Once again I was playing around with Google Trends tonight and found something of interest. (little bored and didn’t want to do any real work tonight)
I thought it might be interesting to take two industry leaders which are very related to each other side by side. Of course I picked RentClicks first since they appear to be the leader in my industry (I would like to change that in 2007 
). Then to change it up a bit, I picked VRBO.com which is the leader (from what I can tell) in the vacation rental market.
Before I got the results back from Google, I guessed that both would track pretty evenly, and I thought I would see some interesting seasonal shifts. Wow, was I wrong. VRBO blew the doors off my industry. I do own a vacation rental site that I have not put much time into - perhaps I should rethink that.
You will notice that I used just the name of the URL without the “.com”. I did this because studies show many people use search engines to go to sites. Many people will type in “VRBO” or “RentClicks” right in to Google instead of the address bar to navigate to a site even when they know the full URL. So this chart represents people that already aware of the brand and are not searching for it the first time.
I am somewhat blown away by the power of the vacation rental market compared to the market that I serve. You would think that there are far less vacation rentals out there, therefore less people search for them.
If this happens to be my last post before Christmas, Merry Christmas to all my readers.
[tags]VRBO, Rentclicks, Google Trends[/tags]
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NAR (National Association of REALTORS) has done research in the past that those that search online first for homes to purchase make more money and are better educated. Do you think that those looking for vacation homes fall into that “research category” more so than those looking for homes to lease long term, thus the difference in the numbers?
I would think that those that are looking for vacational rentals have more disposable income and because it is for a shorter term, more people would be looking as there is a larger pool of people.
Ah, you bring up a good point! You might only look for a rental house to live in once every few years, but you might look for a vacation rental once a year. That would account for the increase in searches.
Dave
Great comments guys. Yes, I think it is a combination of two things, the first what Wendy and Dave mentioned is there are more people searching for vacation rentals because you could theoretically have a different person or family occupy your home once a week. Second, there are dramatically more vacation rentals online compared to single family homes. Some estimates are:
Over 1 million vaction rentals being advertised each month online (US and ROW) compared with about 60,000 homes for rent being advertised online (US).
Does anyone have any data on how many total single family homes for rent are on the market each month that don’t advertise online?
I would imagine that a higher percentage of vacation rentals are advertised online. This could be anywhere from 90 - 95 % of total inventory. It is hard to put a sign up infront of your beachfront mexican villa and hope someone sees it.
As compared to total number of single family homes on the market, I wonder what the percentage of those are advertising online?
I know you wrote this a while ago but it is still an awesome analysis that you did. Sometimes it’s good to have too much time on your hands.
I have a vacation rental property that I list on VRBO.com. My site is http://www.parkcitysilveradolodge.com Of course it is a vacation ski rental in Park City. But what amazed me is that VRBO is to the Vacation Rental Industry what Google is the the Search industry.
I am listed on probably 10 other sites and none of them come close to the traffic and the revenue that I get from VRBO. It’s like 99 to 1 or 95% of my booking revenue has come from vrbo.
What is interesting is the Alexa ranking for google is about 8000, It’s next closest is 40,000. The difference between 8000 and 40000 is huge.
I think there is opportunity for new blood out here but only the cream will get really really paid.
Hi Taylormade,
The Alexa ranking for “Google” is actually #2. I do agreee with you by syating that VRBO is one of the best (if not the best) in the vacation segment. I believe the bulk of their success can be attributed to the simplicity and user friendliness of the site. The majority of sites out there shun the importance of keeping things simple. They try to over compliacte the user experience with too much marketing BS, flash, banner ads, and useless content. Marketing boobs and IT nerds can really do some damage to a perfectly good website. Take a look at Craigslist. Pretty darn simple isn’t it. This is classified ads people! BORING! And even beyond that we’re talking about the rental industry. There’s no need to over complicate things. Leave that to the myspace’s. But we still have people the likes of Rentals.com who think they need make tnis industry more romantic and compliacted than it actually is.
However, saying that VRBO is to the vacation industry what Google is in the search industry is a stretch. Great yes, but not great the likes of Google greatness.
Red Neck,
I am curious, is RentVine simple enough or do you recommend making it more simple?
Dave,
I believe RentVine is simply enough. I like the basic format. You have something great going that others have overlooked (or are too afraid of the open format since its hard to keep only the paid bloggers posting comments. There are a few other things you can do for SEO and property searchibility. But lets not give out too many secrects and free advice. We know the good people over there at Rentals.com are listening, even though they must remain silent. Its gotta be killing them.
Thanks for the comments.
I heard that the folks over at rentals.com are banned from commenting here.
Dear All,
I’ve been renting an apartment in Paris for 3 years and VRBO has brought me about half to 75% of my business. I manage to kep the pace rented about 80% of the time but now it’s getting harder. I am lookng for new ways to market my place. What’s the second best sight? And what would be the best site to attract Europeans? Finally
do you think that having a personal site to back up the VRBO site is really important?
Most all of the top vacation rental sites in the US are own by one company - their parent site is http://www.homeaway.com. I only study the vacation rental market a little so I’m sorry I can’t help you.