Kinko Tochi or when the future of cities almost happened - Re-visiting Vacation Rental's concepts

image credit Frieze. 

Reading Amelia Groom's essay (Frieze march issue) on the Japanese manifesto 'Metabolism 1960' the other day sparked a little debate here on whatever happened to the future of cities and where do we stand now, focusing on vacation rentals, are we swimming against or flowing within that vision?
The vision, in Amelia's words, is a promise of

" design spaces for living bodies that would be more in line with the metabolic processes of those bodies, they conceived of cities as living, moving and evolving creatures. Buildings would be adaptable organisms perpetually rejuvenating themselves; the metropolis would be a verb rather than a noun."

nagakin capsule tower. im. credit stephendavidsmith.net

Cities as verbs. Super-organisms evolving and changing. Living as a pret-a-porter, a snack. Humans flowing through cities as blood through cells. Travel as compulsion rather than occasion, closing that circle that started as nomadism and to nomadism gets in this fin-de-siècle (siècle meant as civilization) we're living in.

kenji-ekuan-dwelling-city-1963.jpg. Credit relationalthought.com

Where do we stand? Looking from inside out it all seems to boil down to the dichotomy of Hotels Vs Vacation Rentals, a trivial commercial war underscoring fundamentally different interpretations of the future. Assuming Metabolism is happening and the state-of-traveling ever more is going to be a state-of-being, can living be just a snack that can be cleaned up and served or should it rather be somewhat unpredictable, open, in one word, personal?
'My house is your house'... up to a degree, for a given timeframe and for a fee, rest assured. Yet if you spend most of your life out of your own capsule, you may as well borrow a piece of my own life rather than eat and digest yet one more snack.
Where are we heading? To a post-human that will accept alienation as a state-of-being or rather to a 'What's Mine is Yours - The Rise of Collaborative Consumption' kind of future.
We're betting on the latter...

Cities Reference to include mountains, countryside and seashores into the inventory or the concept of Outer Area.

"There is more to a city than bricks and mortar"

Bisonblight blogging on skyscrapercity.com - Image credit  shunvision

That's what we were thinking when we finally decided to include 'Outer areas' into our listings a fortnight ago.

Back in '97, if your apartment was a inch away from Campo de' Fiori you wouldn't get admitted. What the hell was that? Snobbery? That's as anti-our-own-mission as it gets.

Over the years the radium got expanded, started including suburbs and then new cities and their suburbs. Know what? Travelers loved to be enabled to choose, as long as it was well marked in the description. To hell with the historical center, many must have thought, you get more space for less money at the cost of some extra time on the metro, big deal? Depends...

And now the 'Outer areas', my friends, just get ready to see prices drop at the cost of a simple change of perspective. The real 'City break' we may say. You spend the week swimming and skiing only to go into town for the week end, only that's all part of your holiday, and cities look much more relaxed when their business self is reversed. Do that out of seasons and prices can be 1/10th than those in the historical center in some cities.

How do you do it? Just pick 'Outer area' when booking your 'city break'.

Where is the catch? If you actually wanted to be smack downtown you better give that extra look at the map and the area from now on, if it's marked 'Outer area' you may end up sharing your next Bright lights Big City experience with a bunch of cows.

...Go ahead and flood us with comments (swear words not admitted ;)

End of an Era - Survival of the fittest

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” (Charles Darwin)

We just thought maybe Charles got it wrong for once... and guess what, we blew it. In a period of grand consolidation we went like:

'Hey, why don't we spread out our site and make it many? Exploding into thousands of city-sites that will feel like local. Glocal! Was it us that invented the word? Cool'.

Yeah sure, shame it didn't work though, had we listened to Charles in the first place we would have spared some nice time and money. It's been fun ultimately, so we're fine, aren't we?

 Ok here is the announcement followers and fans: starting tomorrow, if it's not tomorrow it's going to be monday, either way it's happening soon before you know it unless you follow us on Facebook, all our city-sites will disappear and merge into Cities Reference, with one and only city-site survivor, of course, Roman Reference.

I said it.

Too much hassle running behind tens of websites, we couldn't handle it. Also, more fundamentally, this division into indipendent city-sites ultimately felt like a cheat to the people we care the most: You.

If You go to a city-website you want its heart and soul to reside there, its staff, its office, and You're right. You didn't say, but we listened harder. Our heart and soul reside in the website and our office and staff resides in Rome. Space/time in our modern age has comfortably collapsed enough to let us be global from just... here. The launch will follow (in a Facebook near you ;).

Long story short: the Press and us since 1996

Since 1996 we've kept our main office in the same garage. While that and the team have stayed pretty stable (see picture) everything else has changed. Changes have washed away a lot of records and press realeases have gone lost with a lot of memory of time past. This post is our best shot at getting it together. On the other hand let's face it, we do not measure time regularly, like clocks do, but with many different rates of speed. In the complexity of today's experience, it often seems as if events far apart in time were  simultaneous. However...

It was long gone 1996 when we first got noticed by the press, ouch, it feels like yesterday! Local city news magazine 'Roma c'è' (just disappeared from news stands here in Rome, but it's been making everyday's life easyer to surf for Romans for almost two decades) listed us under Tourist Information. Indeed when we got started we meant to be an averall city reference and the definition still sounds right for times to come, ironical how the vacation rental got mentioned last:

'Multi-service association for tourists. Services include transportation, interpreters, translators, personal health trainers, tours, long and short-term accommodations and more'

From local to national press in 2003 Dove magazine interviewed us, I remember what seemed like an hour on the phone, and they got it all wrong... They pictured us as a local agency as opposed to websites aiming to be virtually global, which is what we were trying to do... actually

But thankfully 2003 was also the year where international press finally took note of us. Condé Nast USA Gourmet Magazine (the magazine of good living), listed us under the '100+ great things about Rome'.  That was nice ;)

Same year, fashion magazine Sirene from Denmark listed us best accommodation alternative to hotels.

One more scrap of press we managed to find yesterday is Condé Nast USA Traveler magazine 2007

Which list us under the '50 affordable gems of Europe'. Better still their journalist Lee Aitken came back to Rome and used our services in 2011, see the behind the scene article here, quote 'I would have gone stir-crazy spending ten days in a hotel room'.

In 2008 Sylvie Wyeth of Travel + Leisure USA meet us for a tour of our best apartments and writes a whole article about the Villa Fortuny apartments we list on Roman Reference.

In 2009 Frommer's Rome lists us as among the '5 rental companies to consider' and 'the best all-around apartment rental agency in Rome'.

In 2011 we got listed in Time Out and Ville e Giardini.

Recently viewed apartments

A Cities Reference FB fan asked how to keep track of the apartments recently viewed.

We will soon add a 'Favorite & Compare' option to further simplify this process.

What we have in place already is the 'Recently viewed apartments' feature which you find bottom right of your screen as per attachment here.

This feature keeps track of the apartment pages just visited and provides an easy link if you want to go back to it. Same way again if you want to go back and fro to compare amenities and features of each apartment.

If you don't like performing the back and fro, just open a new tab.

If you want memory of your apartments search results 'Send' it to yourself on Facebook see picture below, that will provide you with a link you can easily go back and use again whenever you want.
Got questions? Contact Cities Reference and/or Find the Answers.

Cities Reference's Discounted Commissions

image credit forexbrokerz.com

  Cities Reference's Discounted Commissions

This post is addressed to travelers, apartments' owners don't have to worry 'cause nobody is touching their net fee when we apply Cities Reference discount coupons to the bookings.

If you're reading this chances are you are already eligible for a discount on Cities Reference's network as a repeat client, friend or family of a repeat client or Facebook page fan. Therefore you know how easy it is to get our (in)famous 5% discount.

The question we'd like to answer today is what does that 5% discount corresponds to when weighted against Cities Reference's official commissions as explained in our previous post. The answer is appalling (for us, mind you, it should sound just fine to your ears).

Here follow the list of the real % of discount we apply on our own commission when you cash on your CitiesReference discount, starting from our highest possible commission down to the lowest, mind you, we're dividing in discreet amounts although the descent from Max to Lowest happens gradually in inverse proportion to the total rent, you'll have to use your calculator and our previous post to figure what's inbetween the layers below:

• Discounted Max Commission: you get a 27% discount on our highest commission of 20.5%+VAT.
• Discounted Average Commission: you get a 34% discount on the medium commission of 16%+VAT
• Discounted Lowest Commission: you get a 66% (!!!) discount on our lowest possible commission of 9%+VAT

Oh boy, wish we'd done the math before we launched this campaign!

OK, OK, you don't care, you want to know how much you're paying in commissions exactly when you get a discount. Here we go:

• You're paying 14.9%+VAT if you're paying our Discounted Max Commission, which is to say you're renting a relatively cheap On Request apartment for a relatively short period of time.
• You're paying 10.2%+VAT if you're paying our Discounted Average Commission, which is to say you're renting a relatively cheap Instant Booking apartment for a relatively short period of time
• You're paying 2.7%+VAT (!!!) if you're  paying our Discounted Lowest Commission, which is to say you're renting a relatively expensive Instant Booking apartment for a relatively long period of time

 Ok, we hear you, how likely are you to get the nicer looking commissions?

• Max Commission is paid in 12% of bookings
• Average Commission is paid in 76% of bookings
• Lower than Average Commission is paid in 11.5% of cases
• Lowest Commission is paid in 0.5% of cases

Yes, you've got to really deserve that lowest commission! ;)

Extreme makeover for the owners' back-end

Most of you Cities Reference property owners woke up after the week end to a brand new back-end experience on our website. Some of you complained, most did not express awe or emotions. Well actually... besides a few complaints, we didn't hear anything at all from you guys. Therefore we're opening a poll on Cities Reference Facebook page where you can mark the do's and dont's.

Most changes are actually cosmetic, meaning server and database haven't been affected, but your experience, at least in our intentions, is enhanced, better, revolutionized!

Let's quickly go through what has changed

Dashboard: You have alerts now. You'll be reminded

• if a client will be ringing your apartment's door bell soon. 
• If you have failed to update your calendar in the past month ;)
• If you don't have any pictures
• If you don't have a description or amenities

Your Listings: It will be prettier to look at your listed apartments, you'll see a picture first off and a wealth of info in a sortable grill (net rate/pending and confirmed bookings/city/address).

• When you click on your apartment's details you'll enjoy a visually enhanced and simplified calendar page. With simple clicks to block dates and a list of bookings (confirmed and declined) to the side. Just as you had asked us to do (see above)!
• The pricing tab will still include the test pricing, but more comfortably placed to the right of your screen
• Last but not least of the changes you can finally reply to the travelers' comments on your apartment on the reviews tab end right of your screen.

Your reservations: will list all the booking received for your apartments

Your trips: this section will keep together all the discounted bookings you make on Cities Reference's website when renting our listed apartments worldwide.

Now enjoy and let us know on facebook what you like and what you don't.