You probably know that today, Cyber Monday, is the busiest day of the year for online retailers, but did you know that January 2 is the busiest day of the year for booking vacation lodging? So if you want to rent your dream vacation home for 2008, it’s a good idea to beat the rush and start planning ahead!

With an eye toward January 2, there are only 38 days left before everyone and their extended family is finding and booking their ideal vacation rental home for 2008. While everyone else is hitting the pre-holiday online sales, get in on a little known secret—if you’re good at planning ahead, your dream vacation home is just a click or two away. Just decide when, where and what vacation you want to take this coming year, and you’re well on your way! Planning ahead means you’ll have many more properties available from which to pick and choose.

To get started on the right foot, here are a few tips about how I end up with the right vacation rental home for us:

Tip 1: Make a ‘must have’ list of everyone’s needs/requirements

With small children, you might not want to travel with safety gates, a Pack ‘n Play or a high chair. Put it on the list. If you’re vacationing with a pet, you’ll need lodging that accommodates the dog or cat, too. Can’t imagine vacationing without a pool, hot tub or internet access? Add it to your ‘must have’ list, and don’t forget to combine your list with the ‘must haves’ of others vacationing with you. Aim high because your vacation home can be as nice as your dream home if you start planning early.

Tip 2: Research online

Property manager sites and vacation rental search site PickPackGo showcase all of their properties online. This is a great place for you to compare your ‘must have’ list with what is offered in individual homes, condos and villas. Read the descriptions and view the photos closely. They’ll tell you a lot.

Tip 3: Make several inquiries

Even if your heart is set on one particular place, ask or inquire via email about a few different properties. This will help you to evaluate (and compare) the responses to your questions, and provide a chance for you to ask about more specific needs. You can learn a lot about property managers’ or owners’ responsiveness, as well as their knowledge of the properties and area through inquiries. They should be willing to take the time to answer your questions and concerns, and if they don’t, it may be time to move on to your next choice.

Tip 4: Read the fine print

Make sure to review a copy of the rental agreement in advance of booking your reservation. It may include policies about deposits, payments, check-in/out procedures and requirements the property management companies or owners have about the rental.

Tip 5: Book early!

Historically, January 2 is the busiest booking day of the year for vacation rental homes. Looking and booking early can guarantee you get the property you really want. Truthfully, waiting until the last minute and hoping for a ‘special’ won’t help much, unless its off-season. Some owners would rather not rent their homes than get a price below what they are asking during high season. So waiting is not to your advantage. If you have an idea about when you want to travel and where, it pays to book a rental early.

So after you shop for that new camera online today, take a minute to start looking for your dream vacation home for ‘08, too. January 2 is coming soon!

Posted: November 26th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Property Management, Travel, Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: none

The release of our new Book Now functionality last week was especially exciting to me as a primary contact to our property managers. Since releasing Book Now, we have delivered direct bookings to a number of property managers, including Advantage Vacation Homes in Orlando, Florida, near Walt Disney World.According to Fred Zorayq, director of sales and marketing at Advantage Vacation Homes: “Travelers appreciate the convenience of online booking and we are pleased to be working with PickPackGo to process bookings automatically for renters. PickPackGo is aligned with our goals of getting more highly qualified renters and confirmed bookings. Within 24 hours of activating Book Now through PickPackGo, we generated a confirmed booking for one of our vacation rental properties near Walt Disney World.”Vacation rental property managers, such as Advantage Vacation Homes, are able to seamlessly add their listings for free on PickPackGo because of the solid partnership we established in early September and continue to have with Instant Software.

I’m also pleased to report that our Book Now functionality has excited new partners. Property managers running their businesses on software from Escapia now will be taking advantage of our online booking capabilities.

Property managers are key to making vacation rental homes a mainstream lodging alternative because they provide renters with peace of mind about their stay. Today, we are excited to be working with two vacation rental software leaders to deliver more bookings and revenue to property managers.The possibilities with PickPackGo are unlimited. If you’re a property manager, contact us to learn how we can help you attract more renters and bookings, no matter what system you’re using.

Posted: November 19th, 2007 under Property Management, Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals, Web 2.0.
Comments: 2

I like things easy. I like to go to a website, search for what I want, and buy it with a credit card. That’s what’s cool about the new Book Now functionality we officially released today. It’s easy. Renters searching for vacation properties can now find, compare, and securely complete a booking all on PickPackGo.

The ability to book immediately online may not be new for property managers, but it will be new to a lot of renters. That’s because they’ve never rented a vacation home online before or they’ve only rented from individual homeowners and this type of functionality wasn’t available to them.

With Book Now, renters can have the same peace of mind reserving a vacation rental home as they do reserving a hotel room. Knowing they can use a credit card will provide more security to travelers previously concerned about sending a check or money order to confirm a booking.

The majority of professionally managed properties on our site are now enabled with online booking capabilities. Check them out:

This new feature will make renting a vacation home more convenient for me. I hope you’ll contact us and share your experience about how it worked for you.

Posted: November 13th, 2007 under Property Management, Technology, Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
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

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