No matter if you own and manage 1 or hundreds of vacation rentals it is wise to have a personal vacation rental website.  It is our experience that bookings will increase if you can show that you are a legitimate vacation rental owner or manager.  To create a professional image and increase your chances of being found on internet search engines you should have a personal vacation rental website.

Affordability should not be an issue unless you have many, many properties to display and rent.  A simple 3 to 5 page website can be designed, hosted and maintained for under $100 per year. There are many website hosting and design sites that will allow for you to do everything you need to get your site up and running within 24 to 72 hours.  It just depends on how much time you want to spend designing.  Don’t get worried about the design because there are numerous templates to choose from.  For example, you can point and click on the layouts you prefer and then just fill in the template with your images and text.  Two sites that enable you to get your personal vacation rental website up and going quickly may be Godaddy.com and Homestead.com.  We have experience with both, they are both great and we prefer the super simplicity of Homestead.com.  If you manage many vacation rentals you may want to hire a web developer or webmaster to build an enterprise level site to include online reservations, real time availability and much more.  An enterprise level site may cost anywhere from $5000 to the sky’s the limit dependent upon what software and applications are running.  Some of the sites that large vacation rental property managers use can cost over $100,000 to develop and maintain.

Check out these examples of Furnished Homes Vacation rental listings that link to their personal vacation rental sites.  Pay close attention to all the area information and additional help these owners provide to travelers.  The first vacation rental site is for a Flagstaff, Arizona Cabin Rental – The Nakai Chalet and the second vacation rental website is for A Penthouse in Rome, Italy.

         Flagstaff AZ Cabin Rental                                  Rome, Italy Penthouse

Picking a domain name for your new rental website.  It is advisable that you pick a name that is easy to remember and one that you think may be searched by particular keywords.  For example, if you own a vacation rental in Sedona, Arizona you may want to consider SedonaVacationRentals.com instead of JacksHomesandRentals.com.  We would need a blog the size of an encyclopedia to discuss keywords, search engine optimization, reciprocal links, semantics, Google algorithms, and so much more.  If nothing else you should make the domain name do what it says and easy for people to remember.  You can work on the rest later.

When you build your personal vacation rental site it gives you the opportunity to add your special touches and flavor.  Many vacation rental advertising sites limit the number of images you can display (Furnishedhomes.com allows 25 images of your vacation home) and on your personal site you have the freedom to put many more images.  Once your site is active be sure to add your website link to vacation rental directories that allow for links to the owners personal sites.  For example, when you upload a vacation rental home to Furnishedhomes.com you are allowed to link to your personal website!  Therefore, when someone finds your listing and wants to see even more information or “check you out” they can just click on VIEW OWNER WEBSITE and they are automatically directed to you!

Your personal vacation rental website will add credibility to your rental and allow for new avenues for vacationers and travelers to find you and make a reservation.