Cities Reference

Cities Reference's Discounted Commissions

2012-02-09T05:39:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-07T01:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Cities Reference's Commissions

2012-01-30T04:28:00.000-08:00

image credit forexbrokerz.com

Cities Reference's Commissions

Following recent changes and your Facebook requests for ever increased transparency and clarity here follow the details of how our commissions work.

Most of you seem to know already that our commission ranges from 9 to 20.5% and that you will decrease it by 25% when activating the Instant Booking. But you're unclear on how and why exactly the commission moves downward. Here follows our best attempt at shedding some light on the whole process.

Commission is composed of a fixed and of a variable factor. The previous depending on the booking system you apply to your listing (Instant or On Request), the latter on the total rent amount of your booking.
The Variable Commission subtracts from the Fixed Commission in inversed proportion to the final rent cost.

The Fixed Commission

Instant Booking apartments are charged 16%+VAT of the price posted on Cities Reference's websites.
On Request apartments are charged 20.5%+VAT.

The Variable Commission

The above commission will decrease by 10% every 50% increase of the rental cost heading down to the set minimum 9%+VAT.

Please note: When comparing our fees to others please make sure their fee structure is clear, there often is a double charge, some to the owner and some to the renter. We only charge one flat fee.

Find furter information on Cities Reference help page.

Test Pricing

2012-01-10T03:37:00.000-08:00

Test Pricing has been moved under the Pricing tab.

When activating a new fee or discount always remember to test the pricing to avoid unintended results. Just click on 'Test Pricing' and input the dates you want to check and the number of people. You'll see the net you'll receive for your rent itemized by the single fees or discounts you have activated.

Any doubts? Seek answers in Cities Reference FAQ page or Contact us.

Apartments' rating algorithm change to be launched tomorrow

2012-01-07T05:12:00.000-08:00

Don't be surprised if your apartment will rank different tomorrow. In our bid to be as transparent as we can here is how apartments ranking update will work in broad lines starting tomorrow.

30% will depend on our reccommendation
20% on whether you're instant or not
30% on how often and for how long for your apartment gets booked. Note that booking logs are erased shortly after check out, so the ranking you earn with bookings is not there forever.
10% on how often and how well your apartment gets reviewed by clients
10% on how often and how deeply you interact with our website.

Got more questions? Find more answers in Cities Reference help page or through Cities Reference contact page.

Best tip to gather rankings fast? Get bookings. How do you get bookings even with a low rank? Competitive rent price, many travelers sort by price...

Image credit: socialmarketing.oneupweb.com

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

Wanted to check back with our followers that dig into our analytics. New year comes with plenty of nice surprises. Let's check it out

Cities covered are now 33! We're looking at a growth of 267% compared to the same day last year.
Apartments listed are now 3,651! We're looking at a growth of 346% year on year. Nice!
Instant apartments are 816, the ratio is 22.4% of total, we'd like to grow this dimension fast.

Alexa:
Roman Reference kind of stable at 58,000 (growing 11.5% year on year)
Cities Reference losing some ground at 63,000
Paris Reference losing ground at 118,000
the rest are way lower

Facebook
Cities Reference Facebook page has 1,331 fans/841 talking about it (more than doubled in the past couple of months!)
Roman Reference Facebook fan page is at 438 fans and 4 talking about it

Analytics Rome

Rome grew unique traffic by 5% and
number of bookings by 18%, although the
goal value is broadly stable due to the fact that commissions have gone down dramatically under pressure from the competition
conversion rate with the new website and lower commissions and apartments inventory up 55% grew a meagre 7% in Rome. It must be the crisis, or maybe it's just me and expecting more than 7% growth on conversion rate is not realistic despite all the investments made to that purpose.
Weight of adwords on overall site traffic grew from 13.6% to 18.2 (grew 50% nominally year on year). Adwords weight of revenue and transactions on overall site results in the past year has been 24%, last year was just 14.6%. Nominal growth of adwords generated goals has been 73.5% year on year spreading up nicely when compared to the 50% growth on traffic. Adwords conversion rate grew 18% year on year and has been 32% higher than site average. CTR has improved 47%; CPC is up 26% (to 1.9 from 1.5), Impressions are equal. Adwords investment grew 79% year on year, it's ROI grew 490% (from 115% to 680%) Margin grew 63% (from 53% to 87%). Overall spreads on site average are looking good, year on year improvement on performance of adwords is looking nice pretty much on all dimensions especially considering the deepening of the global crisis and the increased competition.

Analytics Paris

Unique visitors grew 2.5%
number of bookings grew 33% though with goal value going down 20% because of lowering commissions
conversion rate is up 15.5%
Adwords on Paris is a losing game our inventory is not competitive and competition looks too hard. Stable at ca 5% of total traffic. Conversion rate although growing 75% from .49 to .86 is still in negative ROI and below site average (!).

Apartments:
Rome apartments are 815. Growth year on year is 55%, which is quite remarkable. We launched the new website with improved apartments listing wizard last March, since between 2010 and 2011 the growth had only been 15%, it is fair to assume that the new wizard makes listing a whole lot easier and allows a 5X growth in apartment listing inventory for a mature website.
Instant Ratio is 42.3%. Growing! We can't wait to hit that benchmark of 50% which we're heading to, certainly before the end of this year we hope.
Visitors per apartment/month: is 15, lower than usual in low season. It's 35 on Instant Booking apartments.
Conversion rate is 1.38% on e-commerce and 82.7% on online bookings slightly better than the last update.
Booking requests went below the psychological benchmark of 600 briefly last month and they're now back up to 645, still worryingly low. Crisis is hitting all of us after all. It must be remarked that spikes in growth of apartments are usually coming together with lows in bookings. This period is no exception.
Apartment reviews 2,421

Paris apartments are 347. Growth year on year is 120%

Export (or import) your calendar with Cities Reference

2011-12-21T02:37:00.000-08:00

Did you know you could export your calendar with Cities Reference? It takes the time of a copy and paste and it allows you to update just one calendar for all the websites you're using. This is going to make your life a whole lot easier and allow you to activate your instant booking with us which multiplies 10x your bookings.

Are you using the 'Map View'?

2011-12-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

Are you using the map view when searching your rental apartment? This is a great tool that will give you total control of the area where you want to be located. It will show you only the apartments available in your time frame and its cost. You can seamlessly go from map to apartment description and booking.

Check it out here: explore the apartments and click on 'Show on map'.

Update completion

2011-11-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

We weren't able to complete the last update.

What changed for the three sites already listed is

Alexa:
Cities Reference up 8.2% with 61,000
Roman Reference up 7% with 58,000

Apartments
Rome Apartments: up 2.5% in 2 weeks to 770 apartments. 60% growth annualized. Waste Ratio is 9.9%. Availability Ratio is 15% in low season counting only Instant Bookings (29% factoring in non instant)
Paris Apartments: stable at 343 apartments (!). Waste Ratio is 9.9%. Availability Ratio is 3.9% (48% factoring in non instant)
New York Apartments: stable at 149 apartments. Waste ratio is 5.4% and Availability ratio is 0.7% (42% factoring in non instant)

Spotlight is needed still on
London Reference
Analytics: Our 6th site on traffic, up two positions, just below Copenhagen Reference by a few units. Time on Site is well above average at 67% of RomanReference's speed or 32.8% lower. Same goes for the Bounce, better than Paris and better than average.
London Apartments: It is our 3rd site with 151 apartments (421% rate of growth!) and an instant ratio of 61%! Waste ratio is 8.7%
Booking/Instant Ratio is 12.5%. Great numbers well worth further investment.
Availability Ratio:

Amsterdam Reference
Amsterdam apartments: 142 apartments our 5th site
Instant Ratio is 0. Waste Ratio is 0. Availability Ratio is 19% (but no Instants so actually 0)

Barcelona Reference
Barcelona apartments: 82. Our 7th site. Rank 1
Instant Ratio is 50%. Waste Ratio is 1%. Availability Ratio is 2.4% (or 39% factoring in non instant)

Belgrade Reference
Belgrade apartments: 91. Our 6th site. Rank 1
Instant Ratio: is 5.5%. Waste Ratio is 0. Availability Ratio is 1.1% (57% On Request)

Berlin Reference
Berlin apartments: 78 our 8th site. Rank 1. Instant Ratio is 57.7%. Waste is 0. Availability is 7.7% (43% on Request)

Brussels Reference
Brussels apartments: 50 our 11th site. Rank 0. Instant Ratio is 96%. Waste is 2%. Availability is 8% (10% On Request)

Copenhagen Reference
Copenhagen apartments: 14. Rank 1. Instant 0. Waste is 21.4%. Availability is 0 (50%)

Krakow Reference
Krakow Apartments 30 apartments. Rank 0
Availability ratio is 16.7% in low season. Waste Ratio is 0. Instant ratio is 100%

Madrid Reference
Madrid Apartments 58. Rank 0. Instant Ratio is 64%. Waste ratio is 1.7%. Availability 5,3% (13%).

Prague Reference
Prague Apartments 63. Rank 0. Instant Ratio is 98.4%. Waste Ratio is 0. Availability Rate is 8%.

Growing on

2011-10-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

Three months on we feel pressed to update.

City sites are now 18, with just a 6% growth (notably and finally Amsterdam rentals), but the main improvement is on sites like A'dam itself and Dublin now featuring decent numbers of apartments listed. Apartments are now 2,069 keeping the pace shown with the last update and growing 55%. With 751 Instant Booking apartments the ratio is now gone down to 36.3%. Still very reasonable.

Last but not least New York is finally also a .com and not just a .co.uk.

And now a look at the details.

Cities Reference features an Alexa of 66,000 (growing 3% in traffic). On Analytics traffic is stable at 32% of Roman Reference; traffic month on month is down 8%, year on year though - which is what really matters - gains yet more speed at 862% growth!
Time on Site 9,02 and Bounce 36.7% are as usual the best of all. One note here is necessary. Since the overhaul last March/April 2011 the parent site -Cities Reference- has become the venue of mostly owners as opposed to the single city sites which gather mostly travelers. Different behaviors here reflect well our underlying strategy of envisioning owners as partners in business and travelers as clients. No wonder apartment owners show a higher level of stickiness to the site.
Other than that it must be stressed that time on site has been growing a robust 12.5% compared to the last update, while bounce has remained largely stable.
CR Facebook page: with 543 fans, starts getting decent

Roman Reference
Stats: with Alexa of 62,000 (growth 6.5%) is performing at one of its best standards ever. Gathering distance from Cities Reference despite our prediction.
Analytics keeps pace from all the other websites. Growth year on year slows down slightly to +11%. Month on month is down 11%.
Bounce and Time on Site: at respectively 38% and 6.05min are really good for a traveler centric kind of site.
Rome Apartments: with 751 apartments it keeps growing 13% from update to update, it's a 50% growth if annualized, so very robust considering this site can by all means be considered mature at this point.
Visitors Vs Apartments/month: 20.1 so slightly improved, this is the best metrics when looking at traffic. 49 is the ratio for Instants.
Instant Vs On Request: stable at 41%
Conversion: on Ecommerce is 1.57% which is 3.2X compared to the industry average. We'll track growth on this from now on. Conversion on online bookings is 79.7%, lower than average, which is odd for a low season period, this is likely due to October that, being highest season, has received a lot of last minute bookings for On Request apartments. On the other hand November is too slow to make up for it.
Booking requests: 879 in line with the low season tide.
Client Reviews: 2,276 we'll start checking its growth from now on.
RR Facebook Page: 412 fans

Paris Reference
Alexa: 105,000 up 20% and firmly third website
Analytics: Still third website at 12.6% of Roman Reference's and 40.4% of Cities Reference's speed and keeping the 4th site (New York Reference) at 17.7% of its speed, so the traffic measure is comparatively not bad, although the year on year measure stays put in red at -3.9%. Time on site is 42.4% less than RR (not great and worsening) and bounce is 45.7% higher (ouch bad metrics in Paris!!).
Apartments: Still 3rd with an amazing growth rate of 96%! This measure largely makes up for the previous when looking at the future.
Visitors VS Apartments ratio/month: bound to drop dramatically with the recent flow of apartments: 5.3, although it keeps stable for Instant apartments at 53 per apartment. A note here is due. 53 per Instant apartment is higher than Roman Reference therefore worth noticing. Instant apartments in Paris are getting booked out faster than Rome and they are likely what determines the dismal figures for time on site and bounce rate. Working on the Instant figure in Paris becomes the key to success.
Instant VS On Request: Down 50% with just 10.2%, ouch!
Conversion on Bookings: it's 0.87% on ecommerce, still better than industry average but almost just half of Roman Reference. Conversion on online bookings is 62.3%, which is good in general and improved lately despite the bad numbers above, which again comes to demonstrates that this site needs at least double the ratio of Instant Apartments to start delivering.
Bookings are just 7.5% of Roman Reference, so... going down. Still by far our second site in terms of booking requests.

New York Reference: A lot of things have improved in New York. Finally a .com for it, finally the USD as the main currency, finally our team on visit to the Big Apple to promote it for good, a lot more apartments!
Alexa: at 1,035,000 is up 132%.
Analytics: Shows it up one to our 4th position. 2.2% of Roman Reference so slowing a little on that measure. Time on site is 41% lower than Roman Reference, so improving consistently and getting to be slightly better even of Paris. Bounce is 13% worse than RR, so again a lot of improvement and a lot better than Paris Reference.
Apartments: It's now our third on apartments, up 5 position. With 149 apartments it grew 224% after our trip to New York.
Visitors VS Apartments: It's 2.2 which doesn't surprise with a sudden growth of 224% on apartments. The real measure to look at is towards Instant Booking apartments where it has 36.5 visitors per apartment which is rather good actually.
Instant Ratio is 6%, so 3X better than the last update, clearly the visit to NY brought reaped some interesting results.
Booking requests: Easily our third site in terms of booking requests with 1.6% of RR and 24.5% of PR. Not bad.
Conversion on booking requests is 7.7%.
Analysis: New York, in spite of recent legislation against vacation rentals, pulls a lot of weight and has a lot of potential.

A benevolent Generalplan Ost for Cities Reference

2011-07-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Two months on a lot has happened, especially East of Europe Warsaw, Krakow, Prague and Belgrade apartments are now listed, even Apartments in Venice are kind of East after all.) Sites listing vacation rentals (that is not blogs) are 17 therefore a whopping 70% up compared to our last post. Apartments are 1,333 compared to just 860 (55% growth). Most importantly the ratio Instant Vs On Request apartments has jumped to 46.2%! A productive couple of months indeed!

This is low season for monthly bookings (just over a 1000 they went down ca 30%) and it may be what helps apartments' growth since single owners get more spare time and an urge to fill the gaps

Let's give a look at the details

Cities Reference confirms its parent site status with 68,000 alexa (basically stable), disk usage is 4 times lower than Roman Reference still yet 6 times higher than the third ranking website (Paris). Analytics ranks it our second site in traffic twice more traffic than Paris Reference and stable at 33% of Roman Reference speed. Traffic is unsurprisingly down (7%) month on month (this is low season) but it's gaining speed on a yearly basis at 627% growth.
Time on Site (8:07) and Bounce Rate (36:38) are by far the best of all

Roman Reference
Alexa 66,000 is down 10% in two months (which comes with low season) and meeting with Cities Reference in the middle, this was bound to happen and likely Cities Reference should pass Roman Reference soon since it's become the general hub the previous used to be.
Disk Usage is still the highest with 25,000MB and 41,000MB of traffic
Analytics still the highest (66% more traffic than the 2nd best - 10 bookings everyone made by the second best). 14% growth in traffic year on year.
Apartments: With 667 apartments it has grown 13%(!!) compared to two months ago and almost 45% since May 2010. That seems to show a hell of an acceleration since its annualized rate, if it kept the pace is 156% almost 300% faster than last year.
Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 19.5. Considering only Instant it's 48.
Instant Vs On Request: Also the Instant ratio is improving sensibly with 41% compared to 38% only two months ago.
Conversion: on bookings is also improving to 83% of online bookings converted Vs 81+ two months ago
Booking requests: 887/Month, the slow down is pretty normal in low season, although 26% is double the slump in traffic.

Paris Reference
Alexa 127,000 is down 13.5% with low season and still firmly our third website.
Analytics: our third site on traffic still faring at 16% of Roman Reference's speed, time on site is 40% lower than Roman Reference and bounce 22% higher so there is improvement in all measures. Year on year traffic is also improving to just 3.8% slower than last year.
Apartments: It's still our third website on apartments although the competition seems to be gaining speed. With 175 apartments it grew 9.4% in two months, so half the speed of Roman Reference and nothing compared to the speed of the developing websites below.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 11.5. Considering only Instant it's 54.

Instant Vs On Request: ratio has improved a lot to 20%
Conversion on bookings has improved sensibly to 57.3%
Bookings are still just below 10% of RR's
Altogether a reasonably good picture compared to two months ago and taking the season into account.

Berlin Reference:

Alexa: 2,258,000 down 10% with the low season

Analytics: It's our 6th site on traffic (1.8% of RR, slowly gaining field) so it's up one position, time on site is 61.9% lower than Roman Reference (so improving), bounce is 33% higher (stable).

Apartments: It's our third site for apartments, so up one position. With 77 apartments it grew 140% in two months. Pretty stunning growth

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 3. Considering only Instant it's 5.1.

Instant ratio is 59.7%!! A stunning growth.

Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is 50% double last time, as for booking requests is 4th on our site 0.45% of RR this is also improving.

Very good jump ahead with Berlin

Barcelona Reference:

Alexa: with 3,558,000 is 153% down...

Analytics: It's our 7th site on traffic (2 down, 1.48% of RR, so going down), time on site is 56% lower than Roman Reference (improved) and bounce rate 20% higher (improved!). Year on year traffic is up 48.68%, that's a great figure!

Apartments: It's our 4th site with 71 apartments, so up two positions and up 163% compared to only two months ago. One of the biggest velocity we got.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 3.3. Considering only Instant it's 5.4.

Instant Vs On request ratio has come to a flattering 60%!

Booking Requests/Conversion ratio are too low to mention, the booking requests are plenty though, by far 3rd site.

Analysis: the fundamentals of Barcelona are now in order we only need to bring in some traffic.

Prague Reference

This is just gone live but it runs real fast. 2,284,000 on Alexa and 62 apartments, mostly Instant. We've got great expectations

Madrid Reference

Alexa: 3,709,000 badly down

Analytics: It's our 10th site for traffic (stable, just .66% of RR, so going down in measure) time on site is 62% lower than RR, bounce is 9% worse than RR. So here there is a big jump in improvement.

Apartments: It's our 6th site for apartments (up 1 position), with 48 apartments it grew 243% in two months, the fastest website growth we got.
Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 2.3. Considering only Instant it's 3.

Instant ratio is 73%!! Our best on older websites

Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is Nil.

Brussels Reference

This is just gone live but it runs pretty fast. 3,193,000 on Alexa and 47 apartments, all Instant.

New York Reference:

Alexa: at 2,397,000 is stable

Analytics: It's our 5th site on traffic (up 1! 2.66% of RR so improving quite a bit), time on site is 59.2% lower than Roman Reference, bounce rate is 20% higher. Kind of stable.

Apartments: It's our 8th site for apartments, down 5 positions. Hardly surprising since we're growing in the Euro area mainly. With 46 apartments it grew a meagre 5% in two months.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 10. Very good rate for a developing one.

Instant ratio is 2.1% and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is too low to mention, as for booking requests though it's our 5th site.

Analysis: New York has slowed down, this is hardly surprising since we are concentrating on Europe right now

London Reference

Alexa: with 1,879,000 this has been the only site growing in traffic during the slow down.

Analytics: It's our 8th site for traffic (stable, 1.3% of RR), time on site is 27.4% lower than RR, which is great! and bounce rate is 6.1% higher than RR, which is also great!

Apartments: it's our 8th site for apartments with 33 of them, down 3 positions due to the Euro focus of the past couple of months, up 14% in two months on inventory which is not bad.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 4.8.

Instant ratio is Nil and Booking Request/Conversion is 8%, as for booking requests it's 3rd on our site 2.8% of RR which is not bad

We expect London to grow dramatically after the summer once we'll have sorted out our currency problem and concentrated on the non Euro countries

Krakow Reference

This is just gone live but it runs pretty fast. 4,200,000 on Alexa and 32 apartments, all Instants.

Copenhagen Reference:
Alexa: 3,998,000 traffic went tumbling down since we stopped believing in its growth and investing in it.
Analytics: It's still our fifth site on traffic (down 1 position and 2.5% of RR), time on site it's 64% lower than Roman Reference, bounce rate is 17% higher. Traffic year on year is down 28%.
Apartments: It's our 11th site with 13 apartments, precious little growth since six months, 33% year on year.
Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: is still the best we got: 26! The problem are the deals on sale which just aren't great at this stage.
Instant is 0 and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is 25%, as for booking requests it's our 6th site

There are 6 more websites, 2 of which brand new, although they're either too slow or too new to mention. Next time!

Cities Reference - Brand new metrics!

2011-05-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

Almost six months since our last metrics update while a lot has changed. An example? Brand new website and apartment listing wizard with it. A new website: San Francisco Reference.

Let's see what has changed in the meanwhile:

Cities Reference: with the new website it has finally become a real Parent site. Everything from sign up/sign in to apartment search has to or can pass through it. Unsurprisingly its
Alexa rank has boomed to 69,000 an improvement of 525%!
Analytics It's our second site for traffic (32% of Roman Reference) and it's traffic is gone up 16% month on month and 420% year on year. Time on site and bounce measure better than all our other websites

Roman Reference:
Alexa 60,000 up 15% compared to January and 28.5% year on year
Analytics: By and large still our first site (68% more traffic than the second best, 9 bookings every one made to the second best); grew its traffic 11.5% year on year.
Apartments: with 590 apartments it has grown 12.5% compared to six months ago and almost 30% year on year which is a very interesting rate considering that this site is already mature
Instant: ratio Instant to On Request is 38%
Conversion: ratio Booking Request to Confirmed Booking is 81.5%
Booking Requests: 1,210/month

Paris Reference:
Alexa: 112,000 our third site, up 19% to six months ago and 53% year on year!
Analytics: It's our third site on traffic (16% of Roman Reference) since the new site was launched, time on site is 43% lower than our mature site (RomanReference) and bounce rate 27% higher. Actually down 14.5% year on year in traffic.
Apartments: It's by far our second website in terms of apartment with 160 apartments it grew 86% year on year but lost 10% to 6 months ago due to an unexpected bleeding.
Instant: ratio Instant to On Request is 13%
Conversion: is just 36.5%
Booking Requests are 10% of RR, by far our second site for that.

Copenhagen Reference:
Alexa: 1,447,000 our 5th site still, but is down 51% compared to six months ago and a staggering 75% worse year on year.
Analytics: It's still our fourth site on traffic (2.4% of RR) after site launch, time on site it's 66% lower than Roman Reference, bounce rate is 34.7% higher. Traffic year on year is down 9.5%.
Apartments: It's our 8th site with 12 apartments, no growth since six months, 33% year on year.
Instant and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio are too low to mention, as for booking requests it's our 7th site, 0.16% of RR.
Analysis: We stopped investing in CPH, there seems to be a trust problem with companies that aren't based in the same city or aren't very big/cool American companies. This is true for single owners and competitors there. We had started with quite a bit of enthusiasm with the idea that smaller cities could work better than big ones, and it was so, just at the very beginning though.

Barcelona Reference:
Alexa: 1,401,000 is our 4th site up 100% six months and 84% year on year, only 15% up compared to February 2010.
Analytics: It's our 5th site on traffic (2.35% of RR), time on site is 65% lower than Roman Reference and bounce rate 31.6% higher. Traffic is up 8% year on year.
Apartments: It's our 6th site with 27 apartments, up 42% compared to last year
Instant and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio are too low to mention, the booking requests are plenty though, by far 3rd site 1.3% of RR.
Analysis: we just need new apartments, most of the ones we have don't update nearly enough and keep changing their prices in obscure ways, but we do have traffic and booking requests.

New York Reference:
Alexa: 2,045,000 up 45% compared to six months ago, but 34% worse year on year
Analytics: It's our 6th site on traffic (1.8% of RR) after site launch, time on site is 49.5% lower than Roman Reference, bounce rate is 30% higher
Apartments: It's our 3rd site for apartments! With 44 apartments it grew 110% in six months and 390% in a year
Instant ratio is 2.3% and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is too low to mention, as for booking requests it's our 6th site 0.25% of RR.
Analysis: New York is growing fast, we have to invest here to get the appropriate amount of traffic

Berlin Reference:
Alexa: 2,032,000 up 13% compared to six months ago it has lost alexa traffic by 46% year on year
Analytics: It's our 7th site on traffic (1.62% of RR) after site launch, time on site is 65.7% lower than Roman Reference, bounce is 32% higher.
Apartments: It's our fourth site for apartments. With 32 apartments it grew 146% in six months and 220% year on year!
Instant ratio is 3.1% and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is 25%, as for booking requests is 5th on our site 0.33% of RR.

London Reference
Alexa: 2,040,000 up 11% on six months, down 48% year on year
Analytics: It's our 8th site for traffic (1.28% of RR), time on site is 49.7% lower than RR, bounce rate is 31.3% higher than RR.
Apartments: it's our 5th site for apartments with 29 of them, growth is stuck year on year
Instant ratio is Nil and Booking Request/Conversion is 20%, as for booking requests it's 4th on our site 0.4% of RR

Madrid Reference
Alexa: 1,944,000 it' up 15% six months and 36% a year
Analytics: It's our 10th site for traffic (0.7% of RR) time on site is 76% lower than RR, bounce is 88% worse than RR
Apartments: It's our 7th site for apartments, with 14 apartments it grew 55% year on year
Instant ratio is 42.8%!! and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is Nil, as for booking requests is one before last on our site 0.1% of RR

San Francisco Reference
Last but not least!
Alexa: 1,496,000 newborn runs fast
Analytics: It's our 9th site for traffic (0.8% of RR), time on site is 46% lower than RR, bounce rate is 30.7% higher than RR
Apartments: It's our last site on apartments with Miami, 8 apartments. Seems pretty good considering it just went online
Analysis: It's a really good start, already competing with the other websites

Working on a Cities Reference t-shirt concept

2011-05-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

Moon, Sun, Travel ;)

Cities Team goes to London and Paris

2011-03-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

Meet the Cities' team for free drinks and a chat on how it works.

Learn how to be a host, list for free and make some extra cash.

Paris April 4 to 8 (tbd)
London April 14 to 18 (tbd)

Contact us for the details and to set up an appointment we can't wait to see you!

Owners: we'll launch the new website next week!

2011-03-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here follow the instructions on how to merge your old accounts whenver you'll see the new website change:

1. Go to the site: http://www.citiesreference.com

2. In the top right header, click the "Sign Up" link.

3. Follow the instructions to sign up for an account. Facebook is fast and easy, but you can also create a Cities Reference account.

4. After your account is created, click on the "My Account" link in the top right header. (you will need to be signed in to see the link)

5. Click the "Merge Old Account" link on the left side.

6. Enter your old Roman Reference username and password. If you have forgotten this please contact us at info@citiesreference.com

That's it! You now have a new Cities Reference account and your apartments should be listed in the dashboard page!

2011 - let's compare a year on

2011-01-28T14:39:00.000-08:00

One year on since our first post blog with metrics on Cities Reference let's see what has changed:

Roman Reference Alexa of 68,750 is 4% down in ranking, as of January 2011 it has 525 apartments, a growth of 15% compared to last year
Paris Reference With Alexa of 133,700 has improved ranking by 2% compared to last year, and with 178 apartments it has grown its inventory by 131% (!)
Cities Reference With Alexa of 430,700 has improved ranking by 17% compared to last year. That's the parent site so we expect it to keep growing faster than average.
Copenhagen Reference Alexa 707,600 is down 49% in ranking compared to last year (!) and with 12 apartments has grown its inventory by 33%.
Madrid Reference With Alexa 1,163,600 has improved its ranking by 92% (!!) and with 12 apartments has grown its inventory by 33%.
London Reference with 2,268,000 goes down 115% in rankings and with 29 apartments strikes a 4% growth in inventory.
Barcelona Reference With Alexa of 2,798,000 has seen his rank worsen by 58%(!) and with 21 apartments it has improved its inventory by 11%.
Berlin Reference with Alexa 2,300,900 has lost 53% in ranking and with 13 apartments it has grown the inventory by 30%
Miami Reference with alexa 4,123,000 strikes a record down (240%) and with 8 apartments no growth in inventory
New York Reference with 3,500,000 has the biggest decline in rankings of all (340%) but with 21 apartments it has the biggest percentage of growth on inventory 162%.

Once again Analytics seems to have a slightly different, if realistically more precise, narrative. True Ranking and Visits are indeed two different metrics although we would tend to expect more alignment.

It reads a growth in visits of 16% on Roman Reference and ove 100% growth for Cities Reference, London and Miami, on Madrid it sees a record growth in visits by over 260%. Paris and Berlin instead decline in visitsby just over 20% and New York a staggering 95%. Barcelona barely equal to the previous year.

Last but not least there is one more metrics worth comparing, probably the most important, conversions. We have tracking only for Rome (+30%), Paris (+47%) and Copenaghen (-46%).

If we look at Paris we get some clues. Inventory grows 131% and as a consequence ranking goes up (looks like Alexa values especially returning customers) and, most importantly, conversions go up, even in spite of a decline in visits.

Inventory is clearly key!

A new look at the metrics

2010-11-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

Six months on Alexa is dropping all over the place while apartments are growing steadily:

Roman Reference: Alexa is down a further 11% to 83,233 while apartments (now 507) grew a handsome 10% (20% annualized.
Paris Reference: Alexa instead is improving handsomely 13% up to 150,000, on apartments the results are even more flattering. With 158 apartments the growth rate is 85% (170% annualized)!
Copenhagen Reference: is down 14% to 630,000. Apartments growth, with 13 now, is ok on a percentage basis, over 40%.
Cities Reference: is also going 10% downwards to 684,000.

The other cities don't have noteworthy differences

New Logos!

2010-11-09T00:54:00.001-08:00

New Logo for cities reference and it's city sites are ready!

Cities Reference teams up with Blizzard Marketing

2010-05-11T00:31:00.000-07:00

We're eager to announce that we just partnered with Blizzard Marketing in Colorado, the aim is boosting our online standing and reputation.

In the past few months growth has been lagging behind. There has been a general slow down in traffic (see details below) and overall apartments grew by just (5%). We need a boost.

Roman Reference alexa ranking slowed down from 66,000 to present 77,000 (down 16%) and compete from 360,000 to 535,00 (down 48%!). Also in terms of apartments growth raise has been slow from 455 to actual 461 (annualized growth 2.9%).
Paris Reference lost positions from 137,00 to 172,000 on Alexa (down 25%) and from 649,000 to 753,000 on compete (down 14%). Apartments grew into 86 (annualized growth 24%).
Copenhagen Reference went from 358,000 to 553,00 (down 35%) and from 878,000 to 847,000 (so it actually grew on Compete.com). Stable on apartments.
Cities Reference from 518,000 to 624,000 (down 20%) and 742,000 to 988,000 (down 33%).
New York Reference from 793,000 to 1,584,000 (down 99%!), while it grew 10% on compete from 936,000 to 847,000! Apartment growth has been astounding from 9 to 21 (270% annualized growth).
London Reference from 1,053,000 to 1,755,000 and from 742,000 to 1,073,000. Stable on apartments.
Berlin Reference from 1,090,000 to 1,494,000 on alexa, while it grew on compete from 1,197,000 to 1,070,000. Stable on apartments.
Barcelona Reference from 1,186,000 to 2,575,000 while it grew on Compete from 935,000 to 846,000. Stable on apartments.
Miami Reference from 1,223,000 to 3,041,000 and 927,000 to 1,074,000. Stable on apartments.
Madrid Reference from 2,235,000 to 2,654,000 and now ranked on compete at 1,073,000.

Get a 5% discount!

2010-05-04T06:05:00.000-07:00

See the details on Roman Reference Blog

technorati claim code TFDRNF75JNYP

2010-02-06T04:12:00.000-08:00

Technorati claim code

TFDRNF75JNYP

Nice new features for CitiesReference's Owners

2010-02-04T03:49:00.000-08:00

Starting this week owners are enabled to change/update your apartments' weekly prices and upload new apartment's pictures directly from your back office access. As usual you are very welcome to keep your calendar updated and write a personalized unedited blurb on your own apartment and its whereabouts. Questions are welcome, contact us or comment here.

More metrics for the cities reference network

2010-02-02T09:39:00.000-08:00

Alexa rankings are not nearly as precise as Google Analytics. Although I'm not quite ready to make public the analytics results I can say that broadly speaking the differences you see on the alexa rankings underestimate romanreference by a measure of half (romanreference has actually 450% more visitors than parisreference (not just 200%) and 1,300% more than copehagenreference (not just 540%)).
Broad differences do reflect analytics measures from there on though, with paris going some 250% faster than cph and copenhagen going ca 150% faster than citiesreference. Major difference otherwise is that Berlin and Barcelona are actually 100% bigger than the other younger websites.

Looking at the analytics each website visitor's size, broadly reflects its age online with the only exception that to get really close to the precise measure you should double the value. For example RomanReference is 250% older than ParisReference, but ca 500% more valuable in terms of visitors and 1,000% in terms of revenue, ParisReference is 150% older than CopenhagenReference but 290% more valuable etc.
Age does matter for websites' visitors and market value. For a reason.

Let's look at another public measure, listings
Roman Reference as of January 2010 has 455 apartments
Paris Reference 77 apartments
London Reference 28 apartments
Barcelona Reference 19 apartments
Berlin Reference 10 apartments
Copenhagen Reference 9 apartments
Madrid Reference 9 apartments
Miami Reference 8 apartments
New York Reference 8 apartments

Welcome to Cities Reference

2010-01-29T08:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to CitiesReference.com blog. In the past years we've kept a blogonly for Rome and one for Paris, with Rome, romanreference.com being our best and foremost website, picking up on all our best posts.
The idea is to slowly move all generalist and vacation market related posts here and leave strictly those related to Rome in romanreference blog, Paris in parisreference.com blog, etc.
Cities Reference blog should sort of encompass all the other cities and we though a good way to start with this would be to take a picture at the Alexa and Compete rankings of all our network's websites from most to least relevant/visited:

Roman Reference clearly comes first with alexa ranking of 66,000 and a 360,000 on compete
Paris Reference is second with 137,00 on Alexa and 649,000 on compete
Copenhagen Reference is third with 358,000 and 878,000
Cities Reference with 518,000 and 742,000
New York Reference with 793,000 and 936,000
London Reference with 1,053,000 and 742,000
Berlin Reference with 1,090,000 and 1,197,000
Barcelona Reference with 1,186,000 and 935,000
Miami Reference with 1,223,000 and 927,000
Madrid Reference with 2,235,000 and not yet ranked on compete

In other words, at the beginning of 2010 our Rome vacation rental website is still leading uncomparably faster than the other. We'll take other measures in the next posts and see how this is going to change now that we'll start implementing a more global strategy.