Last week, Pam over at Nerd’s Eye View asked for “Hawaii-philes” to write in and let her know “the thing you’d say I should do/see/eat if I had only one day on that island.” Our Hawaii City Host was happy to oblige recommending the following:

While you’re on the island of [Oahu] you must see the [Chinatown Historical District]. And if you have time and are in the [Kapahulu area], you gotta stop at [Irifune] because they have the best damn [Garlic Ahi] you’ll get anywhere.

While she was at it, our Hawaii City Host also offered some advice about cultural experiences on Oahu that are fun and informative for the whole family:

• In Honolulu, start out early with a tour of the farmers market to avoid the crowds and taste some great local produce. It’s located in the Historic District in Chinatown (between Maunakea and Bethel streets) . While you’re there, admire the architecture, view some art, do some shopping, and enjoy dim sum for lunch. Free Chinatown maps, history and an events calendar are available on the Arts District website.
• After lunch, take a tour of one of the Historic Capital District museums or visit the Hawaiian government buildings, including Iolani Palace, home to Hawaii’s last Queen, Lili`uokalani. The Mayors Office of Culture and the Arts website hosts an updated calendar of events.
• Enjoy evening dining in the Kapahulu area at Irefune (one of my favorites!) and then hit the underground scene at the Island Independent Film Festival. The four-day film festival begins November 9 in the heart of Chinatown.

With the holidays right around the corner, I’d also recommend seeing the Honolulu City Lights along King Street if you’re in town this December. Walk, take a horse drawn carriage, ride the trolley, or ride an antique fire truck to enjoy the beautiful displays. Come and see how Hawaii celebrates the holidays; it’s quite an experience. Hawaiian for Merry Christmas is Mele Kalikimaka!

There is much more to a tropical vacation than sun and surf. When you’ve had your fill of the beautiful beaches, try some of these Oahu treasures. You’ll fall in love with Hawaii all over again. If you have a question about something specific, drop a note. Our Hawaii City Host looks forward to hearing from you. Mahalo.

Posted: October 30th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Travel.
Comments: none

We just returned from the 23rd annual Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) conference and showcase in New Orleans where we engaged in a number of discussions about vacation rental property management versus ‘rent by owner’ (also known as RBO).

Just as homes can be sold directly by owners or by real estate professionals, vacation rentals can be rented directly by owners (RBOs) or by vacation rental property managers. More than 98% of the vacation rental properties on PickPackGo are managed by professional property managers. We focus our efforts at building and developing our inventory of professionally managed properties for a number of reasons:

Professional property managers run real businesses focused on making sure your vacation is a success.

When you make an inquiry, a professional property manager has reservation staff available to respond to your request. If the home you are interested in isn’t in the perfect place, they can recommend other options that are available, saving you the time and hassle of further research. Once your questions have been answered, a management company can accept credit cards for payment, which can be more convenient and trouble-free for you, the renter.

Property managers live and work locally, and can tell you more about special events and activities that take place during your stay than property owners who might live hundreds or thousands of miles away. They can provide detailed and up-to-date local information, handle key exchanges, and provide lock-out and other emergency assistance.

Professional property managers have staff to assist you throughout your stay.

If your flight is late or your car breaks down en route, professional property managers have procedures to take care of you. Late check in and check out may be stressful for you, but staff work hard to ensure there are no surprises upon your arrival or after you’ve returned home.

And, should something go awry during your stay, an on-site presence means immediate attention to your needs. In the unlikely event a home is unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances, property managers can usually provide alternate accommodations quickly.

Professional property managers strive to provide the highest quality accommodations.

If you rent a lot of vacation homes, you may have already noticed that professional property managers have greater resources to provide high levels of maintenance, cleaning and attention to properties under their management. The volume of business they do requires it, and so does maintaining their professional reputation, which ultimately results in a more highly maintained property for you, the renter.

You might have difficulty checking the reputation of an individual owner, but property management companies establish reputations, which can be verified by a local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. Property management companies are also governed by local laws that protect guests, and they pay local taxes, which benefits the area you’re visiting.

At PickPackGo, we make it easier for you to find the ideal vacation rental home by providing a link to “View manager’s other properties” whenever you are viewing the full details of a property on our site. When you click the link, all of the properties displayed in the search results are managed by the same property manager.

With all of these advantages, why would we show any owner-managed properties on our site at all? Stay tuned to learn why. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from any of you who have rented from both professional property managers and individual owners, and how you felt about your rental experiences.

Posted: October 24th, 2007 under Property Management, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: 1

It’s official. We’ve only been live a short while and we’ve already received our first award. We’re super excited about what we have built, and about making the best experience of renting a vacation home easier and safer for renters and property managers.

Since I am the designer here, at PickPackGo, it was up to me to take the lead in creating our site look and feel. Our team approached our site design knowing that today’s web users want fast, relevant information delivered in easily discernible ways or we’ll lose them. When we looked at other online vacation travel sites, they fell short—most offering drab, cluttered, text-heavy sites that can be very frustrating to navigate. Users deserve better.

Branding: In order to successfully meet travelers’ needs, we’ve designed a site where our users can easily find, compare and rent vacation homes. Our brand is simple. A warm, welcoming color treatment and use of fun font types sets us apart in an otherwise corporate, predictable sites of our industry.

Design: Our site consists of clean, airy page layouts, easy-to-read large fonts, bright, bold colors and a splash of fun graphics such as in the following page examples:

Personable approach: It was also important for us to bring a down-home element to our site. What better way than City Hosts who are locals in their cities? We wanted this area to be informative, as well as upbeat and inviting, so I introduced picturesque avatars for each city, as well as a City Host personality. When we add your city, let me what ideas you have for your city’s avatar.

Stay tuned: Since our launch, we have been steeped in testing and revisions, and we are working on implementing new features such as sharing favorites and reviews. Come back soon and see for yourself.

We hope you’ll find our site refreshingly easy to navigate—and even enjoyable. We know you just want to find your vacation rental and be done with it. Me, too. As we continue to improve our site design, I welcome input on what you would like to see or how we can make it better!

Posted: October 22nd, 2007 under Site design.
Comments: none

Felix and I enjoyed talking about our site with the hosts of Jumping Monkeys. Megan Morrone (mother of three toddlers) and Leo Laporte (father of two teens) toured PickPackGo as we chatted about our business and why vacation homes are ideal for families. If you haven’t heard it, they have a terrific show about parenting in the digital age, featuring lots of helpful links and advice, plus interviews with other geek parents, web site designers, and bloggers.

You can listen to the podcast at Twit.tv or download the mp3

Posted: October 16th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Technology, Web 2.0.
Comments: none

It’s that time of year again. The leaves are falling. The cold winds are beginning to blow. Editor Peter Geiger of the Farmers’ Almanac, 2008 Edition says Chicago could see its first snowstorm as early as mid-November. Brrrrr. Don’t get caught in the cold; start planning your winter getaway today.

When travelers hear the word “Orlando,” the first thing many think of is family attractions. The greater Orlando area is home to Walt Disney World, Sea World, Universal Studios, the Kennedy Space Center, Cirque du Solei, Jungleland Zoo, and 80+ other attractions.

But our Orlando City Host insists there’s more to Central Florida, and offers some suggested day trips for travelers taking advantage of a vacation rental home in the area.

In and on the water:

• Head to the Beach. It’s warm year-round, and both the East Coast (Clearwater Beach) and West Coast (Daytona Beach) are just a short drive away from Orlando. Clearwater Beach is known for its picturesque sunsets and laid-back atmosphere. Daytona Beach is said to be “the world’s most famous beach,” and you can drive onto it during daylight hours. Vendors are set up there to rent or sell everything from floats to motorbikes and hot-dogs to sunscreen.
• Swim with the Dolphins. Head over to Discovery Cove for an experience you will never forget. The park limits the number of visitors each day, has no lines, crowds, or rides. The only structure to your day is the scheduled dolphin interaction.
• Go Fishing. No experience required. In-shore fishing trips are available for adults and families, including young kids. Set out to catch the big one or just enjoy a great day on the water. The Lagooner Fishing Guides can hook you up.

In and around town:

• Relax. Spend the day in upscale Winter Park, shopping at chic boutiques, eating at a cozy café, visiting museums and taking in the scenery along Park Avenue.
• Antique. Visit historical Mount Dora with its touch of “Southern” charm. Its downtown is full of quaint boutiques. Renningers Antique Center is a must see there.
• Cruise with the Classic Cars. Olde Town in Kissimmee is home to the largest weekly car cruises, including the Saturday night classic car cruise. Take a stroll down memory lane, listen to a live band and visit one of Olde Town’s specialty shops or amusements.

With so much to see and do around Orlando (and the Magic Kingdom), you might need to book that vacation home for an extra week!

Posted: October 15th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Travel, Vacation Homes.
Comments: none

When I was a kid, vacation meant sunshine and three months of freedom from school. Those summers did have the added bonus of taking what I would then have called a “real vacation,” which was going out of town for a whole week of family fun.

When I got my first job, my employer defined my vacation as two weeks with paid leave with the caveat that my time off fit well with everyone else on my team’s schedule. That’s when I learned that vacations didn’t always last a whole week, and more importantly, they didn’t always take place in the summertime.

When I left full-time employment to run my own business, I redefined my vacations as anytime I left my home city and didn’t check my email. My how times had changed.

For most of us, what we consider a vacation has changed a lot over the last decade. With busy, 24×7 work schedules and new realities, such as year-round schools, the traditional, two-week “summer vacation” just isn’t practical for many travelers, particularly families. In the case of my friends and family, weekend or long weekend getaways have become more of the norm.

According to the Travel Industry Association, the average length of a vacation has dropped from about five days in the 1980s to four days in the ’90s to less than 3.5 days now. At the same time, the number of annual vacations is rising, as people take shorter but more frequent trips.

With their two- and three-night minimum stays, I think vacation home rental property managers have the right idea about vacation getaways. For many of us, it really takes two or three nights to feel like we’re doing something different than what we’d be doing at home in our everyday lives.

Don’t get me wrong, longer vacations are wonderful and offer even more chances to relax and build shared memories with family and friends; yet the reality of our ultra-connected worlds makes it necessary for us to choose which is right for us at which point in the year, and which point in our lives.

So this weekend, I’m going on what I currently define as a vacation: Two nights away without my computer, but with my cell phone. I’ll be enjoying the company of family and friends, some of whom I’ve known since kindergarten, relaxing and recharging.

Interestingly, Webster’s definition of vacation is “a respite or a time of respite from something; a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended; a period of exemption from work granted to an employee; a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation.”

It never mentions how long a vacation is or has to be. I like that. Vacations are what you want them to be. How do you define vacation? Leave a comment and let me know.

Posted: October 12th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Travel.
Comments: 2

Several of us attended a conference in Aspen recently. Continuing on the theme of eating our own dog food, we decided to book a vacation rental home as an alternative to a hotel, and share our experiences about how owners and property managers can make guests feel more secure.

Any time a person travels, they’re filled with anxiety. What time do I need to leave for the airport? How long is the security line going to be? Why do they make me take off my shoes? (As Bruce Schneier says, “It’s a good thing the shoe bomber wasn’t an underwear bomber.”) Will my flight be on time? Will I get stuck on the tarmac? Will there be bad weather? Will they keep my car reservation? How do I get to the place?

With vacation home rentals, travelers add one more really big “Will.” Will the house exist? And if it does, will it be nice?

Unfortunately, I managed to miss my flight and had to take a later one from San Francisco to Denver. So I found myself driving from Denver to Aspen because I had missed my connection. The drive was beautiful, and much better than being stuck in an airport for eight hours, which was my alternative. So you can imagine how I was feeling when I got to the property management office a little after 5:00PM (having planned to be there by noon). But that shouldn’t have been a problem…I had instructions emailed to me that told me where to pick up a packet with the keys and a map if I was going to be late.

As expected, I found the packet in the after-hours drop box with four sets of keys, but unexpectedly, there were no directions to the house. No address either. So I had to track down somebody in the back office to figure out where I was going. OK, it was probably an oversight, but I was lucky someone was still there or else I guess I would have called someone using the number in the confirmation email.

Success. I found the vacation home. It was a small house on a residential street downtown. But as I walked up to it, I realized I had no way of knowing it was the right house. All I had was a key and a hastily scrawled address. What if I got it wrong? They have a lot of guns in Colorado, don’t they?

Of course, it was the right house and I opened the door. But where were the lights? The switch was inconveniently located behind the now open front door. Other lights were scattered around the room. In the dark, I’d have been stumbling around.

I got settled in before the rest of my party. There was nothing welcoming me to the house. I wasn’t expecting flowers and candy, but I figured I’d find an information sheet telling me where everything was and anything I needed to know about using the place. I found nothing. No instructions about garbage, heat, appliances…nothing. I guessed we were on our own.

In the end, it worked out fine. One of the showers needed maintenance, but the other one worked. The beds weren’t great, but they were ok. One of us was scared half to death by a sound on the back porch at 1:30 in the morning, waking up another one, while a third slept through the whole thing. (I was the third).

But this experience led me to some key takeaways:

• Key exchange is critical. The renter should get directions to the house and the keys as early as possible. Keyless entry is probably even better.
• There should be something on the house that the renter can use to identify that it’s the right place. Obviously a big neon “vacancy” sign is going to be frowned on by the neighbors, but some kind of marker would help. Something that occurred to me was putting a symbol on the keychain that matched a symbol on the door, near the lock. Also, if you have a vacation rental home you should make sure your address is clearly visible from the street.
• Think about someone walking into your place at night. Your light switches should be in the obvious places. In fact, all your light switches should be the kind that light up so they’re easier to find, especially if someone is fumbling in the middle of the night, scared half to death.
• Put the rules of the house in an obvious place. I’ve seen a lot of owners put them on the refrigerator. They should detail how the house is expected to be used. They should talk about anything that’s unintuitive about the appliances. They should explain where to put the garbage. There should be some detail about where a renter can find things like food (especially at night), firewood if appropriate, coffee, etc…

If you’re saying you do all these things already, great, but I’d still advise you to take a nighttime walk through each of the properties you manage or own. You might be surprised at what you discover.

Posted: October 9th, 2007 under Property Management, Travel, Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: none

If you aren’t quite ready for winter, according to our Colorado City Host, there’s a lot more to Colorado than the ski slopes. In fact, she says Fall is one of the best opportunities for sightseeing across the state. The roads aren’t terribly congested, nor do you have to check the weather report every half hour. While it does start to get chilly, especially at the higher altitudes, the skies are clear, the sun is shining, and as you can see from the sampling of activities below—there’s a lot to do! Here are some of her recommendations:

*It’s not too late to pick your fruits and vegetables at The Pumpkin Patch in Fort Collins. The family owned and operated farm is open daily all through October.

*The 8.5-acre Corn Maze, open through October 28 at the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield, is an October classic. Make a day of it on October 13-14 and check out the Pumpkin Festival too.

*Glenwood Springs hosts an annual Historic Ghost Walk through Linwood Cemetery, with several nightly tours October 19-21 and October 26-28.

*The 2nd Annual Canyon Colors Festival takes place on October 13 in Gateway, Colorado—south of Grand Junction, just east of the Colorado-Utah border. The festival benefits the Western Colorado Center for the Arts, but the scenery alone makes the trip worthwhile.

*The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad hosts the Great Pumpkin Patch Express on the weekends of October 13-14, 20-21, and 27-28. Pick your own pumpkin with the Peanuts gang!

*And if you haven’t yet explored Colorado wineries, what are you waiting for? Follow a Colorado wine trail (or two) and find out why Colorado wines are making such a name for themselves.

If this rundown hasn’t given you enough ideas, our City Host can help and so can the Colorado.com website. Search by region or by activity, or just browse around. This beautiful state is filled with adventures for everyone!

Posted: October 5th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Travel.
Comments: 1

We just got back from RezFest 2007, Instant Software’s user conference for the Vacation Rental Industry. What a great event! It was terrific to meet so many wonderful property managers from around the country, and Instant Software did a great job of making the entire event both educational and fun. This is great news for renters because we’ll be bringing even more professionally managed properties onto our site.

The mountains around Aspen, Colorado are beautiful this time of year. Greens and yellows everywhere. Temperatures ranging from morning 30s to afternoon 70s. It’s hard to imagine in just a few short weeks everything will be covered in white powder and another ski season will begin.

Aspen, Colorado

For those of you planning a ski vacation this year, SKI magazine recently completed its 2007 guide to North America’s top resorts, ranked and rated by the experts—your fellow skiiers. Among the Top 10, not surprisingly, six were in Colorado—Vail, Aspen, Snowmass, Breckenridge, Beaver Creek and Steamboat.

And of course, there are great Colorado vacation rental homes and condos waiting to make your vacation more fun and more affordable!

Posted: October 1st, 2007 under Travel, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: none