Happy Holidays to all

Flipkey Poised tobe Number One

One of the oldest and largest travel websites is TripAdvisor.com. They are presently positioning themselves to take over the number one spot presently held by homeaway.com. for vacation rental listings. Their new vacation rentals listing site is Flipkey.com

We were approached by Flipkey in February of 2010 to list our vacation rental with them for a 60 days free trial listing. This was an opportunity to get more exposure with what I thought to be one of the best travel related sites. We were contacted by Flipkey again at the end of our 60 days with instruction on how to pay and keep our listing. I wrote back and expressed that we had not received any viable inquiries because we did receive two inquiries but none of them had phone numbers. We do not count inquiries without phone numbers as serious or true inquiries because anyone could be sending them in. They came back with an extended sixty days and then we finally received several more inquiries with phone numbers and booked one of them. We continued to get inquiries and soon realized that most of our inquiries were coming from Flipkey.

I started to research them and realized that not only was my listing on Flipkey but they had also added a vacation rentals tab to TripAdvisor.com and were also showing our listing and we were receiving inquiries from TripAdvisor.com also.

They do something very unique in that once someone inquiries about a property they also offer up other options to send the inquiry to. This is great because if someone inquires about another rental in the same area they offer up our rental asking if they want the inquiry to come to us also.

VRBO and Homeaway have gotten bad raps for the way they handle the testimonials site allowing the owner to pick and choice which ones are posted, Flipkey has a process in place which we also like as they allow us to select who we want to ask for a testimonial and they post it once received.

With their ten million plus visitors to their websites I think these guys are poised to take the number one spot for vacation rental listing site in just a few more months or by 2012.

What this means to all property owners is that they are the site to list with, so run do not walk over to the site and get your property listed for the ten million plus visitors they have to offer.

Get your Sixty Day Trial Today


Al & Nelida Rios
Owner Operators
Villas de COSTA MAR

Rentalbot Tools & Services Walk Through

RentalBot offers Vacation Rental owners an unparalleled array of Property Management tools and services to keep you organized, on time and invest only on sites that are providing you with inquiries and bookings. Below are a few and how they work to help you…
Inquiries Script: Saves you the time it takes to enter inquiries into Rentalbot to build a marketing customer database.

 Book It: A fast and easy way to convert an inquiry to a reservation.

 Reservation: Payments – add and remove payments that add up to your rental fee. You can also add the refundable deposit collected and also add the refund as a negative number for easy tracking. 

• Date Due:  
• Date Received:

 These allow you to document and keep track of funds received and due as their names state.

• Remind Me Date:

 You can set a reminder for each payment date you setup to receive a reminder email.

Expenses: You can use these to keep track of all expenses for said rental client. Maid, Property Manager, Repairs any other expense which may arise. You also have

• Due Date
• Date Paid
• Remind Me Dates
• Check # 

Another great way to stay organized and on time.

Task: You can setup all task associated with said rental client like Contract Due, flight Itinerary recorded, email maid, Return Deposit any other task associated with said rental client. You also have:

• Complete by: 
• Date Completed
• Remind Me Date

 Other tools will be covered in blog and next newsletter…

Rentalbot E-Connect

I wanted to get back into the habit of writing, putting my thoughts on paper as to where Rentalbot is today, what upgrades we have in development for this year and going forward. I will be writing several blogs during the course of the coming months and then compile what I have blogged about in a quarterly newsletter that will be distributed to all Rentalbot members.

If any members are blogging and have an article they would like to share please forward it to me for review and publication. Communication is important in any business and I want it to flow both ways so email me your concerns, stories and suggested topic.

I will include a link back to your website or blog in your stories so it’s a win for you when your stories are published.

Stories must be relevant to subject matter of vacation rentals…

• Properties
• Management
• Marketing
• Maintenance
• Location
• Tenants’

Send us any interesting/informative stories that we can all benefit from and enjoy reading. Please forward to blog@rentalbot.com

We will also do walk through of tools and services and how they can help you better manage, organize, and get a ROI.

Vacation Owners & Property Managers?

How do I keep track of my rental guest?
When is my next rental payment due in?
Who has paid up to this point in time?
What still needs to be done for this rental?
When are they arriving, what date?
Where are my inquiries coming from, what listings?
What listings are providing me with the best ROI?
Which listing should I renew next year?
How do I get in contact with past guest?
How can I get in contact with past inquirers?
How can I continue to market to them all?
What is the best way to manage all this and stay sane?
Who has all the answers to these questions?
How can I stay in touch and on top of it all?
Who is asking all these questions and why?

Property managers and owners that do not have; a RENTALBOT.com account!
That’s who!