Airport security is tightening, airlines are limiting your carry on luggage and charging more for your extra items.  For those of you who are renting short term accommodations and vacation rentals for a month or longer you may want to consider shipping your must have items ahead of your visit.

Check with your vacation home landlord or property manager to see if you can have items waiting for you when you arrive.  You may need to pick the items up at the management office or you can ship your packages the day you fly out and take delivery at your vacation destination.

Some items that we see travelers ship ahead of time are hiking and sports equipment, clothing, makeup, books, bikes and computer equipment.  You can travel light and still have your favorite items awaiting your arrival.

Photos, photos and more photos!  You can visit just about any vacation rental website and you’re bound to see some blurry and really horrible thumbnail images for listed homes.  How about the distorted and stretched thumbnail shots that make you want to get an eye exam?  Or how about the owner who decides to post a primary picture of the “throne room” aka “the bathroom”!  I am sure travelers look at those listings and say “OMG, those images are awful – NEXT!”  Site owners and developers are at the mercy of the images uploaded to listings.  That being said – Please upload nice big images!

Photos are so crucial to your listings.  Visitors want to see multiple pictures of your rentals.  Many people travel long distances to visit your home and before they pick your place they will pour over many listings and those with the best images will rise to the top of their short list.  Take advantage of the 12 to 24 big images that you can post Furnished Homes listings.  The 12 images and link to your personal site or calendar is only $39 annual and 24 vacation rental images with 3 links (your personal calendar, website, twitter or youtube links) is only $99 annual!

Get rid of those terrible photos and post the really good ones!  Get your place listed and get noticed!

The snow is comin’ down in many areas of the USA and it is becoming a reality to travelers that it may be time to reserve some “sunshine” soon.

Check out these recently added vacation rentals – you’ll be hitting the golf trail, bird watching and soaking up the sun rays in no time.

• Tucson, Arizona
• Scottsdale, Arizona
• Miami Beach, Florida
• Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico
• Costa Rica
• Playa del Carmen, Mexico
• Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
• Netherlands Antilles

Furnishedhomes.com – Vacation Rentals by Map is searching for your great travel and vacation rental images!  Our graphic design team is calling for some really great images that will appear on the “Home” page for Furnished Homes.  The image files need to be big and high resolution.  So if you have that perfect evening sunset shot from your beach house or a killer image of your cabin in the woods, just shoot us an email  (support at Furnishedhomes.com) with your images and we’ll take care of the rest. 

This will be front page exposure and not all images will qualify.  Your images can include both exterior and interior shots.  The Furnishedhomes.com vacation rental site re-design is nearly complete.  Here’s your chance to get your home on the home page!  Looking forward to hearing from you.

Updating previous post about Homeaway vacation rentals website advertising during the Super Bowl.  I think it is a really good move!  You can just imagine the possible scenarios of the Griswold’s rolling into cheesy hotels, cramped into a single small room and piling in unexpectedly at friends homes along the way!

Pretty impressive that Homeaway recreated the original wood paneled station wagon and signed on Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo.  Looking forward to the commercials and higher awareness about renting vacation homes.  It is still amazing to me that many people have not considered a furnished rental home as oppossed to a hotel room – especially families.  Hmmm – families may be the key buzz word – thus the Griswolds?  Kudos to Homeaway! 

List your vacation rentals today

Home Away – aka Homeaway.com, Vacationrentals.com, Vrbo.com, etc. announces that they will be advertising in February 2010 Super Bowl.  Vacation homeowners and managers report receiving emails advising them that Homeaway based in Austin, Texas will be advertising during Superbowl XLIV in Miami, Florida.

Great news for vacation rental owners and vacation rental directories as this will help draw even more attention to the value of renting a furnished vacation home as an alternative to staying in a hotel.  We blogged about this in the past - trying to squeeze families in a hotel room is tough and of course there is no privacy - Read our previous entry here  “We Choose Vacation Rentals over Hotel Rooms!” 

Would not be surprised to see a commercial of a family trying to squeeze into a hotel room and then seeing the light and renting a vacation home?  Will be fun to watch the game and the new commercial.  Way to go Homeaway!

We’re updating the Furnished Homes vacation rental map owner and manager panels.  We will be implementing a streamlined panel for vacation homeowners to track hits to your listings, Google analytics, easy upgrades and subscriptions.

Look for an announcement in the next week or so about the new owner panel launch and site updates.  By the way – Furnished Homes is searching well in a number of keyword categories at Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Vacation Rental owners can now post to their listings that they are interested in the possibility of exchanging vacation rentals with other owners.  Make other owners aware that you are open to possible trades – my beach house for your ski cabin?  Select the option in step 1 of add or edit a property and it will appear instantly in your listing.

$39 standard and $99 preferred listings can now be paid monthly or quarterly via auto-pay with Google Checkout.  If you add a property or upgrade a vacation rental listing you will have these new options.  Basic listings continue to be free.  Happy Renting!

Vacationrentals.com, part of the Homeaway network, is starting to increase advertising rates in October.  Renewals for listings for 3 months listings will increase on October 6, 2009 from $69 to $99, an increase of nearly 45%.  A one year listing at Vacationrentals.com will increase from $169 to $199 per year, or approximately 18% higher.

The Austin, Texas based company states that inquiries to owners is up 25 percent over last year and traffic to the site is up 20 percent over last year.

Furnishedhomes.com – Vacation Rentals by Map

Vacation rental map site Furnishedhomes.com secures and authenticates site for visitors with leading online SSL provider Comodo.  Furnished Homes domain name is authenticated by Comodo.com and provides for strong encryption for a secure HTTPS connection. 

Why Furnishedhomes.com chooses Comodo for online security?

Comodo is a leading global provider of Identity and Trust Assurance services on the Internet, with over 500,000 customers worldwide.

Headquartered in New Jersey with global offices in the UK, Ukraine and India, the company offers businesses and consumers the intelligent security, authentication and assurance services necessary to ensure trust in online transactions.

Comodo is the Higher Certificate Authority. Dedicated to keeping customers one step ahead, they have ensured that InstantSSL is 2048-bit ready to keep our customers safe for the next 20 years. Comodo customers do not need to worry about vulnerable 1024-bit certificates, and can rely on our SSL certificates to keep their website secure for years to come. Comodo has invested millions in their Research and Development labs that are consistently working to push boundaries and develop new exclusive technologies that make interacting online a safer venue for everyone.

Comodo’s current clients include IBM, Xerox and Hewlett Packard and NASA.