Time to take back our Vacation Rental Advertising Business!

The Problem

If you are currently an owner of a Vacation Rental property here on Siesta Key, (or a local rental agency representing an owner), you may be like many of us, advertising your rentals on one or more expensive commercial "By Owner" rental sites.

And like us, you have watched your yearly advertising costs soar with their endless price increases as they buy-up and roll over all their "Vacation Rental By Owner" competition. (Nothing wrong with that, it is the American way - but their "Super Bowl" ad was really expensive, and someone had to pay for it).

These mega-companies aren't located on Siesta Key, or even Florida, yet they have managed to take over almost all of our advertising revenue and ship it out of state. As you write out your check this year for $299 (or $400-$500 if you have many pictures on your ad), perhaps like me you wonder if there couldn't be a less costly but equally effective alternative?

A Solution - The Green Bay Packers model

Perhaps you know about the Super Bowl Champs, the Green Bay Packers. The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States. The community took ownership of their team and made them winners.

We Siesta Key owners could use their business model to take back our rental advertising business, reduce our costs, and increase our profits. After all, WE OWN SIESTA KEY! We sacrificed, sweated, and somehow acquired these SK rentals; we pay the taxes that support our tropical paradise. We OWN Siesta Key and we could/should OWN the main Internet site that attracts our rental clients.

Our Siesta Key Solution

Here is a brief overview of exactly how we could come together and take back ownership of our Web presence and promotion.

(A) We establish a "Siesta Key Rental Owners Association" (SKROA) with minimal annual membership dues.

(B) We establish a "Siesta Key Rentals By Owners" website.

(C) All SKRBO members may list their properties at no cost on the website. This website will be as professional as any other "By-Owner" website, featuring 20-30 owners pictures, maps, guest comments, availability calendars, etc.

(D) All SKRBO members will actively help promote our SKRBO website by getting their owner-friends to also join, and most importantly by answering all rental requests received from other "By-Owner" websites with pre-written promotions for our SKRBO website - let me show you an example:.

(1) You receive a rental request from one of the expensive by-owner websites you currently use.

(2) If you have that time open, of course you rent your unit to the rental client.

(3) But if you are already booked or don't rent to that rental client (for whatever reason), you send a standard reply (that our SKRBO website provides for you) that says something like:

  Thanks Randy Renter,

  Sorry our rental is not available for your timeframe, but did you know that we Siesta Key
  owners now have our own website where you can find hundreds of Siesta Key Rentals?

				(Proposed new Association Website)

  Please consider saving our website in your favorites for your future vacations, after all
  we own this island, we want your business, and promise to serve you better than any other
  website possibility could!

  Thanks again,

  Sally Owner (Member: Siesta Key Rental Owners Association)

Think if we had hundreds of SK owners sending out messages like this to thousands of potential rental clients daily, we could 'bootstrap" our association's Website to be the standard site for all SK rentals in a short time!

Our Siesta Key Solution - Just a "pipe dream"?

Actually NO.

This is not an unachievable pipe dream, but can happen if enough SK owners want it and would support it.

To demonstrate that this is a serious possibility, we offer this website as proof:

RIGHT NOW - you may advertise your Siesta Key rental for FREE. It's simple, you may establish a UserID and password, create a new listing, and upload your pictures, all free.

Edit and change it, publish your rates, and completely control your listings.

This site actually does pretty well in the search engines, if you take the time to create a good ad you will likely be rewarded with rental requests and actual bookings.

Think of this website as a "proof of concept" site, this demonstrates that we have the ability to create a SKRBO website..

Join the Siesta Key Rental Owners Association

If you think that the ideas presented here have potential and would like to become an initial founding member of this proposed exclusive association, please send us an email and briefly tell us about yourself and your rental. Comments, suggestions, and ideas concerning how we should go about establishing this proposed SKROA are welcome, for example how much should the initial dues be?.

Thanks for you interest,.

Jim Hock.