HomeAway Insights

Today, we’re very happy to announce the immediate availability of Insider Guides. Launched in partnership with Gogobot, this new, free product enables vacation rental owners and managers to create custom online guides that enable authentic, local experiences for travelers.

Most of us are familiar with the binder of “things to do, nearby restaurants, and helpful information” found in almost every vacation rental in the world.  Because owners and managers are familiar with the property and the area, they can save travelers time, point them at the best restaurants, and highlight hard to find “off-the-beaten-path” experiences that really make a vacation rental stay special.

However, the binder approach does have a few drawbacks. They take a lot of work to assemble, usually involving printouts, or menus, or handwritten notes and maps. They are hard to keep up-to-date as new restaurants and attractions open (or close).  Your guests can’t see it before they arrive or access it on a smartphone because the guides are not online.

Insider Guides make it easy to build a visually compelling, online guide that is rich with information (like addresses and locations) and enhanced with reviews submitted by one of the most passionate travel communities on the planet:  the 2.5 million-strong Gogobot community.

What is an Insider Guide? 

There are two key elements to an Insider Guide: The first is a list of points of interest (POI) on your VRBO.com or HomeAway.com listing. These POIs have thumbnail photos, distance to your property, and your star ratings and reviews. All POIs are displayed on your map creating a quick and easy way for you to market your property and the activities, attractions, and restaurants around it. This is designed to entice travelers with exciting and fun attractions and search engines with SEO-friendly reviews. See the screenshot below to see how POIs appear on your listing or visit a listing on VRBO.com or HomeAway.com.

The second is the Insider Guide itself. On this page, there is more information about each place (the address, for example), larger photos, and more interactive and social features. This guide is designed for the traveler to use when planning their stay or while they are on vacation.

Travelers can view the Insider Guide on a mobile device, tablet or PC, or download it into the Gogobot iOS™ or Android™ smartphone app. There are map views, a print view (very handy for your binder!), and options for travelers to create their own trip plan or share it with friends or fellow travelers.

The screenshots below show the various views of the Insider Guide or see an example of one here <link>

List View:

Map View:

Mobile Version:

Creating a Guide

Creating a guide is simple. As an owner or a manager, you simply head to the listing editor in your dashboard to get started.

Dashboard View:

Once you’ve named your guide and uploaded a photo, you can quickly add places from Gogobot’s extensive database, write your own review, provide your own ratings, or upload photos.  Only your ratings and reviews will show up on your listing - so make sure you take the time to add your personal and local knowledge. Gogobot built this part of the product, and it’s really slick because they provide you with suggestions that can really get your creative juices going.

Since there is no one who knows your property quite as well as you do - each guide is as unique and special as you make it. Some owners and managers will curate a list of popular attractions, while others will add “off the beaten path” attractions like the blueberry patch, flea market, coffee shop, or hike. These unique and special attractions are what unlock the deep local knowledge that will make for truly delightful and relevant experiences - which in turn will result in great reviews, happy travelers, and more bookings.

How can you take advantage of an Insider Guide?

Once you’ve created your guide, it’s up to you to determine when to share it with your guests.  Some of you will include it in all of your communications from your first inquiry response onward. Others will want to provide the link to travelers only after booking. We’ve provided a helpful “shortcut link” to make it easy to embed the link into your inquiry or ReservationManager™ response templates or any email you send to your guests.

Not only does an Insider Guide allow you to market your property, but it also reduces the time you have to spend answering those frequent questions guests always ask: where is the nearest grocery store? What activities do you recommend? What are the best restaurants? With an Insider Guide, the answer is simple: check the link!

How do I get started?

You can get started building your guide right now. Many owners and managers have already started (see below for some examples) so don’t delay.  Here are a few tips: Make sure you add reviews and ratings! Use the photos that Gogobot provides, or add your own for that personal touch. Send it to your friends who live in the area to get them to comment. And best of all, since you have a VRBO.com or HomeAway.com listing, Insider Guides are included free of charge.  

Here are some resources to help you create a great Insider Guide:

http://help.homeaway.com/articles/en_US/Solution/Insiders-Guide-FAQs?knowledgeHome

And here are some examples to inspire you:

• Sonoma, Calif.
• Austin, Texas
• Umbria, Italy

Enjoy creating your Insider Guide, and make sure you send us your thoughts and feedback!

 
Tom Hale

Chief Product Officer

Over the last couple of days, I was (as I’m sure many of you were) glued to the television with much anticipation to see how Hurricane Sandy, appropriately named “Frankenstorm,” would play out.  After ripping through the Caribbean, the storm barreled straight up the east coast and in the last 48 hours, made a hard left turn right into Atlantic City. 

According to our count, there were 13 states in Hurricane Sandy’s path, causing the destruction of countless homes and businesses all over the east coast. 

News reports have revealed many travelers have been stranded due to transportation cancellations to and from the northeast, and thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes until the roadways are cleared and once again safe for passage.  

Everyone said this was going to be an epic storm, and sure enough, it was.  However, now that the worst of Hurricane Sandy is over, and the sun has once again started shining on the beautiful coastline, it’s time to start assessing the damage and figuring out what we can do to help.  

As we’ve done with previous disasters like the Bastrop, Texas Fires, Gulf Coast Oil Spill and Flooding in Vermont, we’re creating a directory of homes that are available to assist the evacuees in need of temporary housing.

While we know this isn’t feasible for everyone, we’re looking to those of our customers, whose vacation rentals were not damaged, to help provide shelter for their displaced neighbors in the way of complimentary or heavily discounted stays in your properties.

We know this is a sensitive time for everyone near the storm’s path, but if you would like to support the recovery effort by donating your home, you can do so by clicking here.

We really appreciate your compassion and generosity in this great time of need.

Our sincerest thank you,

Brian

To the HomeAway and VRBO user community:

In the past few months, there has been a steady drumbeat of concern rising in these forums from the owners and managers who use HomeAway and VRBO. In the past few days since we launched our quotable rates, it’s risen in intensity and frequency.

For those of you experiencing these concerns, please know that we are listening to your feedback, we understand your frustration, and we’re working hard to fix it.   Since the beta launch, we have already made some great headway with improvements, and we plan to continue in this manner.  We think that quotable rates will have a dramatic impact on our industry, and together we can get it right. 

As we’ve sifted through all of the feedback in these forums and on the phones, much of the concern around quotable rates centered on the following key themes:

• Rates are not flexible enough to accommodate the way I price my property (pricing by person, setting a changeover day)
• Rates as displayed are based on a nightly rate, not a week or monthly rate
• The transition to quotable rates was abrupt and the tool is not intuitive, especially for people who have complicated pricing models
• The process of getting the rates to display on your listings in a way that matches your desired presentation takes too much work, especially for customers with many listings
• The display of the rates on the page and the calculation of special rate cases (event rates) does not always match your expectation
• Minimum stays are not prominent enough
• Once you've committed to the path of changing your rates, there is no “undo” to go back to the previous state.

As we designed the quotable rates product, we consulted with customers in 1:1 meetings and focus groups, we launched it as a beta in August to get early feedback, and we found and fixed defects. While thousands of our owners managed to get their rates into a format they were happy with, roughly 1 in 5 are contacting us on our support lines to get help as they wrestled with one issue or another.

Since we launched quotable rates in a limited release in early September, we’ve made the following changes:

• Integrated feedback into a simplified rates interface (removed confusing “advanced options” and implemented clearer price break options)
• Increased the number of seasonal rates up to 52 in order to support weekly pricing and increased the number of event rates to 12
• Added a notes field for owners utilizing online payments to provide their guests with more context and information
• Added video tutorials specific to rates in the owner dashboard
• Addressed a defect that delayed the population of rates to the property listing page
• Addressed html characters (such as <br>) appearing in the rate table on your listing
• Corrected a defect that displayed the incorrect currency on international sites

We are in process on the following changes, some to be released in the next few days, some in the next few weeks:

• First and foremost, we will add the ability for you to revert back to the traditional rates format.  We recognize that the changes we have made may not be sufficient for many of our users, so it is our top priority to allow you to switch back to the format that may have worked better for your property.  
• We will update the quotable rates tool to set rates in weekly and monthly increments, not just a base/nightly rate.
• We will implement the ability to set changeover days. For most customers we will simply display this information on the traveler site.  For those who have opted in to Online Booking, we will enforce that a reservation request honors the changeover date.
• We will increase the flexibility of weekend rates so that you can select “do not apply weekend rates to stays more than: X nights" – this means that your price breaks for longer stays will not be “trumped” by higher weekend rates.
• We will increase the visibility of minimum stay on your listing so that travelers cannot miss it.
• In search results, when a traveler does not select a date range, we will display the lowest and highest rates for a property, instead of an “average” over 365 days.
• We will implement an update to rate calculations that will ensure consistency between standard, seasonal and event rates based on the dates a traveler entered.
• We will update the quotable rates tool to include the option to set rates "per person." For most owners and managers, we will simply display this information on their listing.  For those who have opted in to Online Booking, the system will dynamically update a quote based on the number of guests entered by the traveler. Of all of these, per person rates are the most difficult to get right, so this feature might take longer than a few weeks.
• We will continue to monitor these forums and our support lines to prioritize and fix defects as they arise.

While I humbly respect the desire to avoid the disruption that comes with change, I’d like to take a few words to discuss why we are moving to quotable rates. It’s pretty simple: when people are making a purchase, they like to know how much it costs, and we’re trying to make it easy and consistent for travelers. Why are we doing this? Because it should result in higher demand and more qualified inquires for you.

In addition, quotable rates should allow us to:

• accurately price your properties to reduce manual work for owners and managers in providing quotes to travelers;
• power our search results with accurate prices (based on a date range, number of people, etc) so that our search engines can accurately sort and filter properties based on price;
• consistently display prices to a global audience of travelers; and
• offer the option to make properties bookable online, while giving owners and managers control over who stays in their homes

It’s this last point that deserves some discussion.

First off – we believe owners and managers like choice. And we also believe that the personal, human interaction between traveler and host makes the vacation rental experience special and different from other forms of accommodation.  It’s one of the things that makes our industry (and our community) great.

If you want to – we have built a system to enable you to provide travelers the convenience of booking online, while giving you the control over who stays in your property. You can learn more about it here. http://toolkit.homeaway.com/reservation-manager and by watching this videos and reading the information there.

If you’d rather not, that is your choice, and we respect that.

As a final word, I want to emphasize that we do our best to gather feedback about what is important to you, to discover issues that need to be addressed, and to learn about needs that our customers have that we can work to serve. We do our best to build systems and software that make it possible for you to market your listings and run your businesses. We do this because we are passionately committed to the vacation rental industry and to the owners and managers who use our tools and services. We are also committed to continuously improving, and to working hard to earn your loyalty, trust, and business.

Stay tuned for more information about reverting back to the old rates format.  In the meantime, your support, feedback and comments are welcome.

The phishing storm is brewing

The vacation rental industry gathered in Austin, Texas last weekend for the HomeAway Summit. Owners, Property Managers, HomeAway staff, and HomeAway partners discussed the state of the vacation rental industry, saw old friends and made new ones, and compared notes.

But this year, a new word entered the conversations in the halls, over drinks, and in the content of the Summit: phishing.  Phishing, loosely defined, is the attempt by criminals to steal your online identity, most frequently via accessing your email account. While our industry continues to thrive, the threat of hackers gaining access to owners’ or property managers’ email accounts continues. If we do not pull together to fight this threat, it will affect the way travelers feel about the vacation rental industry, and ultimately, about booking your property. A storm is brewing.

For some, the storm has already come – just ask anyone who has had their email password phished. Scammers have intercepted inquiries, and ruined vacations by stealing money from trusting vacation rental travelers.  Owners and property managers have had to scramble to re-secure their email accounts and protect their reputations. And the reputation of the vacation rental industry is in question.

For most, the HomeAway Summit marked the first time that they ever heard of phishing, but they understood how both owners and travelers are at risk because of our industry’s reliance on trusted communications via email. (If you are not familiar with phishing, click here for an overview of how it happens, or read Carl Shepherd’s post on phishing.

Today, losses due to phishing are small: in Q1 2012, phishing scams affected less than 0.1% of travelers who found a vacation rental via a HomeAway website. 

But even one ruined vacation or theft of an owner or property manager’s identity is totally unacceptable. Everyone in the vacation rental industry – from owners to property managers to HomeAway – has a role to play in stopping phishing scams.  While phishing may be a relatively small problem in absolute numbers, recent activity tells us that the phishers are getting smarter and more travelers, owners, and managers are being affected.  It is clear that scammers and criminals have figured out that the vacation rental industry is a great target.

Why? Because:

• the standard practice in the vacation rental industry is for travelers to pay large amounts of money for vacation rentals, long before the stay and sight unseen;
• not everyone understands or uses safe and secure payment methods;
• many people conduct their business in email accounts from email providers that have been repeatedly compromised; and
• cybercriminals are good at exploiting communities that rely on trust and a personal connection.

Phishing is not new; vacation rentals are not the first industry to be targeted by cybercriminals. Phishers have attacked many online industries ranging from online auctions, banking, social media, travel, e-commerce, even medical and government institutions, impacting major brands like eBay, PayPal, Barclays, Wells Fargo, Chase, and Bank of America.

Everyone of us in the vacation rental industry has a lot at stake, and we will all need to work together to stop phishers.  You can do your part by guarding your email password with the same care as you protect your social security number, your bank account, and your most valuable possessions.

Our vision on how to fight phishing

So what can HomeAway do to fight phishing?  To be clear, we’ve been fighting scammers ever since HomeAway was founded.  But as we look ahead, we have come to the conclusion that HomeAway needs to take a strong stance against phishing.

We believe that we can fight phishing by:

• safeguarding the traveler’s money by providing safe payment methods protected by strong security, such as ReservationManager™;
• protecting owner and traveler email addresses so that phishers cannot readily target those accounts;
• continuing to provide secure authentication so that HomeAway can ensure that only legitimate owners, travelers, and managers can access information; and most critically
• moving interactions between owners or managers and travelers into a secure environment where everyone can be confident they are talking to each other, not a crook.

Our vision is that we can create an environment where we can protect owners, property managers and travelers with something we are calling “HomeAway Secure Communication.”  This would be a new system, envisioned only in the last few months, and which is now in development. We plan to make it available starting in the second half of this year.

This proposed system is similar to sites you may use, like Facebook, LinkedIn and others, where authentication is required by both parties before they can connect. On these sites, once two parties have decided to “trust” each other, they can converse via email. But until trust is established, they CAN still communicate keeping key elements of their identity protected.

In our vision, owners and travelers would still receive notifications and messages from each other via email and text message, but they need to reply via a secure system that does not disclose their email address.  This way, HomeAway would be able to ensure the legitimacy of the owner or property manager and the traveler.

We’ve already started: we showed one early prototype of HomeAway Secure Communication at the Summit during the HomeAway Sneak Peeks session. We demonstrated how the system will enable owners and property managers to:

• communicate safely with travelers and only reveal their email address when they choose to;
• have a persistent record of the conversation, payments and other events that have occurred;
• manage their conversations, bookings and payments via mobile app; and
• reduce manual and repetitive work for responding to inquiries, sending information about properties and managing bookings and payment.

We recognize that many of our customers rely heavily on email to manage their interactions with travelers. We also know that a system like this will represent a significant change for many owners and managers.

But it is precisely because your email account is so critical to your business that it must be protected.

We are highly sensitive to the needs of our customers and are aware of the scope of change that this solution represents. We are also laser-focused on making this solution as convenient and beneficial as possible; but we are counting on you, our customers – property managers and owners – to help us design and implement a solution that improves the efficiency and effectiveness of responding to inquiries and managing communications with your customers – the travelers.

We’re doing something different than what we normally do. We are announcing our intentions and inviting our community and customers to participate in the process of creating a solution because we believe it is critical to your future success as an owner or property manager: if travelers don’t trust, they will not rent. 

And if you have ideas, you can give us your feedback directly by emailing us at secure-feedback@homeaway.com or via the feedback links on all of our sites. While we don’t respond to every email we get, we do READ every one. 

If you want to learn more about our vision for HomeAway Secure Communication, check our FAQ here.

And please sign up for the Secure Communication group on Community from HomeAway  to join the discussion – we’ll post updates there as we go forward.

What can I do now to fight phishing?

We all have to pull together to fight phishing. HomeAway has worked hard to educate the industry via emails, messages on our website, and via the Security Center. We continuously invest in technology to actively monitor fraud, to surface suspicious activity, and to harden our systems and protect our customers. More recently, we have introduced new products, such as ReservationManager and Traveler Profiles, and processes such as Phone Verification to support safety.

Here are a few steps you can take now to join in the fight:

1. Educate yourself – visit our Security Center to learn about phishing
2. Read our FAQ to learn how to spot fraudulent inquiries
3. When you receive a suspicious inquiry or email, please let us know
4. Accept safe payment methods like those offered through ReservationManager
5. Include an up-to-date phone number on your listing. We recommend that travelers call the telephone number published on your property listing page to confirm their reservation and payment details
6. Use two-factor authentication on your email accounts. See this article on how. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hacker-proof.html
7. If you list on vrbo.com or homeaway.com - log into your dashboard to check your inquiries to make sure you (and not a phisher) are receiving your inquiries.
   Never enter your email password on any webpage via a link sent to you by email, or even if a login page that looks like your email provider’s website pops up unexpectedly.  Always go to the email provider’s website to log in
8. And don’t ignore warning signs or red flags - if you have a bad feeling, it never hurts to double check

Together we can fight this threat to the vacation rental industry, and we’re counting on you, just like you count on us.

Sincerely,

Tom Hale

Chief Product Officer

I have to say I am REALLY excited about our new ad campaign that launches on January 15th during the 69^th Annual Golden Globes!  Kudos to our advertising team and new agency of record, GSD&M, for really nailing the essence of HomeAway’s business with the new tagline, “Let’s Stay Together.” 

This time I feel like we’ve really got it RIGHT!  Truth be told, we’ve resorted to some pretty gimmicky stuff in the past couple of years, preying on the hotel industry and trying hard to stand out in the pack of Super Bowl ads with something shocking and memorable. 

Two years ago it was the Griswolds, an award-winning campaign starring the one and only Chevy Chase.  It received a ton of buzz and even won an EFFIE (for most effective ad campaign), and we sure had fun making it!  But for the most part that ad was a way to simply introduce the brand and poke fun at hotels versus vacation rentals.  And with only 30 seconds at the Super Bowl, we had little time to really highlight the positive benefits of renting a home. 

Last year we stayed with the “Why hotel when you can HomeAway” theme and introduced the “Minister of Detourism” as a character tasked with saving family vacations.  In the process, we made a major faux pas when a (fake) baby was flung into a window during the ad. That caused quite a stir, and in retrospect rightly so. We quickly pulled the ad and apologized.

This year is very different!  We’ve decided to skip the Super Bowl – it forces you to try and be provocative to stand out.  Rather, we have a much longer and broader campaign, and have really taken the time to focus on what our business is really about – promoting togetherness with families and groups. 

So this year it is all goodness, togetherness, and happiness – and emphasizing where you stay is as important as where you go while on vacation. As an added bonus, we got Al Green to agree to license his classic song “Let’s Stay Together” for our campaign.  The end result is a beautiful and artistic scrapbook montage of families and friends having the time of their lives while on vacation, and of course staying in rental homes!  

Most importantly, this campaign is as much about the industry as it is about HomeAway.  If we can simply get people to associate vacation rentals with better togetherness, then we will have succeeded with the campaign.  I think it is going to be a real winner for our industry; I hope you enjoy it too.

You may read the press release and view the 60-second ad here: http://www.homeaway.com/info/media-center/press-releases/2012/lets-stay-together

I look forward to reading your comments.

Best,

Brian

When HomeAway Software for Professionals™ was born in late 2010, we decided to continue the Instant Software® tradition to hold RezFest® as the premier software user conference in the industry.  In doing so, we had a simple goal in mind: to make RezFest 2011 bigger, better, more fun and more professional than ever!  Thanks to all of you showed up in Vegas for RezFest 2011, we surpassed expectations on all fronts! 

Now that we have rested for a couple of weeks, gathered our thoughts and received survey feedback, I can share why RezFest 2011 was so successful.  On a year-on-year analysis, conference attendance increased by 60%, with 80% more individual companies and 78% more sponsors attending than last year - thank you!  We also provided more networking opportunities.  Check out some of the fun photos from the opening night reception featuring the Blues Brothers impersonators to hitting the lanes on bowling night.  Was that fun or what? Many clients thought RezFest was the best industry event they have attended and several of them were hugging us by the end of the conference!  Here are a couple quotes from actual attendees that capture the moment:

“This was our first time at RezFest and we are now making sure that event is in our budget from now on.  Worth every penny spent.”

“If you only attend one convention next year, it should be RezFest.  It is the premier event for the vacation rental manager.  You will meet wonderful people and learn so much.  At RezFest you work hard, and play just as hard.  Don't miss it!”

With 76 track combinations, we tried to offer a diverse and interesting agenda. Presenters did an amazing job and your appreciation was reflected in your survey responses.  The large computer lab manned by the customer support team was also a tremendous success, giving clients the opportunity to be trained and/or ask questions about your particular software.  Again, based on your feedback, the software lab was regarded as a valuable addition because it provides staff members from all levels of your organization a chance to work hands on with our team of experts. The agenda was so packed with engaging material that some of you asked that we make the show a day longer next year!  Wow, that is a first where attendees ask for more time at a trade event!

During HomeAway CEO, Brian Sharples’ keynote, he explained why HomeAway acquired Escapia® and Instant Software and addressed industry fears to demonstrate how committed HomeAway is to the PM segment.  By the end of his presentation, everyone seemed to have understood HomeAway’s strategy and felt much more comfortable with HomeAway’s acquisitions from about a year ago.  Throughout the show, clients were able to mingle and with HomeAway’s executive team. I think customers were surprised by how accessible and down-to-earth Brian Sharples, COO Brent Bellm and the other executives were in person. 

Peter Greenberg, the other RezFest speaker, was an energetic and informative speaker as he emphasized that the “personal contact” property managers provide to their guests 24/7 is key.  He also focused on “selling value to the right demographics,” particularly to Boomers.  Greenberg’s bullish perspective on the travel industry in the coming years was encouraging and the 2011 performance of many PMs in the room this year prove that he may be on track with his predictions.

I hope HomeAway demonstrated our commitment to your success and have your interests at heart.  We will continue to operate in a professional and straightforward manner, with the 120 employees in HomeAway Software for Professionals dedicated to building the best possible software solutions and keeping dialog going with you and the Support and Relationship Manager staff.  To use a construction analogy, we feel 2011 has been focused on building the foundation of a great house of the future.  Next year will be a year of INNOVATION that will add marble counter tops, state of the art light fixtures and simple details to save you time and money.  Our goal is to take your software solution to extraordinary levels of efficiencies using a modular approach that builds on top of your existing platform.  It is not an easy and it takes time but like we said in late 2010, “judge us by our actions.” 

Thank you for attending RezFest!  For those of you who could not attend this year, please join us next year.  You will not regret it!

When HomeAway wanted to develop a deeper understanding of vacation rental homeowners, in order to understand drivers and barriers to renting a vacation home to travelers or listing it online, ethnography-based research seemed like the perfect fit. 

In the past 10-15 years there has been increasing use of ethnographic techniques in market research.  Ethnography is the science of contextualization and ethnographic research, which collects data through participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, etc., allows market researchers to collect insights about customers in context – where that context is broadly defined as when, where and how customers make purchase decisions and use products.  After all, Jane Goodall did not send surveys to chimpanzees in Tanzania, but spent years observing their behavior in their natural environment.

HomeAway ethnographic research process

A total of 55 vacation homeowners were recruited, representing 4 categories:

• Homeowners who were currently considering renting their vacation home for the first time
• Homeowners who were currently renting a home, but were not listing it online
• Homeowners who recently decided to list their home online with HomeAway.com, VRBO.com or VacationRentals.com
• Homeowners who list online but not with a HomeAway site.

Homeowners were given two weeks to complete a Decision Journal that was designed to explore homeowner behaviors and values toward the rental process.  Participants were encouraged to bring their experience to life with photos, emotion stickers, charts and assignments including, family portrait, introducing my second home, to rent or not to rent and my experience finding guests.

Following the completion of the journal, 21 homeowners engaged in a one-on-one, 90-minute interview based on the homeowner’s journal assignment. We sought to dig deeper into the behaviors and attitudes around the decision-making process.

After combing through hundreds of pages of journals and watching the interviews, the team uncovered 2 key findings.

1. There is a common decision path that vacation homeowners take as they move from acquiring a vacation home to renting it for the first time.  How a homeowner moves through that process, depends on what type of homeowner they are.
2. There are 4 homeowner segments that broadly define vacation rental homeowners:

• Sentimentalists - Their second home is their prized possession and they just don’t believe anyone will respect it as they do. These emotions are juxtaposed with their need to rent – either a few times a year or the majority of the year.  They can be so overwhelmed by feelings of fear and mistrust, that they have trouble making decisions when it comes to choosing tools to find renters for their home. Any difficulties in the process, coupled with their anxiety about renting in the first place, can be paralyzing and even cause them to stop the process.
• Cautious Converts - They have evolved into a place of acceptance with the rental process. They’re still wary of others and emotionally attached to their homes, but they have a more optimistic outlook as they have become more familiar with renting. 
• Realistic Reasoners - While still sentimentally attached to their homes, Realistic Reasoners also enjoy sharing their homes with others. It’s not a full-time venture but once they commit to rent, they want to be very involved in the process. While not as sentimentally attached to their homes, they still value the time they spend there when it’s not rented.
• Business Attitudes – They view their second homes as an investment first and vacation home, second. They have feelings for their homes, but approach the rental process more pragmatically with less feeling and emotion. 

The Talk Show

In order to share these findings in an engaging and powerful way with HomeAway staff, we invited 8 homeowners who participated in the project to also participate in a talk show in Austin.  The homeowners shared their personal vacation homeownership experience and rental experience with HomeAway customer support, marketing, communications, finance, strategy and product staff in the US and Europe - an eye-opening experience for all HomeAway employees. We look to take their stories/perspectives and use it to improve upon the service we provide for existing customers and to better understand the needs and fears of those who are not renting.  Specific projects being considered as a result of the insights gained from this research include revising the sign-up process for new customers and changing the tone of some of our email marketing. We realized that while every owner has his or her unique story there are also many similarities in the decision making process. In fact, we thought their stories were worth retelling, so we asked them to write a blog about their experience – which will be posted in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

Karen Fuller, Director of Global Marketing Research

We have seen a few threads, where owners are asking questions about the newly-launched traveler account feature as it specifically relates to reviews.

We launched Traveler Account to improve their experience on HomeAway.com- and ultimately give them the tools they need to best track, share and review properties.  Travelers are now required to create an account (including a password) to:

• Save favorite properties
• Write notes
• Create lists for trips they are planning
• Share favorite vacation rental properties with friends and family
• Keep track of properties viewed and inquiries made
• Write reviews

The reviews portion seems to be a sticking point for some of the owners. While we are now asking for travelers to login to submit the review upfront, it is no different really, than the previous review process in which travelers were required to submit an email address, name on rental contract, and location to submit a review.  In fact, it streamlines the process for travelers to write reviews.  Travelers are asked to set up an account once and then moving forward, they may simply login the next time to leave a review. While we are now asking for a password to finish the review, we have reduced the overall friction to submit a review by removing a number of fields such as nickname and city.

We heard from some owners that they felt the new process would discourage their travelers from leaving a review.  This is an unfounded assertion. In fact, we have compared the number of daily reviews received prior to implementing the Traveler Account, and the total number has held steady.  We will continue to actively monitor the impact this change has on review submissions. 

Best,

Emily Thawley (Product Marketing Manager for HomeAway)