My rental is located in Southwest Florida and was hit by Hurricane Charley. Although fully repaired, and I did pretty well for February and March, I'm concerned about summer rentals. Visitflorida.com did a survey which resulted in 14% of respondents saying they would not come or return during summer (hurricane season). I've also seen in the local newspaper that there is a boycott of Florida by people disgruntled with results of the election!
Although I'm getting tons of hits from the website on which I advertise, I'm not getting as many inquiries as I did last year. And many I do get ask about condition of the area, is there reconstruction going on, can they cancel if a hurricane might hit, will I pay for trip insurance, etc. Any other Fla rental owners out there who could offer comments, I'd appreciate it.
Also, traffic from UK, Euro should be strong and take the place of some of the Americans scared about hurricanes due to all the coverage on the media. Any suggestions on how to target these tourists without having to add many listings and expense?
Thanks!
Florida Summer Rentals
You might try some of the free trials offered on some rental listing sites. If you want to do a europe-specific search, try searching for "vacation rental florida" or "holiday rental florida" etc., on google.co.uk, yahoo.co.uk, and google.co.uk, instead of .com. That will show you what sites are showing up and what might be worth listing on.
We're Americans who own a rental property in France, and we advertise mostly to Europeans because our rental sites are mostly Euro-based.
Cheers, and welcome to the forum!
We're Americans who own a rental property in France, and we advertise mostly to Europeans because our rental sites are mostly Euro-based.
Cheers, and welcome to the forum!
Brooke
Welcome to the forum, Waincroft! 
To tap into the UK market try searching on Google for typical search phrases but instead of 'vacation' use 'holiday' and instead of 'condo' or 'unit' try 'villa', 'home', 'house'. Then you will see the sort of results that come up for British net-users, and you can get yourself a shortlist of candidates to advertise with. For the long version of this, go here.
Although the weakness of the dollar makes the States a very appealing prospect this year, the counter-effect is the hurricanes of last year. I think that is going to put a lot of people off, because if you have one holiday a year, you don't want to spend it in a hurricane shelter.
However, I do think that will be short-lived (if those hurricanes were a one-off) and in 2006 UK visitors to Florida will be back to normal. Vacationers have short memories.
I do think you will have to dip into your pocket for this year. Either paying for more advertising sites, or, what I would do - a Google AdWords pay-per-click campaign, with the ads only being shown in the UK. With AdWords you can choose which countries your ad is seen in. This would allow you to put across a specific message targeted at the UK.
To tap into the UK market try searching on Google for typical search phrases but instead of 'vacation' use 'holiday' and instead of 'condo' or 'unit' try 'villa', 'home', 'house'. Then you will see the sort of results that come up for British net-users, and you can get yourself a shortlist of candidates to advertise with. For the long version of this, go here.
Although the weakness of the dollar makes the States a very appealing prospect this year, the counter-effect is the hurricanes of last year. I think that is going to put a lot of people off, because if you have one holiday a year, you don't want to spend it in a hurricane shelter.
However, I do think that will be short-lived (if those hurricanes were a one-off) and in 2006 UK visitors to Florida will be back to normal. Vacationers have short memories.
I do think you will have to dip into your pocket for this year. Either paying for more advertising sites, or, what I would do - a Google AdWords pay-per-click campaign, with the ads only being shown in the UK. With AdWords you can choose which countries your ad is seen in. This would allow you to put across a specific message targeted at the UK.
Paolo
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