Many villa owners get stung when they buy their property.  Not because they have paid too much or bought the wrong property but because they are led to believe all they need to do is to build a web site and wait for customers…..WRONG!

Even the most beautiful web site will not attract anyone simply because it cannot be found. Google and Yahoo give no points for beauty! They give points for many things including age, fresh content, good connections and being relevant.

So how do you get the attention of the search engines?

This first thing to do is to create and publish your site – or at least the bare bones (5-10 pages).  Then you need to get ‘indexed’. i.e. get the search engines to know you are there.  Yes, but how??

Well, first of all, don’t go using a ’submissions’ service.  You can pay $100 or nothing for this kind of service and it will get you nothing except a mailbox full of spam!  Indeed it can slow you down.  Its the equivalent of sending your business card to the newspapers and expecting to get an article in the ’society’ column!

I’m sure you’ll agree that its better to get noticed because of who you know and are seen with!  Its the same on the Web and what that means is getting people to link to you. Even better is to get a link from a site that is already well ranked in the vacation rentals market.

Whilst its always possible to search for sites that might be able to help you, its been shown to be a long and hard path.  After all, who wants to give a competitor a leg up??  The solution to this problem is to use a company that specialises in this type of service – they can get you the links you need to get indexed quickly and economically.

Bees Web Marketing provides web promotion services for the vacation rentals market.

I thought it might be time to write about various aspects of marketing vacation rental properties in the Orlando area.

Its a Hard Sell
Well actually, it isn’t. When you have the opportunity to explain to potential customers the very real benefits of renting a vacation home rather than cramming everyone into one room in a resort, then they are usually convinced. The hardest part is finding someone who is going to the Orlando area in the first place!

So the hard part is actually deciding where to cast your net. The next hardest part is deciding how to seel your villa to anyone you have managed to attract! You may not be a talented salesman and you may not be available to answer the phone when it rings or to get to email enquiries.

Standing out from the crowd

Advertising your villa on the web is a favourite. But for me, its a bit like looking at a bowl of garden peas and trying to decide which one you’re going to eat! There are over 2 million web pages featuring Florida Villas alone. For Florida Vacation Rentals there are 6.5 million pages! So how do you compete? How does the vacationer wade through this ’swimming pool of peas’ and find you?? And supposing they find you, how do they know that your villa is the one for them!

Daunting – Well its not so bad really

Some people use listing sites. There are masses of them and they rank pretty well in the search engines. Some listing sites get good traffic, others very little. The problem is that some have hundreds of listings – at least we’re in our own bowl of peas now so our chances are higher! But its important to know a few things about the bowl before you sign up.

One of the most important things is the way the listing engine deals with enquiries. You see, they don’t care if the surfer books with you or not – the chances are they’ll book with someone from their site. So they cater for the needs of the surfer by allowing them to produce mass emails to all the villa owners in a particular area or for a particular type of villa. What this means is that rather than the client searching for the villa they really want, balancing the features and look of the villa against availability and price, they blast email the owners and wait for the lowest price to come back.

This is bad for owners and bad for clients too! Owners get fed up with all these emails because they usually lead to nothing. A trial over a few months in 2006 led to several hundred enquiries and no reservations. Tiring to say the least!

What Sells Villas?
There is no doubt that pictures sell. In fact, the more pictures the better as long as they are good quality. Add a Panoramic Virtual Tour and you have an edge too. There are few sites that don’t charge a premium for these services.

A good description is well worth spending time on. I don’t just mean a huge list of everything there – I mean text that really captures the imagination of your potential guest! If you’re not a great writer, ask someone you know to go through your draft and make it more reader friendly!

Anyway, that’s all for now – take a good look at your marketing and see what you can improve. I’ll be back soon with more.

Simple ways to save money when vacationing in Orlando, FL.

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Well, we did it!

We’ve started our own property management business in central Florida! Catering to both the short-term vacation rental and the long-term leasing market, we bring an enormous amount of experience to our clients.

Julie and I have been involved in property mangement for over 25 years and we’ve found the quality of management available in Central Florida leaves something to be desired. We’ve done it for our investors and ourselves. We only have 2 properties but our clients have many and we didn’t want them to invest in rental property in the Orlando area and then be left high and dry. They deserve the same quality management that we have been giving them for many years in the UK.

So More Property Management is born and already has several clients. Offering the flexibility that others don’t and experience and financial backing that the average ‘mom and pop’ business cannot. We are confident that our clients will benefit from this development.

We have a custom marketing programme in both the USA for (Vacation Rentals) and the UK for (Florida Villas) to help owners market their vacation rental properties. ‘The ability to provide bookings is essentioal to the success of a short term rental property’. It makes the difference between the investment being a joy and a burden. We are able to help provide those bookings.

If you have a short-term rental property in the Orlando, Kissimmee, Davenport or Clermont areas we are ready to provide you with a comprehensive one-stop-shop for all your property management needs. Not only that, as seasoned investors ourselves we are able, with the benefit of our established UK high street presence, to offer you marketing advice and services as part of our package.

We recognise that it can be tough to make your vacation rental property pay its way but our goals are simple. To provide both you and your clients with the very best experience so that they will return year after year and tell their friends what a great place they stayed in.

I’m sitting here watching the Grand Prix and every pit stop, they measure the amount of fuel going into the car very accurately. It occurred to me that when I stop to fill my car at the garage I too, measure the fuel put in – not that I ever do much with it! Normally the driving I do is to variable for the figures to mean much. Last weekend however, I drove from Essex to Scotland for my parents Golden Wedding celebrations and I filled up my car just before I left. I use my local Esso filling station on Ipswich Road in Colchester.

I drove to Dunblane in Scotland via Newcastle. The journey was mostly on motorway or dual carriageway and I use the cruise control. When I got to Dunblane the fuel guage was just above the point where the warning light would illuminate – in line with my usual consumption fopr the journey and so on Saturday morning I drove the 8 miles to Morrison’s Supermarket in Stirling to fill up and then returned to my parents home.

We set off on Sunday morning and returned to Colchester via Newcastle on the same route and driving at the same speeds using cruise control but some 60 miles before Colchester, near Cambridge, the fuel light came on and we drove another 20 miles to the next filling station. I put in 7.5 litres to get me back to Colchester and then filled up again at the Esso station on Ipswich Road.

It took 59.52 litres of Esso Diesel to get me to Scotland but it took 59.11 of Morrisons supermarket diesel +7.5 more litres to get me back. Morrisons diesel was the same price as the diesel I bought in Colchester and the same price as competing petrol stations in Scotland. The lesson is clear to me – it may be convenient to buy fuel when you fill up at the supermarket but it makes absolutely no economic sense at all. Supermarket fuel may well be costing you 12.5% more every time you use it.

Incidentally, we didn’t let it spoil our weekend! We had a superb time and my parents had a great day on Saturday surrounded by friends and family. They’re off to spend a few weeks in our Florida Villa in Orlando in September – it will be a lovely time for them.

Our Orlando villas are also available for relaxing family holidays in the Disney Orlando area and are priced very competitively so the you can get the very best value on your exciting Disney holiday!

Simple ways to save money when vacationing in Orlando, FL.

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We have come to realise from chatting with our guests that on of their biggest challenges is how to choose the vacation rental villa that is right for them! This article reflects their experience and hopefully sharing it with you will make your choice easier…

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Staying in a good hotel or motel in the Disney area can prove very expensive for a family and you’ll only get one or two rooms to accommodate everything and everyone. A spacious Florida Villa has many advantages that make it a very cost-effective choice…

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Thanks for coming folks! This is a blog about the trials and tribulations of being a British owner of a villa near Orlando, Florida. Feel welcome to comment and join in – Its going to be an interesting journey!