Travel to summer vacation home destinations sometimes involves long car and airplane rides. During our extended family trips, everyone has their own ideas about the types of movies we should watch and music we should hear. When you want to tune everyone else’s preferences out, an iPod comes in handy.

Enter our July PickPackGo Getaway Giveaway contest and …

Congratulations to Colette of St. Louis, Missouri, the winner of our June Getaway Giveaway contest and a $100 gas card.

Posted: July 1st, 2008 under Contest, Technology, Vacation Homes.
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I had to laugh when I read Troy Wolverton’s “Have gadget, will travel” article in yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News. Our family spends nearly as much time considering which gadgets to take on a trip as we do planning what clothes and shoes to pack—maybe more.

For example, when we head off for our upcoming Fourth of July holiday, we’ll be traveling with: one cell phone, one Treo, two phone headsets, three sets of earphones, an iPod touch, a digital camera (that also takes video), a laptop and a USB memory stick.

Even with all of this gear, I disagree with Christina Tunnah, director of marketing for the Americas at Lonely Planet, that we’ll be “losing out on a potential conversation with a local or an interaction on the bus, and that taking a lot of gadgets tempers the experience of a place.”

In fact, it’s been our experience on more than one trip (and in lots of airplanes and airports) that our gadgets are actually great conversation starters that have led to more interesting discussions about a variety of topics from homelessness in San Francisco to dining in Kiev.

In addition, many of these gadgets have been both time- and money-saving, not to mention, sanity-saving for our family. On the iPod touch, for example, we get G movies inexpensively, and they become wonderful distractions during 5+ hour layovers (which we recently had in Dallas and New York).

We can’t imagine traveling without our gadgets, which is why at our vacation rental search site, we have been giving away gadgets and gift cards monthly as part of our PickPackGo Getaway Giveaway contest.

So although others may claim we are adding a layer of complexity to our trip with all of our gadgets, we won’t be leaving them at home anytime soon!

Posted: June 24th, 2008 under Contest, Technology, Travel, Vacation Rentals.
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I have a confession to make. I’m one of the only people I know who hasn’t been to either Walt Disney World or Disneyland.

I know, I know, I’ve missed out on a quintessentially American experience.

I really need to go sometime. I’m sure I’ll get to at least one, if not both, someday. Chalk it up to having grown up in Minnesota, about as far away as you could live from both Disney park locations and still be in the continental United States. Or maybe because planning a trip there seems a little daunting—is it even possible to see the majority of attractions in a single trip? How close are things to each other? If I wanted to see some animatronic dinosaurs, which attractions would I go to? Where can I find Nemo? By any chance, do they have a train ride that simulates riding to the top of Mount Everest?

Well, answering some of these questions just got a lot easier with the announcement of Disney World in 3D for Google Earth.

For those who don’t know, Google Earth is a desktop application that maps satellite images, building models and other data onto a three dimensional globe that you can spin, zoom in/out on, and fly around. The Disney World 3D data lets you see pretty good representations of many building structures, and includes links to videos and lots of other information about various parts of Disney World.

Of course since I am a software engineer, I think Google Earth is pretty cool technology. But the really neat thing for me is seeing the way that technology can enrich our lives by giving us better ways to access and use information. That’s what we’re trying to do for the vacation rental industry with PickPackGo—use technology to help make it easier for travelers to find, compare and book properties. It just so happens that there are a ton of vacation rental homes in Florida near Disney World, so if playing around with Disney World 3D in Google Earth makes you want to plan a trip, try checking out PickPackGo to find a place to stay in while you’re there!

Posted: June 13th, 2008 under Technology, Travel.
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I am thrilled that Erik Blachford, formerly President and CEO of Expedia, Inc. and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp’s travel division, IAC Travel, has joined the PickPackGo Board of Directors.

Erik brings a tremendous amount of travel market experience and insight to our fast-growing vacation rental business. We are delighted to have him join us as we make it easier for travelers to find, compare and book more affordable vacation lodging using PickPackGo.com.

When Erik joined the Board, he said: “Vacation rentals are a growing trend in travel, and PickPackGo is perfectly positioned to succeed by focusing on meeting renters’ needs, while providing a compelling pay-for-performance distribution opportunity for property managers. I think PickPackGo has an extraordinarily bright future and I’m looking forward to being part of the team.”

We look forward to working with him, too.

Posted: May 5th, 2008 under Technology, Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: 1

Seth Godin’s “Nearly infinite” blog post today is interesting. While I agree with him that “Search makes the infinite finite (at least for a while),” I disagree that “Except search (no matter where you look) is pretty lame, and it doesn’t really turn infinite collections into manageable choices.”

Maybe that’s because people are still counting on horizontal search engines to provide the best outcomes, when they often now provide more choices than anyone could possibly quickly review. That’s where vertical search engines, like PickPackGo, have begun to provide a more satisfying user experience.

By allowing renters to search for vacation rental properties by location and their personal dates of travel, our site helps avoid the phenomenon Seth describes whereby: “In the face of infinity, many of us are panicking and searching less, going shallower, relying on bestseller lists and simple recommendations.”

When renters can easily search through and view thousands of properties, narrowing down choices as they go, PickPackGo search is succeeding in helping turn the infinite collection of vacation rentals into manageable choices.

Posted: April 28th, 2008 under Technology, Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
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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

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.
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As a developer, I spend time thinking about how to get the layout of our vacation rental search site pages to look as perfect as possible on all of the popular web browsers and how to pack as much information about properties into the most concise format.

As a Dad, I spend time thinking about where we’ll go for our next fun outing. Last month, it was Oregon. Naturally, I prefer to rent houses or condos when I can because they are just as affordable and a lot more comfortable than hotel rooms. It’s been awhile since I’ve rented a vacation home (what with all the work around here!) , so I decided to take the opportunity to see what some of our competitors websites are like.

I began searching for houses near my destination, and before I knew it, I was no longer checking out the buttons and layout of their pages as a web developer, but rather I was a customer; a prospective renter looking for the perfect vacation rental. I took that feeling with me back to our own site and it was almost like I was seeing it for the first time. My perspective had completely changed. I wasn’t seeing buttons, colors and layout. I was truly experiencing what it was like to be a user on our site.

As a developer, I’ve always known that to develop a good product, you need to use the product yourself. It’s called “eating your own dog food” by people in the software industry. I’ve done this before, but this time I made the transition from developer to user more completely than ever – probably because it was my own vacation after all.

I’m happy to say that I was pleased with what I experienced. It was easy to browse through houses that I liked and convenient to have maps, rates and photos right there. The “favorites” feature was really helpful for marking properties that I was interested in, and going back to compare them later. I made an inquiry, and the same day rented a place that turned out to be great for us.

During my search, I also discovered some things we could improve. For example, once I found a house that I was interested in, I sent an inquiry asking for confirmation that the house was still available and that the estimated rental fees were accurate. It would have been nice to have some idea how long I was going to have to wait to hear a response from the owner. I’m working on that one. Stay tuned. Maybe there are things about the site that you think we could improve. If so, let me know.

And for anyone going to Oregon, I highly recommend Sunriver, especially:

• Horseback riding at the Sunriver Resort
• Sightseeing at Crater Lake
• Canoeing and swimming in the Deschutes River

Ok, time to get back to work…

Posted: September 17th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Technology, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: none

Fun

A few years ago, my wife and I joined the growing number of people looking for vacation lodging alternatives to the typical hotel room. Frequent family visits to both New York and Europe sent us in search of better value and amenities (kitchen, bedrooms, fireplace, private hot tub, etc.) than hotels provided. More importantly it meant we could stay in neighborhoods away from the typical tourist areas. This led us through a series of vacation rentals including:

• A two-bedroom beachfront condo in Maui that provided a full kitchen and balcony;
• An awesome one-bedroom apartment in New York City with hardwood floors in the heart of Greenwich Village (a great neighborhood with no hotels);
• A long-term stay in a one-bedroom apartment in Paris’ Marais district (another great “local” neighborhood with no hotels)
• A beachside apartment in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Profit

While planning for an extended trip to Europe, we were concerned about leaving our own house unoccupied for an extended period of time. Faced with two unappealing options; paying a house-sitter or asking friends to “look in” on our house, it finally dawned on us that we could rent out our house which would keep it “lived in” while we were gone, and, as a bonus, help to finance our vacation.

Without knowing what to expect, we wrote a full description of our house, photographed it, and began interviewing prospective renters. Everything turned out great with that initial rental, and our experiences so far, as both renters and “property managers”, have been overwhelmingly positive.

Challenges

Though positive, our experiences have not been without challenges. The primary challenges, both as renters and owners, are not what we initially feared; poor accommodations, nightmare renters, and the like. Instead, the problems encountered on both sides of renting vacation properties are around the process of renting a vacation home:

• Financial transactions: As both owners and renters, the financial transaction was awkward. Neither party was 100% sure of the other party, and fairly large sums of money were involved.
• Legitimacy: We were always a little nervous that perhaps there wouldn’t be an apartment, condo, or house there at all when we arrived!
• Locating the “right” rental: It was really hard to find the right place to stay due to the sheer number and disparity of vacation rental sites, many with extremely hard to use search capabilities.
• Availability: Even when we did find good rental prospects, the online availability data was frequently incorrect or altogether non-existent.
• Listing our property affordably: Listing our property on various vacation rental sites cost a flat $100-$300 per year, no matter how often it was rented, which adds up quickly when listing on multiple sites. Even worse, there didn’t seem to be any incentive for those sites to feature our property after we had paid our yearly fee. Finally, we had to pay the same flat fee for the two weeks per year that our house was available that others paid to rent their properties every day of the year.
• Targeting our listing’s visibility (and cost) to particular travel seasons: It was easy to rent out our house during high season, but that didn’t always coincide with when we were away. The sites we listed on offered no way for us to indicate that the focus of our $300 yearly fee should be on a certain period (or even a certain weekend) of the year. Our property received the same treatment on those sites regardless of whether it was our high or low season.

Overcoming these challenges provided the motivation for starting PickPackGo, with the aim of enabling more people to enjoy the benefits of renting vacation homes with fewer hassles. I’d love to hear other people’s comments on their experiences as both renters and owners/managers, as well as suggestions for improving the vacation rental marketplace.

Posted: August 23rd, 2007 under Technology, Travel, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: none

What would the first blog entry be without a big “Welcome to PickPackGo!”

Down the road, the PickPackGo team will be commenting here about travel and technology, the vacation rental industry, traveling with friends and taking multi-generational family vacations. We’ll also fill you in on new additions to our site and controversial (at least internally) features being developed.

By better connecting renters, property managers and owners in this forum and on our site, we believe renting a vacation property can become as mainstream as renting a hotel room.

Our founding team has worked together for the past 15 years on a wide variety of software products and services for Silicon Valley companies. We love building products that we can actually use ourselves and along the way, we’ve managed to find millions of others in the same boat.

We started PickPackGo because as renters and owners, we had similar experiences with vacation homes. Without a recommendation, it wasn’t easy to find a place or qualify a renter, and often we were amazed at just how long the rental process took. There had to be an easier way to do it, but we couldn’t find one, so we decided to build one ourselves.

We’ve pulled together a team of people and some great ideas to solve this problem. We want to make PickPackGo the best place to find, compare and rent a vacation property online. At the same time, PickPackGo will be the best place for property managers and owners to advertise and market vacation rentals. If you haven’t seen the site, here’s a quick look:

PickPackGo differs from other vacation rental listing sites in some immediately apparent ways (like our new website design and free listings). As we get going, we think you’ll discover many more reasons property managers and owners will benefit and renters will keep coming back. In the meantime, we invite you to take a look around and let us know what you think!

Posted: August 16th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Technology, Travel, Vacation Rentals.
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