This past weekend I had dinner with a cornucopia of business professionals.
At the table sat a video game software developer, a painter, a special education teacher, an intellectual property rights lawyer (who also happens to be my upstairs neighbor), and a shrimp broker (who literally sells fresh Louisiana shrimp to restaurants around town).
And when it was my turn to introduce myself, someone leads in like this: “And that’s Matt. He stays in vacation rentals for a living.”
No one had ever described my work this way, but it was not entirely inaccurate, after all, A Sense of Place is about meeting vacation rental destinations and Unlocked Podcast dives into the special people running the show.
But interestingly, this preface opened up a can of worms at the table, with every person taking the chance to recount some kind of horror story from a vacation rental stay. One of them (the video game guy) had his unnamed-listing-site reservation cancelled one day before a big trip only to learn that all the other lodging accommodations in town were fully booked (he had to cancel his trip).
Another had her super creepy unnamed-listing-site host ask if it was OK if he slept the night on the couch in the living room as “he was catching a train early the next morning.”
A third — perhaps the least dramatic of the group, the shrimp broker — said that his vacation rental experience wasn’t terrible, but the host “talked like I was doing him a favor for staying there.”
My instinct in hearing all of this was to get defensive, but instead I ordered a dirty martini.
And I began to reflect on what this conversation actually meant for the industry I call home.
My conclusion? Renting a vacation rental can be a crapshoot.
If you don’t know what to look for, if you don’t have any personal contacts or recommendations, if you haven’t done it before...booking a vacation rental is a little like Russian roulette in that there’s a chance for disaster. And that when it’s your hard earned vacation dollars on the line, this value proposition is kiiiiiind of dubious for a lot of travelers.
Of course, no vacation rental host can single-handedly convert all the doubters. But we can convince the ones we do come in contact with by putting our best foot forward, introducing ourselves, and taking responsibility for the guest’s experience.
IDEA: Convincing a traveler that you are professional and reliable is maybe the greatest deep marketing mission you can embark on.
ACTION: Quell doubts of amateurism and unreliability by investing a few hundred bucks in professional portrait photos for you and your staff. There is nothing that says unprofessional like a cropped or pixelated photo from Jerry’s wedding fifteen years ago. Worse, there’s nothing that says unpredictable like a host who’s not willing to show face (here's looking at you Mr. 'question mark' photo).
- Google “portrait photographer” in [your region]
- Pick a few you like and reach out for price quotes
- Block one morning off the booking calendar
- Gather your team (maintenance, cleaning, accounting, anyone who contributes to the business)
- Take gorgeous headshot photos (some serious and some fun)
- Place group shot in your About Us section as well as portraits with captions about each team member
If you don’t have authentic and professional portraits of you and your team, you either have amateur photos of you and your team or you don’t have any photos period, which opens up the door for the plenty of dubious travelers out there. Give yourself this gift: show off your beautiful face to the world of travelers. They deserve it. And you earned it!
DISCUSSION: Have professional portrait photos changed your game? Did you do anything special to secure them? Trades with photographers?
At the table sat a video game software developer, a painter, a special education teacher, an intellectual property rights lawyer (who also happens to be my upstairs neighbor), and a shrimp broker (who literally sells fresh Louisiana shrimp to restaurants around town).
And when it was my turn to introduce myself, someone leads in like this: “And that’s Matt. He stays in vacation rentals for a living.”
No one had ever described my work this way, but it was not entirely inaccurate, after all, A Sense of Place is about meeting vacation rental destinations and Unlocked Podcast dives into the special people running the show.
But interestingly, this preface opened up a can of worms at the table, with every person taking the chance to recount some kind of horror story from a vacation rental stay. One of them (the video game guy) had his unnamed-listing-site reservation cancelled one day before a big trip only to learn that all the other lodging accommodations in town were fully booked (he had to cancel his trip).
Another had her super creepy unnamed-listing-site host ask if it was OK if he slept the night on the couch in the living room as “he was catching a train early the next morning.”
A third — perhaps the least dramatic of the group, the shrimp broker — said that his vacation rental experience wasn’t terrible, but the host “talked like I was doing him a favor for staying there.”
My instinct in hearing all of this was to get defensive, but instead I ordered a dirty martini.
And I began to reflect on what this conversation actually meant for the industry I call home.
My conclusion? Renting a vacation rental can be a crapshoot.
If you don’t know what to look for, if you don’t have any personal contacts or recommendations, if you haven’t done it before...booking a vacation rental is a little like Russian roulette in that there’s a chance for disaster. And that when it’s your hard earned vacation dollars on the line, this value proposition is kiiiiiind of dubious for a lot of travelers.
Of course, no vacation rental host can single-handedly convert all the doubters. But we can convince the ones we do come in contact with by putting our best foot forward, introducing ourselves, and taking responsibility for the guest’s experience.
IDEA: Convincing a traveler that you are professional and reliable is maybe the greatest deep marketing mission you can embark on.
ACTION: Quell doubts of amateurism and unreliability by investing a few hundred bucks in professional portrait photos for you and your staff. There is nothing that says unprofessional like a cropped or pixelated photo from Jerry’s wedding fifteen years ago. Worse, there’s nothing that says unpredictable like a host who’s not willing to show face (here's looking at you Mr. 'question mark' photo).
- Google “portrait photographer” in [your region]
- Pick a few you like and reach out for price quotes
- Block one morning off the booking calendar
- Gather your team (maintenance, cleaning, accounting, anyone who contributes to the business)
- Take gorgeous headshot photos (some serious and some fun)
- Place group shot in your About Us section as well as portraits with captions about each team member
If you don’t have authentic and professional portraits of you and your team, you either have amateur photos of you and your team or you don’t have any photos period, which opens up the door for the plenty of dubious travelers out there. Give yourself this gift: show off your beautiful face to the world of travelers. They deserve it. And you earned it!
DISCUSSION: Have professional portrait photos changed your game? Did you do anything special to secure them? Trades with photographers?
