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This page has information that might be helpful to you:
How does the "refer-a-friend" program work?
How can you help me market and/or manage my rental home?
Can I have my own web page on WeNeedaVacation.com?
How do I modify my listing?
How does the calendar work?
How do I change my contact info?
How do I submit or
change pictures?
What are your photography and consultation services?
How do vacationers reach me by email?
What are "Owner specials?"
How do I renew my listing?
How do I find or reset my hit count?
Important note about "walk to beach".
What is the "Virtual Rental Assistant"?
How does the automatic login work?
What is "Bookmarking"?
How do I contact WeNeedaVacation.com?
What are the terms and conditions of membership?
Do you have "Long-term winter rentals for Cape & Island
owners?"
For each lister you refer to us, we will gratefully add two months to your
subscription if you are an 1- or 2-year subscriber, or one month if you are a
6-month subscriber. It's that simple. Be sure to tell friends to mention you on
the owner sign-up form in response to the question, "Who referred you?"
You have your own web page on WeNeedaVacation.com! You can send
vacationers who contact you directly to a specific web address. Or other
websites can link to it! Your 'URL' (aka web address) will be similar to those
of our sample properties for the Cape & Islands,
or Florida.
Simply replace the ID number in one of these with your listing's ID number.
Many of you have noticed that these pages have been indexed by some of the top
search engines, increasing traffic to your page.
You can modify your listing by clicking on the link "Maintain your property
listing" on your "Welcome" web page that greets you when you login. We do
not allow a property to be on-line if any required information is missing;
lack of certain information would lead to your property not appearing in a
search result or to low-quality listings. We also require you to actively
"approve" your listing. Otherwise we have no way of knowing that you are ready
to display it. When you modify a property, be careful that you
do not do something that causes us to take it off-line per the above
guidelines. We always tell you if this happens: A message in bold red lettering
will describe the error or missing details.
We support year-round weekly and monthly pricing and availability, which you
can communicate through a "calendar." There is a link to your calendar on your
property's web page. But, even more helpful to you is that vacationers can
search for those specific weeks or months!
Over 80% of our properties have these calendars.
For the vast majority of you who have been renting the past few years, demand
has been strong. The main problem many of you face has been maximizing your
return for each week and filling up the last couple of weeks. The
pricing/availability calendar helps you address both problems. You can increase
popular weeks' rent without fear of hurting less popular weeks, and you have a
way to draw attention to the hard-to-rent weeks as well! To the best of our
knowledge, you are on the only website serving the Cape & Islands or Florida
that does this.
Response to our "calendar" from vacationers has been enormously
positive because it saves them so much time.
To take advantage of this feature, log in and choose the link to "Set up
pricing."
Once you have set up the calendar, you will need to keep this information
current. Nothing will frustrate vacationers more, especially as the inventory
dwindles, to get their hopes up over your "available" dream house only to find
that it has been taken. Keeping it current should be done via the link
to update your calendar. This option enables you to update as many properties
as you have listed with us in one easy step.
If your calendar has not been updated in quite a while, we may email you asking
you to update it. We reserve the right to remove particularly stale calendars.
The date that you last updated your calendar is published on your calendar.
Even if your booking status has not changed, you can easily change the
last-updated date: simply click on your "update calendar" link and then click
the SUBMIT button. Vacationers repeatedly express their frustrations at
out-of-date calendars.
If you participate in this optional calendar program, your web page will
display this special icon 
of a calendar, drawing vacationers to it. Our statistics show that traffic to
properties with calendars exceeds those without calendars. Wouldn't you
look first at a home that you know is available before one that doesn't
indicate one way or the other?
In addition, we have a special feature on our search engine that allows
vacationers to indicate that they would like to see ONLY those homes that have
a calendar that indicates availability for the time they are looking for. Thus,
if you don't have a calendar, and vacationers have used this option, your home
will not be shown to them.
You may change your contact information directly on-line in
the Homeowners section any time you want. Use the "Change your contact
information" option on your "Welcome" web page.
We offer three services to help you face the challenges of renting your home in an increasingly competitive market.
Our photography service includes an on-site visit by our staff photographer, who will bring props and special lighting and will take numerous photos of the interior and exterior of your home, as well as the nearby beach. We will offer recommendations for new pictures and improved, more descriptive captions.
Our on-site consultation service includes a visit to your home by our consultant. She will tour your home with you, giving you on-the-spot recommendations. She will follow up the visit with a full report of recommendations, suggestions to improve your property listing, and a price comparison analysis.
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Vacationers may choose to contact you by phone or by email if they have email
themselves. Both means are referenced at the bottom of your property web page.
If they use our email method, the actual emails are sent approximately one half
hour after the vacationer leaves our site. Vacationers often inquire about
several properties simultaneously, so you should faithfully check your
email and respond promptly to inquiries. If you don't, others
probably will! Our system passes on to you as much information as the
vacationer gives us in order to save you time.
The emails that you receive come directly to you through our service. Our
automatic email feature makes it easier both for you, who receive the detailed
email with all the criteria that the vacationer provided to us, and for the
vacationers, who often send several emails at once.
We allow advertising a "special" to highlight a price reduction, special
weekend rate, or a cancellation. A Homeowner Special is displayed in a
rose
color on the property directory lists, property summary lists from a search,
and on the property page and calendar itself. To enter a Homeowner Special, you
must use our calendar and keep it up to date. You can enter a special by
logging on and going to your calendar page.
Please do not use the Homeowner Special simply to draw attention to your home.
A "Special" should be limited to what vacationers would deem special to them,
such as a price reduction or a cancellation.
PLEASE DO NOT USE ALL CAPITALS.
Homeowner Special guidelines: (We will remove "Specials" that do not adhere to these guidelines.)
Do's
Always
remember to remove your Special if it is no longer relevant. If vacationers see
a special that relates to this past summer or fall, they may think that the
entire listing, including the availability calendar, is not up to date either.
If
you reduce a price, be sure to reduce it in the calendar as well as mentioning
it specifically in the "Owner special." Some have neglected to do so.
The price in the calendar is what is used in the search, so for example, if you
lowered a price from $2,100 to $2,000 and someone searches for maximum of
$2,000, the price in the calendar governs what is presented. The calendar is
also the first place vacationers will look.
Your Special should be specific. Instead of a general statement such as
"Call for reduced winter rates," say something like "$200 off
for any April weekend" or "$500 for any available winter
weekend."
Here
are some examples of valid Homeowner Specials:
"Winter
weekend getaway: $199 for two people"
"Thurs.
to Sun. off-season rate: $550 from Oct. 1 to June 15"
"Off-season
discount for families of four or less"
"5%
discount for prior tenants"
"Last-minute
cancellation for Aug. 6-13; price reduced by $500"
Don'ts
Discounts for multiple summer weeks are not considered a
special. Since so many of you do this, we don't see it "special," but
rather normal marketing
Pricing for an entire summer season or even a month or more
is not considered a Special. Remember that your calendar is the place for you
to show your monthly price if you rent your home by the month.
Here
are some examples of Homeowner Specials that are invalid or too vague:
-
"Prime time 2 week special at $3,000" (When? Not specific enough.)
-
"A Sunday or week day check-in may be arranged" (Unless this is for
in-season, it's not special.)
-
"Reduced rates to fill a cancellation" (When, and what is new rate?)
-
"Fourth of July Week Special! June reduced." (What is the special?)
-
"Note recently reduced pre season and post season prices" (What dates
and prices?)
-
"LAST MINUTE REDUCED PRICES" (What dates and prices? All CAPS are not
allowed.)
-
"Price Reduction" (What dates and prices?)
-
"July & August $1500. Owner's special" (What's special for
vacationer?)
-
"Call for multiple weeks or special off-season rates"(Too
vague)
-
"Weekly price reduction"(Too
vague)
-
"New owners, most summer weeks available!!!!!!!!!!!"(Use
another part of ad to communicate this.)
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"Now available to rent weekends or weeks!" (Most listings could say
this.)
-
"Call or email about off-season weekend rates: the house is available and
heated year-round!" (Most listings could say this.)
-
"Animals welcome" (There already is a way to highlight this via the
"pets considered" amenity.)
-
"Now taking reservations for next summer."(Almost
everyone could say this.)
-
"New to rental market" (Use another part of ad to communicate this.)
We will email you an invoice a month or so before your property's expiration
date.
You may pay on-line by credit card or Paypal, or by mail or FAX.
Our address is below. NOTE: if you have fewer than the 4 pictures
included in each listing, send us more.
If you have been inactive for awhile, you must update your property information
(new pricing, availability...). You also should consider adding a "calendar";
see above.
If you do not renew, we will maintain all of your contact and property
information for easy renewal at a later time.
Your "hit count" is the number of times your property has been seen since it
was first listed, or since you last reset the counter. Many owners reset their
hit counter at the beginning of a new rental season. To see this count, log in
and you'll see it right below the Property ID.
When is the hit counter updated? Our search engine
(http://server.weneedavacation.com/) updates this count with each view, but our
property directory (http://www.weneedavacation.com) numbers are
updated once a day right after midnight, Eastern Standard Time.
For those of you with beachfront homes, be sure that your listing specifically
indicates "on the water," "on a beach," "water view," and "walk to beach." If
you don't, your home will not come up if a vacationer searches for these
highly-desirable amenities. Being "on the water" does not automatically mean
"walk to beach," but of course "on a beach" does.
The autologin allows you to bypass regular logging in from your personal
computer. When you click on the "Login" link on the home page, you will go
straight to your "Welcome" web page, skipping over the Login page itself. This
is a convenience, but comes with a warning: Do this only if
you are the sole user of your personal computer, because it enables anyone all
the powers you have when you've logged in, including modifying your property,
calendar, and contact information.
If you use more than one computer to access our site, you will be able to
choose to use this feature on each computer. For example, you might decide that
the one at home is safe, but not the one at work.
If you take advantage of the auto-login feature, you may also bookmark
the pages used to update your calendar and modify your property information.
Using this feature requires that we place a "cookie" on your computer. Thus
"cookies" must be enabled for this to work. Almost all public sites that you
might visit (cnn, espn, msn...) use cookies, too. Cookies are small bits of
information stored on your PC that tell the saving website something about you
(nothing secretive or sensitive unless you explicitly provided that info). In
our case, you provide a username and we would save it in a cookie to save you
the bother of logging in again. See the "Help" for your browser to enable
cookies. They are enabled by default on most browsers.
Bookmarking is the act of telling your browser to remember your current web
page so that you may return to it easily. Microsoft Explorer calls these
"favorites" and Netscape calls them "bookmarks."
Off-season rentals for a month or longer. A link on the home page will lead
interested parties to a property directory of these homes.
Click here to see what we mean.
To add your home to this list, log on to your web page. Select the link to
update your property listing on the "Welcome" web page. Scroll down to the
"Long-term rental" field and enter the following information: months available,
monthly price, and any other relevant information. For example, "October to May
for $1,000 to 1,300 per month, depending on party size and length of stay.
Utilities not included." Price or price range is required to be legitimate. Be
sure that the information on the rest of your web page, particularly regarding
price, is consistent with what you enter into this new field for long-term
rentals. You have a maximum of 200 characters.
People who are looking for a long-term rental will use the special link to find
your home; they will not need to use the availability calendar. So, you should
still treat the calendar as a weekly pricing calendar. For
example, if you are still willing to accept weekly renters during the
off-season (until you find a long-term renter), be sure that your availability
calendar has the weekly price.
When you find a long-term renter, please be sure to go back onto your web page
and delete the information about long-term rentals from your web page. The
success of our website is based on its ability to provide accurate, up-to-date
information.
We welcome your suggestions and ideas!
All Seasons Vacation Rentals, LLC
30 Mayo Road
Wellesley, MA 02482
E-mail us at Info@weneedavacation.com
Phone: 888-281-8660
Phone: 888-281-8680 (Florida)
Fax: 781-239-0474
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