LMH Owners Survey 2006 - would it work?

[Jimbo]

The performance of commercial rental listing sites is crucial to our success. But how to choose? One person posting that whizzbangrentals.com is wonderful is of little use, twenty saying the same thing gets you thinking, a hundred probably gets you reaching for your credit card. There are many LMH threads devoted to this subject but facts and comparative information are hard to extract because you need to know a lot of factors to put the information into a useful perspective.

I wonder if it might be possible for LMH to start an 'Annual Owners Survey of Rental Sites'. Maybe something along the lines of:

Owners Survey 2006:

Brief description/location of your rental property(s)
Rental sites used in 2006 + cost of each
Enquiries/bookings from each site
Percentage of website cost to overall revenue.
Helpfulness of staff/ease of setting up and maintaining entry
Link to rental website property(s)
And so on ...

A formal survey on an annual basis (whenever's the best time?) could provide a snapshot of the good and the bad - but in an easily digestible form for people with busy lives (ie: of of us!). Maybe with a 'top-ten' league table - must be somebody on LMH who loves compiling statistics? The rental sites should welcome the survey too, if they're performing well. They get a lot of our money, so they should justify our outlay with their performance.

Just thinking aloud at present, could this - or something thought through a bit better - be a runner? Or is it a non-starter? Over to you.

Jim

[Ciapolin]

Hi Jimbo.

I like the sound of thi but it has the potential to get a bit complicated. If you can get past the problem that different sites work differently for different types of property and places then I think it would be really useful.

[e-richard]

Yes, a good idea Jimbo, and I agree with Carole-Anne that classification of property type/location would be the biggest issue. However that can be overcome provided one gets a sufficient number of responses from each property type and breaks the analysis down by differing types.

However, more to the point, I do not think a simple survey is the right vehicle.

For the past 2 years I have been keeping a meticulous electronic diary of the details of every enquiry with the outcome and can now analyse my ROI (return on investment) for all advertising spend. I can for example check what percentage of my revenue is spent in total on advertising, and compare that percentage with each listing site. Moreover, I can look at enquiries that do not turn into bookings and compare site's performances. For example, I advertise on one site, which gives me a slightly below average ROI, but seems to attract a very high number of enquiries for previously occupied weeks. Something to do with the way that site displays or encourages enquirers to review availability calendar perhaps ?

Now, if we could get a sufficiently large number of owners to all complete a similar (identical, even) diary, then over time they could be consolidated to give a much more significant picture of listing site effectiveness on a wide range of attributes.

"must be somebody on LMH who loves compiling statistics?" kind of describes me rather well, and if there is sufficient interest, I'd be happy to consolidate a number of diaries and produce an aggregated report by property type/location and listing site. So the big question is how to get a sufficient number of people here on LMH to complete such a diary ?

Alternatively, feel free to PM me with your email address if you want a copy of my diary and an example of the analysis (its all in a simple Excel workbook) just for your own use. I'll need a day or so to anonymise, and generalise it as I keep a lot of other personal data also.


______________________
About me: Until I retired in Feb of this year, I spent nearly 40 years developing software for the collection and analysis of Market Research surveys, so I figure I've seen a lot of surveys and how they are created and used. Always happy to give advice when mounting surveys on how to execute them and how to analyse the results. I am also a Fellow of the British Market Research Society and adhere to a strict code of conduct regarding data confidentiality and the use of data.

[Ciapolin]

What a generous offer!

I would be happy to compile some data. I will pm you separately.

[A-two]

e-richard,
Generous offer, and you're the expert, but I don't see how you can make it an exact science when there are so many variables and moving goal posts. I can see a number of problems that would need to be surmounted for the data to be universally useful, in fact I don't think it ever could be, because every property is unique and every listing site is unique. The ones that work best for many here do not work for me at all and visa versa. In fact, I can cite several examples to demonstrate that for you. Also, the listing sites themselves are constantly changing. One that is performing poorly today be the best tomorrow and visa versa.

One of the members here has a website which reviews all the listing sites in a side by side comparison, which could be especially useful for those just starting out. Sorry can't remember the member's name or link, err..... www compare.... something ....co....com...whatever... ??

[e-richard]

Joanna, you're right. Its definitely not an exact science. All we can do is build up some ideas, trends and indications of how various sites are actually performing for different types of properties.

Its as important to know what you are not measuring as it is to read the data. For example, we won't know what effect the wording and pictures in any ad will have on bookings and enquiries. We won't know anything about the effects of how we respond to enquiries and so on and so on.

But as a basic indicator of which sites work for what type of property, I do believe we can get better data. As I've said before, I've been doing this for my own property, and while I acknowledge that at least all the extraneous variables mentioned above are at least constant within my own measurements, I do know that the total number of enquiries I get is too small a sample to have much statistical significance.
Hence my suggestion that we pool a lot of this factual data about enquiries.

This idea came about in response to a thought from Jimbo who talked about site "performance" or what I call effectiveness. There is a wealth of anecdotal information on this forum and you can also find personal reviews and basic data at http://compareownerholidayrentals.com/ (I think that's the site Joanna was racking her brains for !). I simply think this idea can only add to the general pool of knowledge. It'll never be perfect nor definitive, but should be "useful"

[A-two]

http://compareownerholidayrentals.com/ (I think that's the site Joanna was racking her brains for !)"

Yes, that's it, thank you!

I simply think this idea can only add to the general pool of knowledge. It'll never be perfect nor definitive, but should be "useful"

Please don't take this the wrong way, but useful to whom exactly?

Brief description/location of your rental property(s)
Rental sites used in 2006 + cost of each
Enquiries/bookings from each site
Percentage of website cost to overall revenue.
Helpfulness of staff/ease of setting up and maintaining entry
Link to rental website property(s)
And so on ...

While I consider myself fairly generous in the amount of "useful" information I share freely with others here and locally, I'm not going to give away the farm. I worked too long and hard for it.... All of above is proprietary information, sorry. What I was kind of hoping to learn from this thread was a better way to evaluate my own data.... I wish you lots of luck with your survey, but please count me out..... (now slinking away)

[Giddy Goat]

Joanna, I don't suppose any of the information would identify the name of the contributor, or the whereabouts of their property? There would have to be the strictest undertaking that this would not happen. I realise there are some special cases such as yours, so that if the locations were categorised, there your stats would be, pointing us all to Southold, so to avoid that, some thinking needs to be done. Also, the forum would have to be satisfied that the collated information would never be shared - either given or sold to any other organisation.

I don't have any sophisticated means of collecting the results of my research (because I'm not a sophisticated collector) so to participate in the survey might mean a bit of time for the likes of me. I recently worked out my stats for return on investment, and that alone took half a morning!

[Jimbo]

Joanna wrote:

While I consider myself fairly generous in the amount of "useful" information I share freely with others here and locally, I'm not going to give away the farm. I worked too long and hard for it....

In pro photography, a curious thing happened a few years back. With the advert of the digital revolution, much carefully garnered knowledge over many years suddenly counted for nothing and seasoned pros and young pretenders were thrown together in the melting pot. And, in some ways, the youngsters had the edge, having been nurtured in the computer world. The farm hadn't been given away, it had been repossessed and the baliffs were in.

What happened was totally unexpected and heartwarming - internet groups (open and closed) of photographers sprung up everywhere, knowledge was pooled and a way forward forged. In spite of many photographers' fears of 'losing the farm', the opposite seems to have happened and the sharing of knowledge has become an established principle. It's quickly become the norm to check with your peers for information and advice - and some of these specialists group have become a force for good within the industry. It's no longer so easy for clients to 'divide and conquer' because everybody knows what's going on. Bad clients, bad publications, bad stock agencies and the like are 'named and shamed' in a way that might surprise members of this forum and fees are openly discussed. The whole shooting match may, of course, end in tears but the portents are good.

A few years back, my reaction would have been the same as yours - what I've learned is 'mine to keep and yours to find out'. But I've seen there is another way too.

Jim

[Giddy Goat]

Have you thought about going into politics Jimbo? Just that you write with such fantastic eloquence and conviction! And are sincere in what you believe, which would possibly be rare in the cut-and-thrust world of politics!

Yes, e-Richard's suggestion, together with your comments provide serious food for thought, especially for the doubters among us. In my humble opinion.

[Alan Knighting]

But surely Lay My Hat is all about the sharing of information?

Inevitably, each member will draw a line beyond which he/she will not go.

It’s a personal decision which I don’t think needs explanation or justification.

Fluffy

[Jimbo]

Gascony Goat wrote:

Have you thought about going into politics Jimbo?

George Burns wrote:

Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.

Thank you for the kind words.

Jim