspelled.   One of my websites is named www.Mickeytown.com and although I think that’s a fairly easy domain to remember and spell, I’ve been compelled to also buy the domain Mickytown.com and Disneytown.com because I discovered those were two of the other domain names that my prospective guests were mistakenly typing when trying to find my website.

7) Generally, avoid numbers unless they have some sort of memorable significance.  For example, most people can remember  number sequences like 411, and 911, and 123.    Some people will try to spell the name and some won’t remember if the numbers come before or after the words.   So, why complicate your domain name with numbers if you don’t need to?

Likewise, avoid words that have multiple spellings for the same pronunciation like  to, too, two.    Again, you want to make the path effortless to your website, and including ambiguous words makes it harder for your customers to find you.

Good luck!

Chuck Eglinton

Http://www.MickeyTown.com

Http://www.BidRobot.com

Http://www.FastLister.com

Http://www.AuctionZipCode.com

How you furnish and decorate your home depends somewhat on what guests expect in your vacation rental market. For example, if you’re renting a bed and breakfast, then guests are somewhat expecting the furniture and decorations they would expect to find in a bed and breakfast in your market. I’m somewhat pragmatic about my rental homes, I’m always asking myself, “how can I resolve this problem so I don’t have to bother with this problem ever again? How can I get this done to reduce conflict with my guests, my cleaners, or my maintenance folks?” The result after several years in this business and currently owning 3 rental homes….

I’m somewhat pragmatic about my rental homes, I’m always asking myself, “how can I resolve this problem so I don’t have to bother with this problem ever again? How can I get this done to reduce conflict with my guests, my cleaners, or my maintenance folks?”

The result after several years in this business and currently owning 3 rental homes….

1) We’ve eliminated most of our silk plants. The cleaners hated cleaning them, the guests didn’t miss them. We replaced them with tchotchkes, like antique bells, decorative bird houses, ceramics, other Pier One fare. The result is that the’re tchotchkes are likely to be cleaned resulting in a better experience for both the guest and the cleaners.

2) We’ve eliminated all of our vertical blinds (and there were a LOT of them!) They were always breaking, they were difficult to keep dusted, the kids and the heat of the sun were causing the slats to perpetually break and fall off. We replaced them with nice tabbed curtains, which can be easily cleaned and which can’t be broken by children or damaged by harsh sunlight through the window.

3) We buy *nice* sturdy rental quality furniture, but we no longer buy premium furniture. We don’t live there. We live 1000 miles away and rent to complete strangers for days at a time. It’s a rental home, get over it. We have very little control if our guests aren’t as careful as we like, so we price wear and tear into the rental fee. We budget to replace the furniture over every few years, so we aren’t so bent out of shape when we visit our home to find a 3-foot scratch in a night stand. We’re not happy, of course, but it’s water under the bridge. With several people in a house at a time, accidents happen. We fix damage to the best of our ability, and we replace it when it’s time.

Here’s a quick story: For the past 3 years, we’ve had guests who come in premium season every year and pay full rate. Every year, her young children take crayons or markers to the furniture. I tell the cleaning lady, “be ready to scrub,” because family X is coming again this year. Do I care? No. She pays full rate and returns every year. The extra cleaning required is priced into her rate. It’s much easier and profitable for me to have her return every year than it is for me to try to secure new guests every year. Is it a hassle for the extra clean? Yes. Is cleaning up after her so she’ll return next year easier than getting a new guest to replace her? Yes. Is it better to have her leave and recommend our home as a great place to stay rather than have her angry about me withholding her security fee? In my opinion, yes. Frankly, every single one of my guests may bring as many children and crayons if they like as long as they promise to return and pay full rate the following year.

We’ve never had damage so bad that we couldn’t fix it for $100 or less. It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, but it happens once or twice a year. In my opinion, it’s dangerous to become emotionally attached to a rental home or it’s contents.

For us, it’s *not* about having rental homes with the nicest flat screen TV, expensive game room, antique furniture, and expensive window coverings. For us, it’s a business, it all comes down to having a positive cash flow, a profitable business, and satisfied guests at a reasonable fee.

Chuck Eglinton
www.Mickeytown.com