tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18904853584955025822024-03-13T21:11:58.795-07:00Cities ReferenceVacation Rental Apartments in capital cities worldwideAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-31367890235131130492014-11-28T06:46:00.003-08:002014-11-28T06:46:52.509-08:00Where did EYE land?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p2maUHkEIgM/VHiKl4J8-WI/AAAAAAAACJk/RGcDIbytJ00/s1600/mostraValeria%2B(3).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p2maUHkEIgM/VHiKl4J8-WI/AAAAAAAACJk/RGcDIbytJ00/s1600/mostraValeria%2B(3).jpg" height="176" width="320" /></a></div>
Thursday, Dec 4 - <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/118397839254574878517" target="_blank">+Cities Reference</a> <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-47105621379830104712014-10-09T03:33:00.001-07:002014-10-09T03:33:28.153-07:00New art opening at Cities Reference - Carmen Korak<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Property Owners, travelers, followers of Cities Reference are all invited at the opening ;)</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-78340534192696661472014-05-26T03:18:00.000-07:002014-05-26T03:18:20.182-07:00XIEY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Art opening at Cities Reference - Everyone is invited<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-26048460152154912602014-02-11T03:53:00.000-08:002014-02-11T03:53:08.410-08:00Opere tessute - Textiles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Save the date of the next art exhibition, thursday Feb 13, 2014 <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/118397839254574878517" target="_blank">+Cities Reference</a> via di monte giordano, 36, Rome.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-50386004273953219252013-12-17T02:56:00.002-08:002013-12-20T01:54:06.463-08:00Endangered Species - PPB or PAYG or Owner Oriented Model or whatever you want to call it<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SPYNpMrJ--M/UrAtpM0c06I/AAAAAAAABUA/YNuHsRtfV2A/s1600/inside_the_secretive_plan_to_gut_the_endangered_species_act.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SPYNpMrJ--M/UrAtpM0c06I/AAAAAAAABUA/YNuHsRtfV2A/s320/inside_the_secretive_plan_to_gut_the_endangered_species_act.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I take responsibility for much of the proliferation of acronyms, apologies, however what matters here is the message: marking up on the net to owner - that is having the traveler pay the fee at the moment of booking - is on its way out.<br />
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An unseemly thing to say right when the behemoths of Vacation Rental (+Homeaway and <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/118294736482650299130" target="_blank">+TripAdvisor</a> and <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/105592266233698205034" target="_blank">+FlipKey</a>) and even huge OTAs (+Booking and <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/109269473008097218752" target="_blank">+Expedia</a>) are embracing right this model. <a href="http://skift.com/2013/11/13/the-trouble-with-managing-managed-vacation-rental-listings/">Right now</a>.<br />
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But we need to make a distinction first. #VacationRental is not, professionally managed serviced apartments. The latter is by far closer to a hotel than a vacation rental.<br />
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I think the best attempt at <i>defining vacation rental</i> is reversing the definition, get in the travelers' boots resting just below that screen and answer the question: 'What are you looking for?'<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">local, unique, personal, slow, well in advance</span><br />
these answers should take you straight to the vacation rental website as opposed to these answers<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">global, standard, professional, efficient, last minute</span><br />
that should take you straight to OTAs or specialist websites.<br />
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I think mixing the two models can be fatal for venues that have grown with a distinct VR profile. Homeaway for example, why would anybody go to such a cumbersome website if not looking for a very personal deal. Talking of which: these guys are <a href="http://skift.com/2013/11/13/the-trouble-with-managing-managed-vacation-rental-listings/" target="_blank">aiming at their forehead right now</a>. Same goes for <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/115781326273917331624" target="_blank">+Airbnb</a>. And again OTAs I doubt can get away from these constraints. <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/105443419075154950489" target="_blank">+Booking.com</a> and <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/109269473008097218752" target="_blank">+Expedia</a>, they're also <a href="http://skift.com/2013/10/22/expedia-partners-with-homeaway-to-offer-vacation-rentals/" target="_blank">aiming at the forehead see here</a>, although Booking has it figured out, since they only deal with professionally serviced apartments, as opposed to Expedia taking owners' direct from <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/113022334104369620932" target="_blank">+HomeAway</a>, tantamount to business suicide, I think.<br />
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Somewhat of a special mention in this is deserved by <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/105592266233698205034" target="_blank">+FlipKey</a>, which I consider a maverick model in many ways, because it does miraculously manage to conjugate on the same site, property owners with professionally managed serviced apartments and villas as well as aggregator and some peculiar way of being a Meta. In that it defies gravity (at least attending the law of physics that I am establishing here ;) by using the <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/11/homeaway-vs-airbnb-whos-winning-race.html" target="_blank">Traveler Oriented Model</a> (or PPL, pay per listing) along with the Owner Oriented Model. Aggregate and yet be a Meta (impossible, quoting Brian Sharple from HA, for vacation rentals, since the 'Metas only makes sense when selling commodities' and VR adds a lot more to it). Will they be able to swing it? Maybe, because they have got the pull of Tripadvisor which somehow hasn't yet lost credibility as an unbiased venue despite going commercial. Or has it?<br />
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<i>But let me go straight back to the point</i>. Vacation Rentals, ie the previous set of answers above, the reason why the PPB is going to fail is really basic.<br />
You can look at it from two different perspectives<br />
- The private owners posting their ads. These guys just can't be bothered with analytics, tracking, let alone analytical thinking altogether, they're busy doing other stuff, just want to make a little cash and forget about it all. They don't care about control, they want to get it over with the marketing (pay the flat fee) and cash in every time they leave the keys in that mailbox. The result is that when they post on <i>Owner Friendly Websites, </i>Airbnb etc<i>,</i> they forget they paid a flat fee to <i>Travelers Friendly Websites, </i>Homeaway<i> etc,</i> and by posting the same base price on both models they automatically drive the price of the previous above and over the market value.<br />
- The traveler, everyday savvier, will sooner rather then later be aware of this and go for the cheaper option. No matter how social you can be, the market is just going to get at you, you're going to have to find a way to charge that owner or die. <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/115781326273917331624" target="_blank">+Airbnb</a> included.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-59073964478053464602013-12-16T02:42:00.000-08:002014-02-03T07:38:14.645-08:00AirBnb or the Truman Show syndrome - Disruptive Innovation or just Disruption in the Vacation Rental Market?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EDN-QDeodXg/Uq7YgG53WOI/AAAAAAAABTk/9QrvQFEw98o/s1600/gv4ff236e2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EDN-QDeodXg/Uq7YgG53WOI/AAAAAAAABTk/9QrvQFEw98o/s320/gv4ff236e2.jpg" height="170" width="320" /></a>If I were to try and give my best shot at an interpretation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_M._Christensen" target="_blank">Clayton Christensen</a> definition of '<i>Disruptive Innovation</i>' I would say you need one firm out of an incumbent oligopolistic industry leadership to start using a cheap technology that saves costs. These is then taken up and reused by a newbie company that can afford it because of its low cost and low need of know-how and reinterprets the business model altogether.<br />
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Now let's step back and go to the <a href="http://www.romanreference.com/" target="_blank">Vacation Rental market as it was, say, in 2008</a>. Homeaway was aggregating by brute force the almost entirety of the PLW (Pay per Listing Websites, which I otherwise call the <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/11/homeaway-vs-airbnb-whos-winning-race.html" target="_blank">Traveler Oriented model</a>) and the only competitor worth of that name was Flipkey/Tripadvisor, that had just started using a new business model, the PPL (Pay Per Lead), whereby Property Managers were offered the option to pay just for qualified leads received instead of paying a forfeit per listing a year.<br />
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The market already had a Owner Oriented Model (or PAYG) since at least a decade, <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/118397839254574878517" target="_blank">+Cities Reference</a> among other websites, the property owner can list for free and the traveler is charged, but that affected only a very small share of the market.<br />
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Come Airbnb in 2008, uses the PAYG business model, there is precious little to none innovation and shake up of the market looking at the fundamentals. Attending Christensen definition of disruptive innovation, we should have rather looked at Flipkey to see a shot in that direction.<br />
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Starting 2011 Airbnb is backed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz" target="_blank">Andreessen Horowitz</a> and from that moment on Airbnb model starts being trumpeted about as disruptive innovation for the whole, mind you, travel market.<br />
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While we don't believe so and we don't even believe that this is a winning model in the medium-long term for vacation rentals, we do believe there are elements of real innovation, targeted to... a wider audience and market.<br />
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The one and foremost intuition, albeit not necessarily a conscious one, is that the vacation rental market (the sharing economy in general) cannot be handled as a commodity market (unlike hotels or airlines) and requires human contact. Looking at it from the vacation rental, or even the Bed and Breakfast, perspective, this market had already been monopolized and was hard to tackle.<br />
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Thing is that Airbnb, or their backers, seem to be after something much bigger than the VR market or even the travel market. Through the use of massive technology know-how Airbnb created a walled garden where guards and fences have been perfectly hidden. A Truman Show where you are induced to believe that you are among friends, or friends of friends at worst, although every word you type is tracked and you get easily flagged on the basis of the wording you use or the peers that have been invited to report you. Offenders are quietly driven out of the studio with subtle moral suasion techniques. Nice, uh?<br />
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Well, yeah, it is actually. These guys are real cool and they know how to make you feel good even when you're kicked out of the place. It's not a real kick-out what you get, you're simply pushed down ranking and, upon time, invited to freeze the listing. I don't think it's too far fetched to call in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Liquid-Modernity-Zygmunt-Bauman/dp/0745624103" target="_blank">Liquid Modernity</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Bauman" target="_blank">Zygmunt Bauman</a> here, these guys are <i>modern</i>, big time, and seduction, not anymore coercion, is the way you have people do what you want them to do, or, he would add, buy what you are selling.<br />
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However, getting there is not as easy as it's been described by the medias. Yes, we all know about the nice professional pictures looking good and the sweet little hearts instead of the stars... Sure. But there is a lot more then three nice looking kids with wonderful ideas behind Airbnb, a Big Brother concerted effort looks closer to real.<br />
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Disruptive Innovation? No doubt. But not of the vacation rental market or the travel market or the sharing economy for that matter. Much more than that. Describing this kind of disruption takes a much better pen then mine. George Orwell? Probably. Are they going to dominate the vacation rental market? Com'on! At this stage these guys are only looking at the big money coming from the IPO and warming up for the next big thing. What is it? I wouldn't be here if I knew it, but it's going to be BIG. Wait and see ;)<br />
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Ah, and while you're at it, go post that ad in the most old fashioned of the oldest digital economy website out there: Homeaway.<br />
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One last note: how would you have reacted 15 years ago if I had told you that on 2014 we would be still paying at <i>Cost per (</i>very vaguely tracked<i>) eyeovers</i>! How comes we got the shiniest little website out there well over 5 years now, claiming to be the future happened, yet the <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/11/homeaway-vs-airbnb-whos-winning-race.html" target="_blank">majority of internet savvy users keep going for the cumbersome and old fashioned Homeaway</a>? Go figure.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-52520284124604851462013-12-15T02:33:00.003-08:002013-12-15T02:49:32.197-08:00Endangered Species - Instant Booking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HP8dZxStdWQ/Uq2JL28ICaI/AAAAAAAABTE/BfZmfYqr7YY/s1600/MV5BMjA5NjA4MjM5MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTI4NjUzMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR5,0,214,317_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HP8dZxStdWQ/Uq2JL28ICaI/AAAAAAAABTE/BfZmfYqr7YY/s1600/MV5BMjA5NjA4MjM5MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTI4NjUzMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR5,0,214,317_.jpg" /></a>At the turn of the new millennium, an Era of great enthusiasm, in the paradisiacal (then) world of Vacation Rental we thought that things could only get better. The thinking was: since there is no awareness about our business and we are backward in technology and processes, the further proficiency we reach with the above, the better for the whole of us. Think again.<br />
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<i>Awareness</i> brought the big lobbies and the big financial guys attention bringing about disruption with precious little innovation.<br />
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As for the <i>technology and processes</i> we may be facing a half truth here. Sure, it would be 'better' to streamline the booking process and turn it into a hotel like experience, but is it possible and, most importantly, is it really what the travelers are looking for?<br />
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<i>The provider's side: is it possible</i>? At <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/owners" target="_blank">Cities Reference</a> we've been doing the Instant Bookings for over a decade now. On a mixed structure, upon great reward pressure, ~25% of owners would go for the Instant. The catch is, that the property owners being mostly unprofessional, if you don't send them a couple of bookings a month they'll quickly lose pace and stop updating the calendar. If you implement penalties at the first mistake you lose ~70% of them thereafter, if you implement just incentives on the opt-in you'll be in for a lot of cancelations. Still bullish about the Instant?<br />
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<i>The travelers' side: is it really what they are looking for</i>? Not sure. If they want professionalism and streamlined process they'll just use OTAs on a flight&hotel combo. Vacation Rentals are often a choice of experience where unique, slow, local, personal relationship may weight more than words like quick, professional, standard.<br />
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<i>What with the fact that OTAs are debuting into the vacation rentals</i>? I think this is working with Booking.com only because so fare they have only taken up professionally managed serviced apartments, the moment they'll try to catch and digest also the huge mass of the unprofessional owners the system will go bust.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-30005152108346925732013-12-14T04:06:00.003-08:002013-12-14T12:00:29.792-08:00Cities Reference to include VAT into its commission starting today - Is PAYG model an endangered species?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K1gZHB00zkE/UqxJHqOBMdI/AAAAAAAABSg/-Ia5m0Nrfw4/s1600/Canadian20Polar20Bears20Stranded20Ice20Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K1gZHB00zkE/UqxJHqOBMdI/AAAAAAAABSg/-Ia5m0Nrfw4/s320/Canadian20Polar20Bears20Stranded20Ice20Photo.jpg" width="320" /></a>Continuing the race downward of the spread between the net rent to the property owner/manager and the grand-total paid by the traveler, Cities Reference is to include VAT into <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2012/01/cities-references-commissions.html" target="_blank">its commission rates</a> starting today. This will result in a further 22% decrease of its net commission continuing the dramatic drop that has seen the commission fall ~70% in the past 10 years, count in <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2012/02/cities-references-discounted.html" target="_blank">promotions and discounts</a> that nowadays more often than not kick in and you get a razor thin margin.<br />
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This is broadly good news for travelers and property owners/managers alike, at least until the system stays afloat. As argued in a previous post here about the <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/11/homeaway-vs-airbnb-whos-winning-race.html" target="_blank">winning business model in the vacation rental market</a> which is likely to take-all in the medium/long term, market pressure on the small/medium sized vacation rental portals featuring an '<i>Owner Friendly</i>' model (or PAYG, or PPB) is applied by its own richer peers, like Airbnb, that are backed by venture until IPO and need more <i>aura</i> than results in the bottom line to keep blowing in the bubble.<br />
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It is not reasonable to think they are not aware that this is going to backfire in the medium term after they go public and they will have to bring home results, therefore we can infer they are after a short term strategy at the moment to offer a handsome exit to the ventures that have invested in them money and, most importantly, know-how.<br />
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The outcome is somewhat ironical, in that, at least attending our analysis, the winning model in the vacation rental market will likely be the oldest one. Since the beginning of the new millennium we've tended to believe that whatever had to do with internet advertising would have eventually embraced a very analytical approach of pay per results. In the age of virtually full tracking of customers funneling the furthest away you can get, and the closest to old style advertising, is the pay per listing model (PLW) whereby you pay a yearly forfeit in advance with no control on your listing's exposure, forget conversions to leads and/or bookings.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-3498614117854584782013-12-13T01:18:00.003-08:002013-12-23T12:16:06.529-08:00Links and useful info of Cities Reference founder's presentation @VRMA European conference in Bruges (BE)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Just back from an intense two days of seminars and conferences @VRMA European seminar. VRMA is importing to Europe the educational and networking culture it has been selling with great success in the US for over 20years now, something that was and is key to the success of the Vacation Rental Market as a whole. Here is a look at the who's who on one of the vacation rental's leading online magazines, VRMintel.com<br />
<a href="http://www.vrmintel.com/whos-who-at-2013-vrma-eurpoean-conference/">http://www.vrmintel.com/whos-who-at-2013-vrma-eurpoean-conference/</a><br />
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As announced day before yesterday during Mr. Parasporo's presentation here follow a list of relevant links to the subject discussed:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">1- The Crisis: endogenic or exogenic @Vacation-Rental-Market?</span><br />
<a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/09/the-crisis-and-us-whats-within-and.html">http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/09/the-crisis-and-us-whats-within-and.html</a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">2- The business models @Vacation-Rental now, which is winning?</span><br />
<a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/11/homeaway-vs-airbnb-whos-winning-race.html">http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/11/homeaway-vs-airbnb-whos-winning-race.html</a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">3-@Property-Managers: the ponderability of prices:</span><br />
<a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/10/the-ponderability-of-prices.html">http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/10/the-ponderability-of-prices.html</a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">4- Legal battle @Vacation-Rental-Market:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Legal battle against VR</span><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-hotel-industry-lobbyists-want-a-global-crackdown-on-airbnb-2013-5" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.businessinsider.com/why-hotel-industry-lobbyists-want-a-global-crackdown-on-airbnb-2013-5</a><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article71138.html" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article71138.html</a><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3018755/fast-feed/airbnb-wins-legal-victory-in-nyc" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.fastcompany.com/3018755/fast-feed/airbnb-wins-legal-victory-in-nyc </a><br />
5-@Channel-Manager<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> solution(?):</span><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://skift.com/2013/11/13/the-trouble-with-managing-managed-vacation-rental-listings/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://skift.com/2013/11/13/the-trouble-with-managing-managed-vacation-rental-listings/ </a> <br />
6-@OTAs<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> entering the Vacation Rental market</span><br />
<a href="http://skift.com/2013/12/07/booking-com-no-longer-toying-with-vacation-rentals-reaches-historic-milestone/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;">http://skift.com/2013/12/07/booking-com-no-longer-toying-with-vacation-rentals-reaches-historic-milestone/</span></a><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://skift.com/2013/10/22/expedia-partners-with-homeaway-to-offer-vacation-rentals/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://skift.com/2013/10/22/expedia-partners-with-homeaway-to-offer-vacation-rentals/</a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">7- Origination Vs Destination marketing strategy</span><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://skift.com/2013/11/04/expedias-uphill-climb-must-meet-booking-coms-structural-advantages/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://skift.com/2013/11/04/expedias-uphill-climb-must-meet-booking-coms-structural-advantages/</a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">8- Investments @VR-Market since 2011</span><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://www.vrmintel.com/over-530-million-invested-in-vacation-rental-startups-since-2011/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.vrmintel.com/over-530-million-invested-in-vacation-rental-startups-since-2011/</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">! </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">9- Is google turning to @be-Evil?</span><br />
<a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" href="http://www.vrmintel.com/googles-organic-keywords-not-provided-10-easy-ways-for-vacation-rental-managers-to-adapt/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.218s; background-color: white; color: #427fed; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.vrmintel.com/googles-organic-keywords-not-provided-10-easy-ways-for-vacation-rental-managers-to-adapt/</a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">10- Engagement Vs conversions does it always work?</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><a href="https://blog.compete.com/2013/12/05/engagement-case-study/" target="_blank">https://blog.compete.com/2013/<wbr></wbr>12/05/engagement-case-study/</a></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-36152789930782987812013-11-26T01:56:00.000-08:002014-05-22T07:51:35.535-07:00If HomeAway is winning the vacation rental market are Airbnb & C. on their slow way out?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There are three main competing models in the vacation rental market today:<br />
<b>the Traveler Oriented Model (PLW see <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/10/the-ponderability-of-prices.html" target="_blank">previous blog post</a> for details on this acronym)</b>: The Property Owner (PO) pays for listing, the Traveler pays just the net price with no commissions added.<br />
<b>the Owner Oriented Model (PAYG)</b>: The Property Owner lists for free and only pays a small commission or none when she gets a booking, the Traveler is charged 10 to 30% commission at the moment of booking.<br />
the <b>Owner+Traveler Oriented Model</b> (or PayPerLead <b>PPL</b>): Neither the PO, nor the Traveler are charged all costs falling on the PM listing in bulk<br />
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The online vacation rental world has been quietly dominated by the PLW model ever since it's origin for well over a decade. It's not like the PAYG model did not exist, on the contrary, it was live and well since its origins when some locally based Property Management Companies (PMs) with a live website were using something similar to what is the PAYG model today. Most PMs were coming from the Real Estate Agents experience (if they weren't one themselves) and tended to charge both PO and Traveler. Come the mid 90's though, some PMs started charging only or mostly the traveler a commission which then also included fees on services such as cleaning/check-in etc (ie <a href="http://www.romanreference.com/en/" target="_blank">Roman Reference</a> since 1997). Within the first decade of the new millennium a few <i>pure</i> websites using the PAYG model started <i>pure</i> online operations, one of these, of course, is <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/" target="_blank">Cities Reference</a> since 2006. Enough of self quotations, just to hint that we know where we are coming from and what we're talking about here. Nevertheless, during the first decade of the new millennium online services were still broadly intended as owners' direct services with PLW models (today known under the oligopolistic brands of <a href="http://www.homeaway.com/" target="_blank">Homeaway</a> (HA) and <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/" target="_blank">Tripadvisor</a>/<a href="http://www.flipkey.com/" target="_blank">Flipkey</a> (TA/FK) as opposed to local PMs using various forms of PAYG models which were less competitive in cost to travelers, but more competitive in service. The vacation rental market couldn't be called mature, but it had reached some sort of a balance.<br />
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Disruption came in 2008 when FK (now a Tripadvisor company) started a then totally new business model, the PayPerLead (PPL above), targeted straight to PMs that couldn't afford or wouldn't go for PLW listing. It was quite an innovation for the market and the first attempt to aggregate a very chaotic market offering a brand new channel for PMs where they could compete with their own brand.<br />
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At the turn of the second decade of the second millennium <a href="http://www.airbnb.com/" target="_blank">Airbnb</a> (Air) got its venture's hundreds of millions (July 2011) and the PAYG model as a whole got a -very conservative since it's forgetting Wimdu and its peers altogether- <a href="http://www.vrmintel.com/over-530-million-invested-in-vacation-rental-startups-since-2011/#!" target="_blank">cumulated 530$ millions</a> up to 2013 and took the lead... that is, on the press and consequently on the general perception. Was that real disruption? Think again.<br />
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<b>Number of properties</b>: we all know how numbers can be delusional, if that is true in general, more so in vacation rentals. On our own experience the majority of properties have 1euro value per year against a top 10% of properties that are worth 500euro a year, still, this is a measure that must be taken into consideration. <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/annual/" target="_blank">Airbnb declares 300,000 properties</a> (other sources say 500,000, notably Ken Yeung in an <a href="http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/09/17/with-8-5m-guests-airbnb-seeks-to-build-a-more-uniform-customer-experience-with-its-hospitality-lab/" target="_blank">article on thenextweb</a> that doesn't reveal its sources), against <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/annual/" target="_blank">Homeaway's 773,000</a> and <a href="http://www.flipkey.com/" target="_blank">Flipkey's 240,000</a>.<br />
Ever more interesting measure since we are calling Homeaway model <i>Traveler Oriented</i>! On the other hand these figures can't be taken without doubts, for example, the meta title of Homeaway.com reads '<span style="background-color: white; color: #404053; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">65,000 + vacation rentals worldwide.' </span>Interesting... true they own tens of different websites and VRBO reads '<span style="background-color: white; color: #404053; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">over 75,000 listings', </span>but it's a safe guess that many properties overlap, that numbers declared will likely be floated etc. Anyway it is already something to know that Homeaway claims to have more properties than Airbnb and no-one, that I know of, has yet blowed the whistle. HA takes 1.<br />
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<b>Number of destinations</b>: 171 countries in Homeaway against 192 countries and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbnb" target="_blank">33,000 destinations in Airbnb</a> and <a href="http://www.flipkey.com/pages/about_us/" target="_blank">11,000 destinations on FK</a>. HA declines to share the number of destinations it covers, but we can play the same game of above and consider that Airbnb declares more destinations and no-one seems to be complaining about it, so far. 1 all.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h4M-4jB0Grs/UoyM-DLV5oI/AAAAAAAABP4/w0hjlXlaCJI/s1600/Airgraph.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h4M-4jB0Grs/UoyM-DLV5oI/AAAAAAAABP4/w0hjlXlaCJI/s320/Airgraph.png" height="141" width="320" /></a>Air</div>
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<b>Traffic</b>: this is also an interesting exercise and we can use Alexa as a metric. Starting with the .com Air is ahead being 1,923 against 2,901 of HA (but it must be stressed that VRBO, a HA property, ranks 2,435, so better than its owner's company .com, still somewhat short of AIR, but that gives the general measure of how there cannot be competition among the two), FK is down at a mere 5,996, not so if you consider its mother company TA at 204 (!) although we don't think that could count here; co.uk HA is ahead being 12,129 against 17,866 (and it ownes Ownersdirect.co.uk wich is 16,537); .fr Air is 15,122 while HA with Abritel is 12,122 and with Homelidays is 13,012 so HA is ahead; .de Air is 18,609 HA with Fewo-Direct is 9,308, so HA ahead again; .it Air 18,165 and HA 41,698 so this time HA is big time in delay, AIR has a flair in Italy for some reasons; .es Air 16,809 against 53,364, so Air is leading again, but HA owns Toprural which ranks 24,114, so the spread is lower than you think.<br />
Leaving aside FK which can't really compete here and looking deeper into the numbers we notice a number of interesting things: 1. that growth rate in traffic for HA is higher than for Air 2. that the search share of traffic is higher on HA(18.5%) then on Air (11.7%), does it spell for better SEO? 3. that traffic, although mainly US in both websites, is then distributed on travel buyer's countries (Spain, Italy, Canada, France - 16% of client base source <i>Cities Reference</i>) in HA as opposed to AIR that has secondary traffic distributed in more typically SEO labor countries (India, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand short of 2% of client base source <i>Cities Reference</i>) 4. On the other hand Air engages its users a lot more judging by bounce rate and pages per user, but this <a href="https://blog.compete.com/2013/12/05/engagement-case-study/" target="_blank">doesn't spell for higher conversions attending Compete.com</a>. HA takes the lead again.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JEa92kqZFz0/UoyNJ2f-V6I/AAAAAAAABQA/YZRi0Abto2E/s1600/HAgraph.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JEa92kqZFz0/UoyNJ2f-V6I/AAAAAAAABQA/YZRi0Abto2E/s320/HAgraph.png" height="141" width="320" /></a>HA</div>
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<b>The Stock</b>: If we give a look at what the financial guys are saying about this I'd like to take into consideration what Estimize says since starting last June they're publicly attempting to '<i>estimize</i>' private companies. <a href="http://www.leighdrogen.com/airbnb-set-to-crush-home-away-eat-marriotts-lunch-and-come-public-at-10b-valuation/" target="_blank">Here is what Estimize CEO/co-founder Mr. Drogen thinks</a> about the matter we're discussing on this post. He runs an estimate on the base of what Airbnb states on its infographics and concludes that Airbnb is set to outrun HA. Is he right? I'd be very cautious about this, do read at the bottom of the above post how user <span style="color: #777777; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 17px;">AirBnB Whistleblower </span>de-codifies numbers claimed on the infographic, de-codifying Airbnb numbers you'll find yourself listening to a different story from the one you're watching... HA 3, AIR 1. FK doesn't qualify here.<br />
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<b>Mistifications</b>: There seem to be little doubt on the mystifications of airbnb infographics as I was hinting above, this said on the contrary HA measures are relatively more reliable than Air's, there is more ahead on this. This is not because HA has better ethics, ethics has never been on HA menu, it's just because AIR has managed to still keep away from going public and avoid the scrutiny that follows IPOs. If you look carefully at the info-graphics below there is more than meets the eye. One example? <span style="color: #42474a; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">"Guests nights booked" </span>is not to be confused with actual nights booked, uh? HA 4, AIR 1.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o55qvJOU1bk/UoyT5-K7PGI/AAAAAAAABQQ/jkNiHPf4qt0/s1600/airbnbinfographic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o55qvJOU1bk/UoyT5-K7PGI/AAAAAAAABQQ/jkNiHPf4qt0/s320/airbnbinfographic.png" height="196" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Our Test</b>: And... we have been testing the two behemoths this Fall! More precisely we posted 3 test properties: 1 in Rome, 1 in Paris and 1 villa in Sicily. The <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/paris/apartment/110PAR" target="_blank">Paris apartment</a> has 36% more visits on Airbnb than HA, but, mind you, no leads whatsoever, while TA has a 30% conversion into leads. FK here wins, it has way more traffic than both the above (~200%) with a 4% of conversion into leads and 3 real bookings made! The <a href="http://www.romanreference.com/en/rome/apartment/931" target="_blank">Rome apartment</a> has 9% more visits on Airbnb, but, mind you, again no leads, while TA has an 18% conversion of lookers into leads, FK is a lot weaker than both here with about half traffic and 1% conversions and no bookings. The <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/noto/apartment/100VENDICARI" target="_blank">Sicily Villa</a> has 18% more visits on AIR with ~1% of lookers converted into leads while HA has a 4% conversion. FK is extremely low on traffic with a ~1% conversion.<br />
Pay attention, no bookings for the posted properties in the past 90 days neither from HA nor from AIR, but a bunch of leads from HA turned into other conversions in the rest of our inventory while nothing like that is possible in the closed system of Airbnb! FK converted only on the Paris apartment, but it has to be stressed that it wasn't new to the site and had reviews, while the new ones competing shoulder to shoulder didn't really qualify. Still it does work impressively when you get reviews. Look at this factor from the PMs perspective and... more on this ahead.<br />
What do we see here? We see that numbers showed by Airbnb are, once again, dubious ~0% conversions on leads (mind you, it's <i>Questions</i> of travelers, not <i>Bookings,</i> what we're calling conversions here) on almost 1,000 visits compared to the over 20% conversions on the same properties on HA. Really? HA 5, AIR 1, FK1<br />
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<b>How are they behaving</b>? In everyday life it's the most common thing, to look at how a person is behaving and draw conclusions. If that still stand some chances of getting it right, does that rule still stand if there are big interests and organizations involved? Mmmm, not really. Looking at it from the outside we see HomeAway struggling. Every day there is a new, almost incomprehensible and very steep fee on their subscriptions page, now HA is even shooting on its own foot by opening to the PAYG model, see <a href="http://skift.com/2013/11/07/homeaway-must-determine-how-to-prevent-war-between-its-customers/" target="_blank">more details on Skift</a>, while AirBnb is booming and busting on all medias and creating high expectations. We suspect this may all be a facade. HA seems to be struggling just because it's been a public company for years now and has to keep growing inventory and turn-over to make investors happy, while AirBnb shows hubris just because there are interest behind them ever since they got their venture money that want to turn them into the next internet bubble IPO and will possibly abandon it soon after. There is ground here to doubt that AIR will keep shining for long after going public. FK has been also embracing revenue share. So, this is still a score to AIR though: 5 to 2.<br />
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<b>Our Poll or the users' perception</b>: We've been running a poll with our users, travelers, POs and PMs. General perception of <i>travelers</i> is all for AIR, they vote for their graphics (which has been defined as shiny and cool as opposed to boring and depressing for HA), for their social appeal and easiness of use. Most also post their own apartments. But they list as travelers, not professionals, they don't update the calendars, reply only if the request falls in the right dates, or if the user looks cool, they (ouch!) wouldn't even consider listing with <i>Cities Reference</i> when asked (not to our face!), never mind HA that is even asking for money. POs and PMs are divided, we've been surprised finding out that almost 30% of PMs also uses AIR and declares itself satisfied by it. That's definitely a go for AIR again 5 to 3.<br />
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We have a winner of our little game: HomeAway! Flipkey comes a good second, AIR from our perspective looks in quagmires.<br />
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Really, why do we think that, against all odds, taking the press online and offline (see <i>estimize</i> above), against the general perception, see our poll, against what we thought ourselves just until a couple of years ago, the HomeAway model will win the battle over the vacation rental world dominance? Let's look at it from the perspective of those that actually use these tools, once the shine about the 'new' tool (is it really <i>new</i>? I will soon post a '<i>Disruptive Innovation or... just Disruptive</i>' article about the elephant in the room of vacation rental) will fade away, they will have to cope with facts, and here is how we see the facts from the different perspectives.<br />
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<b>The Traveler perspective</b>: young travelers are charmed by the social feel, the easiness of use, the bright colors of AIR/PAYG websites and claim not to even consider PLW websites. Seasoned travelers on the contrary are matter of fact and realize that PLW and PPL websites won't charge commissions and eventually will give them better deals. Phocuswright claims that vacation rentals are mainly used by families and groups that are more price sensitive, the average 15% overcharge of PAYG websites, once the hipe is over, will make a difference.<br />
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<b>The Property Owner perspective</b>: It is true that property owners don't like to pay in advance and in the case of Homeaway prices are getting steeper and ever more complicated by the day, which doesn't help. Still, as we've seen on our testing, PAYG websites will hardly give you a full occupancy unless the apartment you're listing is sold at a net price below its market value. It is <i>important</i> to stress that all the property owners we have interviewed once they pay the flat annual fee to PLW websites just forget about that charge and when they list on PAYG websites they will not write it off the base price creating an extra charge that will be pushed on to the traveler buying on PAYG websites. Get a better grasp on how this maybe a problem for PAYG websites on our previous post '<a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/10/the-ponderability-of-prices.html" target="_blank">The ponderability of Prices</a>'<br />
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<b>The Property Manager perspective</b>: Most PM marketing departments are understaffed. PMs are historically more focused on operational and sales (meaning acquisitions of new properties). Closed systems on PAYGs websites like Airbnb force them to list each single property thereby using a lot of their precious time for precious little conversions. Until Homeaway will close a blind eye on PMs listings multiple properties at a discount as private owners (that are ranked better on most PLW websites), the possibility of moving leads across their inventory will push more and more PMs towards PLWs as opposed to PAYGs which use closed systems that are at odds with the way most PMs conduct their businesses. Finally, PPL is a fantastic deal for PMs that can afford the little technology required to pass the properties to PPL websites in mass.<br />
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I would like to close this with a note on what my really be THE disruptive innovation taking more and more shape now in the vacation rental market. Channel managers, like <a href="http://rentalsunited.com/" target="_blank">Rentals United</a> and <a href="http://kigo.net/" target="_blank">Kigo</a>, they are a further tool in the hands of PMs to pool together and share properties and bookings. We'll dedicate a post to it soon, but this may really be the future of the market. Keep posted ;)<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-19148109296354987812013-10-29T10:12:00.002-07:002013-10-29T10:12:34.052-07:00Art Openings at Cities Reference Rome office<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
First of a series of art openings we've decided to launch at our office in Palazzo Taverna, Via di Monte Giordano, 36 - Rome.<br />
A good occasion to get to know each other in front of a drink and contemporary art.<br />
Veneri in Astronave curated by Elena del Drago, everybody is invited.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-69608808002764784982013-10-15T03:18:00.000-07:002013-11-25T03:04:07.337-08:00The Ponderability of Prices<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qR5mDWsn7dU/Ulz1_vnassI/AAAAAAAABKg/AOb_WDAV0Iw/s1600/ponder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qR5mDWsn7dU/Ulz1_vnassI/AAAAAAAABKg/AOb_WDAV0Iw/s320/ponder.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Let's brain storm here on the decision making behind the rental fee I mark on different websites. It just cannot be one-size-fit-all, because there are important differences to take into account between <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/owners" target="_blank">Cities Reference</a> and PLW/PAYG(see below) websites.<br />
<br />
I want to take into consideration the following facts about CR website and then compare:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>1- The price I mark on Cities Reference is net in my pocket (the only possible exception is the <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2012/09/verified-apartment-and-priority-owners.html" target="_blank">Priority Owner</a> discount).</li>
<li>2- Cities Reference does not ask for an advance payment to owners (unless your very self asks for a <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/09/flat-annual-listing-fee-now-available.html" target="_blank">flat annual fee</a>), <i>Per Listing Websites</i> (PLW) do.</li>
<li>3- Cities Reference does not take off percentages of my rental fee, typically 3% are levied from your fee at the moment of payment, but it can be more, by <i>Pay As You Go Websites (PAYG)</i>.</li>
<li>4- Cities Reference deals with the traveler and contacts me only when the traveler has paid the advance, no direct bargaining with the traveler, contracts via fax machine and the like.</li>
<li>5- Cities Reference assists the traveler until my door steps and after.</li>
<li>6- Cities Reference pays me any money it has received from the traveler in case of cancelation.</li>
<li>7- Typically CR's clients pay directly to me on arrival, therefore avoiding the commissions and hassles of bank or electronic payments, so my booking is confirmed but I don't have to deal with bank wires and other methods of payment</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
Okay, that means that when I'm sitting down to mark my net weekly fee on Cities Reference, say 1,000 a week, I consider<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>-<i>point 2</i>, that I was about to set the same net price I had for a listing site that has me pay, say, 500 euro in advance and on average books 5 week in a year. That means I should take off 100 before I list on CR.</li>
<li>-<i>point 3</i>, that I typically list with websites that take 3% off my rental fee when they pay me. That means I should take off 30 before I list on CR.</li>
<li>-<i>point 4&5</i>, <i><b>how much is an hour of my work worth?</b></i> Did I ever consider how many hours of work it takes me to answer emails and how many times direct bargaining takes me to discounts I had not planned for? Fair enough, say it has taken me 5 hours of work to reap those 5 bookings a year, say I value my time 100 an hour, it's a 500 value on a 5,000 turn over, 900% of ROI is nice, but isn't it better if I don't even have to work for it!!? So, that means I could put 100 more towards CR net and still be even, say 100 sounds too optimistic... That means I should take off another 50 before I list on CR.</li>
<li>-<i>point 6</i>, typically if you don't take a '<i>flexible cancelation fee</i>' on PAYG websites I get ranked to the last pages, while on PLW websites the down payment is all up to you and that is most times cumbersome. We deal with the advance and pay it to you in case of vacancy on cancelation. Both the other options have a cost. Did I get unpaid cancelations that resulted in vacancy last year? Did I do the math of what that costed to me? Say 1 week, with CR I would have gotten about 200 and instead I got nothing. Say I rent 20 weeks a year on average, that makes 10euro less on the average weekly. That means I should take off another 10 before I list on CR.</li>
<li>-<i>point 7</i>, Paypal takes almost 4% of your payment, credit cards 2 to 5%, banks take fees, we can average that to 2%. That means I should take off another 20 before I list on CR.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Let's call the numbers:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>When I list my apartment at </b></div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>1,000 on PLW I will list at</b></li>
<li><b>940 on PAYG and at</b></li>
<li><b>820 on Cities Reference</b></li>
</ul>
<div>
That's fair! Contact us if you have questions or if you just want to talk about it you could comment right here ;)</div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-23069928018507615792013-09-24T03:30:00.000-07:002013-09-25T01:16:25.662-07:00Flat Annual Listing fee now available also at Cities Reference<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
You've asked and we've listened.<br />
<br />
Starting today you can list with us as <i>On Request</i> paying an upfront fee of 144 euro + VAT for 12 months (12 euro per month) and our commission charged to the traveler per booking will go down from 16% to just 3%, to cover just the basic reservation costs.<br />
<br />
<br />
The only change for you here is that<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-unCpNHWtbr0/UkFomBL_NTI/AAAAAAAABIM/jUev_Y777nk/s1600/Picture+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-unCpNHWtbr0/UkFomBL_NTI/AAAAAAAABIM/jUev_Y777nk/s320/Picture+2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
we will follow the clients just until the acceptance of the terms and then ask them to get in direct contact with you for the advance payment and anything else concerning the apartment and the arrival (otherwise we normally we take care of these services).<br />
<br />
On the plus side your price will become much more competitive and after 12 months you can decide whether it pays off or if you'd rather go back to the standard method.<br />
<br />
Questions? <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/contact" target="_blank">Contact us</a>.<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-22787386558809253582013-09-10T02:50:00.000-07:002013-12-03T01:45:47.459-08:00The Crisis and us: What's within and what's without the current crisis in the Vacation Rental Market -or the uncomfortable position of the Little Ones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over the course of the past 12 months I've been polling just above 200 among Property Managers and Channels about the current crisis in international conferences and gatherings. I've gotten started to the direction of some conclusions, although this is bound to remain food for thought rather than anything written in stone.<br />
<br />
First of all an assumption though; all but a precious few (1.9%) have indeed confirmed a slowdown averaging just about -20% over the past 12 months (when the question was asked), especially among Property Managers it's been claimed the slowdown has been ongoing starting 2008.<br />
<br />
Now a look at who is the '<i>ALL</i>' that's been interviewed.<br />
<br />
<b>Property Managers</b> (PM): I<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">ndividuals or companies responsible for the day-to-day functioning of tens of pieces of real estate, in charge of advertising, c</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">ollecting and depositing rent and communicating regularly with the property owner on the status of the property.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>Direct Channels</b> (DC): B</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">usinesses through which the property passes until it reaches the end consumer. Not to be confused with Indirect Channels, better know in our market as Channel Managers.</span><br />
<i style="color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Please note that I've been strictly interviewing small to medium companies, which I consider to be the backbone of what used to be the Vacation Rental Market before the appearance of big investments in our field. More of that later.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dCKpbUXpDbc/Ui7KCOdtsyI/AAAAAAAABGE/RdDaR3IYiS0/s1600/crisi:viaggio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dCKpbUXpDbc/Ui7KCOdtsyI/AAAAAAAABGE/RdDaR3IYiS0/s320/crisi:viaggio.jpg" width="226" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>The Crisis Without</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">While talking to me many of the above mentioned just shuddered and said there was <i>Crisis</i> in the World and that explained about everything. Or did it?</span><br />
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I've been taking a look at the European Commission's</span><br />
<h1 id="title" style="background-color: white; color: #29a2eb; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 1.5em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; min-height: 23px; padding: 2px 0px 5px; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=6473&lang=en" target="_blank">Attitudes of Europeans Towards Tourism - Flash Eurobarometer Report (March 2013)</a></h1>
<div>
and other papers that establish that the number of leisure trips hasn't decreased in Europe's overall figures throughout the crisis, more details <a href="http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/4-28062012-AP/EN/4-28062012-AP-EN.PDF" target="_blank">here</a>. However it must be stressed that 36% of travelers travel as free guest ('visiting family, friends or relatives' see: <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_370_en.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>) and that package travel (33%) is growing faster than organizing travel plans separately (necessary for vacation rental online). On the other hand 46% claim information gathered through internet websites was most important when making decisions about travel plans (!) and 53% claim to have used the internet to arrange their travel plans. </div>
<div>
This is not meant to say that the crisis hasn't influenced travel trends at all, since the poll shows 41% of people interviewed declared it did, nevertheless I argue that the world crisis is not <i>key</i> to explain the small/medium business' crisis in the vacation rental market.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The Crisis Against</b></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XFh5c-qwqpQ/Ui7KgWnPCiI/AAAAAAAABGM/VaA33CnK5Zs/s1600/Picture+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XFh5c-qwqpQ/Ui7KgWnPCiI/AAAAAAAABGM/VaA33CnK5Zs/s320/Picture+2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Some of us have been blaming the hotel lobby and it is reasonable to think that behind many anti-vacation rental laws there is their labour. It is also true that they have slightly shifted their product towards a more family friendly environment, maybe also to compete with vacation rentals. But if I may misquote a sentence of Larry Page, have you ever heard of a company shutting down because of legal disputes? Nope. Of course this doesn't help, but again, this isn't <i>key</i> to the crisis of medium/small companies in Vacation Rental.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The Virus Within</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TOaC9qE-L3c/Ui7Nip_NXpI/AAAAAAAABGU/wVt85NzEax0/s1600/flu-virus-can-spread-within-a-distance-of-two-meters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TOaC9qE-L3c/Ui7Nip_NXpI/AAAAAAAABGU/wVt85NzEax0/s320/flu-virus-can-spread-within-a-distance-of-two-meters.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div>
</div>
<div>
Oh, an by the way, the Vacation Rental Market as a whole is facing a slow down, right? Think again. It is not attending to <a href="http://www.phocuswright.com/products/4252" target="_blank">PhocusWright</a> that talks of a 'rebound' or if we look at what <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/annual/" target="_blank">airbnb</a> and the other behemoths are claiming (although this should be subject to further scrutiny, see our previous post <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/11/homeaway-vs-airbnb-whos-winning-race.html" target="_blank">'Airbnb Vs Homeaway: who's winning the race?'</a>, another nice take is <a href="http://blog.estimize.com/post/53845066632/airbnb-set-to-come-public-at-10b-valuation" target="_blank">Estimize's</a> eye.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
So, let's face it, we've got to look for trouble at home it's pointless to search elsewhere.<br />
<br />
<i>A little history - Online Marketing</i><br />
Back in 1997 when we got started with <a href="http://romanreference.com/">RomanReference.com</a> it wasn't hard to market <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/vacation-rentals" target="_blank">vacation rental properties</a>, you pretty much just had to list on any search engine to be on the first page of results. That would take you travelers. In the old times we all felt like pioneers... But, hold on, who did?<br />
<br />
<b>The traveler</b>: back then a very internet savvy person looking more for a very personal experience than for a deal. Not anymore...<br />
<b>The property owner</b>: back then a very internet un-savvy person who wanted to make some money with no effort, totally unaware of marketing and reputation. This is also not the case anymore.<br />
<b>The PM</b>: see above.<br />
<br />
Getting to the traveler was relatively easy online, while getting to the owners online was still near impossible. It was a time when finding the right owner was a problem and you had to compete elbow to elbow with brick and mortar agencies with a lot more experience and appeal. This has changed for the better now thanks to huge investments that improved awareness of vacation rentals in the general public.<br />
Back to history, by 2002 organic competition had started to get a little stiff and there came Google Adwords, at an average 50c per click it would reward you with great conversions giving you a lead on the newly arrived organic competition.<br />
Today's sponsored listing, at an average 3.5$PC on big cities keywords, has become almost unaffordable for channels or PMs that don't earn the full rental revenue and/or can scale with thousands of destinations worldwide. CPC has gone up almost 10fold, while conversion rates have gone down, to the best of our knowledge no matter how good you are Adwords will cost you ~18% of total revenue. To make things worse google adwords does not let you target long tail keywords anymore putting the small operations totally out of reach. True, there are new players such as MSN, Yandex, etc, but they're still too small to matter on sponsored ads.<br />
<br />
<i>What happened? Or The End</i><br />
Since 2011 just short of 1Bl of dollars (see dedicated <a href="http://www.vrmintel.com/over-530-million-invested-in-vacation-rental-startups-since-2011/" target="_blank">VRmintel article on venture money in the vacation rental market </a>and consider they have forgotten at least 200$mil with Wimdu and 9flat and Billy+many undisclosed investments) have been invested in online vacation rental via venture capital, stock market and big company investments. These investments have outplayed the small operations online both organically (unless they use shadow or black hat techniques) and sponsored. At the same time have put a very heavy weight on commissions, pushing them down from an average 30% to an average 15% (do the math with my above findings if you want to make a ROI out of your next SEA campaign).<br />
It must be said though, that not all the investment has played against the little operations in the VR market. A growth in awareness, see above, has brought about a great abundance of properties and travelers.<br />
For old timers like me it's like having grown up on the tip of a dune in a desert where every once in a while it used to rain enough to drink aplenty all year long. Now the desert has been flooded with salty waters and we're just standing there, surrounded by the very thing we've been craving for for so long. Only unable to drink it.<br />
<br />
<i>What's left?</i><br />
Oh well, we just need a desalination kit... or good communication.<br />
Thankfully over the past few years a lot of Direct Channels have sprouted out, most of them are free to PMs. These are now getting together (see the <a href="http://vrma.site-ym.com/blogpost/766551/Vacation-Rental-Switch" target="_blank">Switch</a> or <a href="http://rentalsunited.com/" target="_blank">Rentals United</a>) or getting managed by Indirect Channels or Channel Managers (see <a href="http://kigo.net/" target="_blank">Kigo</a>). The future of small operations is here, like little bridges that link those tips of the dunes, so we can share the little drinkable water spilled by them behemoths hovering high above our heads...<br />
<br />
<i>A little pride, c'mon!</i><br />
That is unless... you come up with a couple of tricks, I've got a couple of ideas, but we better talk about it in person. I plan to be voicing them on a brain tempest taking place in next <a href="http://www.vrma.com/?EuropeanSeminar" target="_blank">VRMA European Seminar</a>, Dec 9 to 11 2013, in Bruges Belgium. See you there!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-21130769976851060402013-07-15T06:00:00.001-07:002014-01-24T08:21:54.052-08:00Sponsored Listings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NExe8vaRlm0/UePwULhI0RI/AAAAAAAABBk/zMvzXasVXkI/s1600/Schermata+07-2456489+alle+14.50.55.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NExe8vaRlm0/UePwULhI0RI/AAAAAAAABBk/zMvzXasVXkI/s320/Schermata+07-2456489+alle+14.50.55.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
Answering to repeated requests for this product made by our apartment owners we are eager to introduce starting today the <i>Sponsored Listing</i> feature, it consists into being published under the <i>Featured Apartments</i> section of the page at a fee.<br />
<br />
Here follow the fees to be published on the city/destination homepage per week + VAT:<br />
<br />
3rd position to the right: 15 euro<br />
2nd position in the middle: 25 euro.<br />
1st position to the left + bigger picture im mid page and top on rotation: 50 euro<br />
<br />
If interested in a sponsored position please <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/contact" target="_blank">contact us</a>.<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-90689732700080059692012-11-13T02:35:00.000-08:002014-01-30T01:47:40.763-08:00Cities Reference discounts EXPOSED!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--i0xhSi9Hls/UKIhGRzqHBI/AAAAAAAAA9I/52B0dBfC9qA/s1600/discount.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--i0xhSi9Hls/UKIhGRzqHBI/AAAAAAAAA9I/52B0dBfC9qA/s320/discount.jpg" height="255" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
There's been a lot of asking both on the part of apartments' owners and travelers dealing with our <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/vacation-rentals" target="_blank">vacation rental websites</a> on how exactly discounts work and how to be eligible.<br />
<br />
First of all<i> Discounts</i> should not be confused with <i><a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/support/q4" target="_blank">Promotions</a></i> which are activated by the owners when setting up their apartment listings' prices, ie last minute, long stay, etc and they cumulate on top of it. Discounts though, will not cumulate on top of one another and the highest one you can get is equivalent to 10% off.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kv2JfmbqUVE/UKISr3s_4rI/AAAAAAAAA8w/ZXOohzqZ_Jg/s1600/10%25coupons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kv2JfmbqUVE/UKISr3s_4rI/AAAAAAAAA8w/ZXOohzqZ_Jg/s320/10%25coupons.jpg" height="194" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Here follow a step by step road map to get you the best discount<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Step1</b></span><br />
<br />
'<i>Like</i>' <a href="http://www.facebook.com/citiesreference" target="_blank">Cities Reference Facebook page</a>. There is no point filling in the discount coupon code if you're not a Cities Reference '<i>fan</i>' because you're not going to get any discount without it.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Step2</b></span><br />
<br />
Have a notion of what the discounts are and beware that<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>you are not able to cumulate discounts on top of one another</li>
<li><b>discounts are valid on all apartments besides those showing listing codes that start with letters instead of numbers (ie: AA, RU, BL, etc)</b></li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<u><i>Try2</i></u>: this is a 10 euro flat discount if you tried booking a <i>On Request</i> apartment that declined your booking request<br />
<u><i>Repeat client</i></u>: it's a 5% discount to all repeat clients, just input you previous booking code to qualify.<br />
<i><u>Owners' discount</u></i>: it's a 5% discount to all apartment owners listing their apartment with us. Just input your apartment's listing number when booking.<br />
<i><u>FB5%</u></i>: this is a 5% discount on the total posted, all you have to do is be a Cities Reference fan on our Facebook page and stay put to qualify. For those of you who appreciate clarity, if you go on just the time of the booking and off when the booking is over you won't qualify for the discount.)<br />
<u><i>PO10%</i></u>: this is a 10% discount and to qualify, on top of the above, you need to find an available <i>Priority Owner's</i> apartment. To see if an apartment is of a Priority Owner go to the <a href="http://www.romanreference.com/en/rome/apartment/346" target="_blank">apartment listing</a>, click on '<i>Description</i>', top left, beside '<i>Apartment</i>' and <i>Verified™</i> you will see it marked as '<i>Priority Owner</i>'.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Step3</span></b><br />
<br />
If you qualify to all the above all you have to do is input the appropriate code where it says '<i>Coupon Code</i>' on step2 (final) of the booking process.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ou10buoid7M/UKIg8RLsohI/AAAAAAAAA9A/hnN1kO4Od04/s1600/Picture+6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ou10buoid7M/UKIg8RLsohI/AAAAAAAAA9A/hnN1kO4Od04/s320/Picture+6.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><b>Please Read</b></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">: discounts do not apply on </span><a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2013/09/flat-annual-listing-fee-now-available.html" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">flat listing fee apartments</a> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">and on third party apartments. Recognizing both is easy since their listing number starts in both cases with a letter rather than with a number.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><b>Important</b>: The discount code must be inserted during the booking process and must be correct both in it's spelling and in its content. So, if you're using a previous booking ID please ensure it's the correct one as well as you have to ensure that the spelling is correct. If you're using a Facebook discount, please do make sure to have 'Liked' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/citiesreference" target="_blank">Cities Reference's Facebook page</a> before you book. These mistakes may invalidate the discount so please do ensure to pay attention to it.</span><br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-45084424136206662482012-09-12T10:14:00.002-07:002013-09-04T01:55:23.727-07:00Verified™ Apartment and Priority Owners<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If we were to single out the two most important Trust factors an apartment listing can weigh in after <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2012/06/travelers-reviews.html" target="_blank">travelers' reviews,</a> they are certainly the <b>Verified™</b> tag and the <b>Priority Owner</b> status.<br />
<br />
How do you get them turned on for your own listing?<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nd40QW-SFNs/UFCmtak2xZI/AAAAAAAAA7g/FtazseGFUrg/s1600/ETO_Verified.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nd40QW-SFNs/UFCmtak2xZI/AAAAAAAAA7g/FtazseGFUrg/s1600/ETO_Verified.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Verified™</b></span></div>
<br />
Assumed that all apartments go through a verification process to be live on <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/" target="_blank">Cities Reference</a> which encompasses among other measures cross checks on the web, valid and tested phone number and identity, etc. An apartment owner can further get the <b>Verified™</b> tag on his apartment description by either<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>meeting one of our representatives and show the apartment's paperwork;</li>
<li>at least 3 completed and successfull rental bookings and/or receive at least one verified traveler's review (we will contact the travelers directly for further confirmation).</li>
</ul>
What you get in return is that your apartment's listing will be marked as <b>Verified™</b>. <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aiRTrpTiDgE/UFCnrlUiEUI/AAAAAAAAA7o/ML28AYmASi0/s1600/priority-card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aiRTrpTiDgE/UFCnrlUiEUI/AAAAAAAAA7o/ML28AYmASi0/s1600/priority-card.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Priority Owner</b></span></div>
Getting the <i>Priority Owner</i> status is more challenging, but reaps great benefits at the same time.<br />
To qualify as <i>Priority Owner</i> you have to:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i>Grant</i> a 5% discount on the grand total to qualified and repeat customer travelers. Qualified travelers hold a personal coupon that is assigned to them only if their identity has been verified and/or they have already rented successfully through us in the past. They represent roughly 30% of our customers' base. Unqualified travelers' bookings will not get any discount from you.</li>
<li><i>Qualify</i>. Only optimized apartment listings will qualify to join the Priority Owner program. You can set up an appointment with our <i>Optimizers' Team</i> <a href="mailto:help@citiesreference.com" target="_blank">here</a>.</li>
</ul>
<br />
On the other hand you will get:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i>Exposure</i> on the homepage with dynamic rotation depending on the availability of your calendar and the general ranking. </li>
<li><i>Verified customers</i>, who will be incentived by the discount will prefer your apartment to the one that is not Priority giving you a edge and a more trustworthy clientele.</li>
<li>10% worth of <i>Ranking</i>. Becoming Priority will give your listing a boost to <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2012/01/apartments-rating-algorithm-change-to.html" target="_blank">your apartment's ranking</a>. </li>
</ul>
Interested in turning on any of the above? <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/contact" target="_blank">Contact us</a> and we'll set up an appointment! <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-43299946744856967432012-09-04T09:18:00.000-07:002012-09-04T09:18:10.414-07:00Instant Bookings Advance Notice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KGpmdDUBNeQ/UEYna2H0ASI/AAAAAAAAA7A/pVHORHT3eSA/s1600/training-announcer.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KGpmdDUBNeQ/UEYna2H0ASI/AAAAAAAAA7A/pVHORHT3eSA/s320/training-announcer.gif" width="248" /></a></div>
Good news for Instant Booker owners: the much touted and long awaited <b>advance notice</b> is now available in your back end!<br />
In other words you can put a gap between the booking and the check in that goes from none to 7 days, if you want to avoid last minute bookings that get you unprepared for check in.<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Just log into your account</li>
<li>go to your apartment, </li>
<li>Details</li>
<li>Top right where it says '<i>Allow last minute bookings?</i>' use the scroll down and pick the minimum advance notice you require</li>
</ul>
<div>
Not clear enough? Just <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/contact" target="_blank">contact us</a>.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-77322203912355866572012-06-12T09:35:00.001-07:002012-07-26T00:11:16.305-07:00Travelers' reviews<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A2-CODVCXms/T9dvtZ8zntI/AAAAAAAAA6g/DcGBjwDO0G8/s1600/Guest_Reviews.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A2-CODVCXms/T9dvtZ8zntI/AAAAAAAAA6g/DcGBjwDO0G8/s1600/Guest_Reviews.png" /></a></div>
Ever since <a href="http://tripadvisor.com/" target="_blank">Tripadvisor.com</a> came out with the unbiased user generated content at the beginning of the last decade our internet life has changed... for the better.<br />
At first we didn't quite think so. It was 2001 and a client fishing for a refund wrote harshly about us. We dind't know a thing about Tripadvisor or even the concept of user generated content. We found it shocking! We thought she wasn't in good faith and, thankfully, Tripadvisor pretty quickly agreed with us and took her comment offline. Fair enough ;)<br />
Within a year we had adopted user generated content in our website and the whole philosophy of unbiased reviews. <br />
A lot has changed since and there is a lot more automated checks and balances in place nowadays when publishing a traveler's review.<br />
<br />
We ensure the following<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>The traveler posting the review has to be '<b>real</b>', we'll cross check the email address and dates provided to verify he actually stayed at the apartment she is reviewing.</li>
<li> To ensure it's <b>unbiased</b> we don't allow either Cities Reference and/or rental apartment owners to </li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>edit reviews. Rental owners can add a separate response that is displayed in addition to the original review.</li>
<li>delete reviews. However rental owners can protest a review. </li>
</ul>
</div>
To leave your traveler's review<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>either access the property listing using the direct link you find on your booking correspondence with us or go to <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/">CitiesReference.com</a> and use the listing number or the address in the quick search.</li>
<li>On the listing page for your apartment rental, click ‘Been here? Write a Review.’ Top right hand, just below the apartment's address.</li>
<li>Describe your experience. Tell everyone about your stay and the apartment.</li>
</ol>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mn77kO3PdnY/T9dsML-p2nI/AAAAAAAAA6Q/GfqKL4mMTjE/s1600/Picture+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mn77kO3PdnY/T9dsML-p2nI/AAAAAAAAA6Q/GfqKL4mMTjE/s320/Picture+1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
You will find your review<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>On the homepage, where they are listed as they come, in chronological order to improve the immediateness and transparence of the travelers experience on our website.</li>
<li>On the apartment listing's webpage, as a useful, if not just essential tool for the traveler's informed decision on booking.</li>
</ol>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hnEmPytO5qg/T9duO6d-jfI/AAAAAAAAA6Y/U1ncAjGRgiQ/s1600/Picture+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hnEmPytO5qg/T9duO6d-jfI/AAAAAAAAA6Y/U1ncAjGRgiQ/s320/Picture+2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Happy rentals everyone! </div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-82185294596100775982012-06-02T05:56:00.002-07:002012-11-23T07:50:04.990-08:006 months on, the numbers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last march we <a href="http://blog.citiesreference.com/2012/03/end-of-era-survival-of-fittest.html" target="_blank">ended an Era</a> and now we want to take a good look at what has changed exactly when looking at the numbers.<br />
<br />
First off <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/" target="_blank">Cities Reference</a> has finally and definitely passed <a href="http://www.romanreference.com/" target="_blank">Roman Reference</a> for good. We're looking at over 75% more traffic and growing (alexa has it at 61,000 against 110,000 - this is ~ 15% growth year on year for CR, traffic to vacation rental websites in may is seasonally low, just a month ago CitiesReference reached its peak ever of 55,000 alexa).<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/citiesreference" target="_blank">Facebook page of Cities Reference</a> has 5,860 fans against the 521 fans of <a href="http://www.facebook.com/RomanReference" target="_blank">Roman Reference's fanpage</a>. RomanReference's FB page has grown 25% in 6 months which is reasonable, the real noteworthy change is Cities Reference, which, thankfully has taken full parent site status at this point and it's faring at full steam.<br />
<br />
<u><a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/search-vacation-apartments" target="_blank">Cities destinations</a></u> covered are now 45 with a 36% growth in 6 month.<br />
<u><a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/" target="_blank">Apartment rentals</a></u> on offer are now 4,421 with a 21% growth in 6 month and a 350% growth year on year.<br />
<u><a href="http://www.romanreference.com/" target="_blank">Instant apartment rentals</a></u> are now 893 with a 10% growth in 6 months and 260% growth year on year. It's 20% of total against the 23% of all the apartments in inventory of January 2012. So this particular ratio is going the opposite direction than our wishes. Probably due to the fact that we've become tougher with apartment owners listing as Instant, but unable to be precise when updating their calendars.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.romanreference.com/en/search-vacation-apartments" target="_blank">Rome apartments</a> are 953 with a year on year growth of 63% (this looks like a very good measure, especially the fact that we are keeping the 60% growth speed since quite a while yet).<br />
<u>Instant apartment Vs On Request apartments</u> ratio is stable at 39% (improved a year on and double the average of all sites).<br />
<u>Conversion ratio</u> booking requests Vs Confirmed bookings is 81.5%, stable a year on.<br />
<u>Resident apartments</u> (ie apartments that use us as primary contact) are 95%<br />
<u>Bookings</u> are 1,425/month so up 18% year on year.<br />
<u>Unique visitors</u> are stable year on year for Rome. Duration, bounce and new visits are all improving ca 5% year on year.<br />
<u>Conversion rate</u> has become really hard to track now, because many visitors decide on Roman Reference and book on Cities Reference. Cross guessing though and doing some counting to double check I'd estimate growth in conversion rate at ~20%. This is a welcome piece of news, May last year the new website started to stabilize and we're finally looking at the conversion growth brought over by hundreds of thousand of euro and most importantly thousands of hours of cumulated work to raise this measure that, be it the deepening of the crisis or the growing competition, has become really hard to deal with. Cities Reference is not done at all as for what regards efforts to make it more conversion friendly. After all we just belatedly added a press dedicate page and made customer reviews visible on the homepage and other chosen general content pages across the website, just to mention a couple of examples. We wish to see this measure keeps growing ;)<br />
<u>Weight of adwords</u> doubled year on year to 31% in traffic and 35% in transactions, it is now the biggest source of revenue and the second source of traffic. While <u>organic traffic</u> went down almost 15% to 35% of total traffic and 30% of total revenue, <u>direct traffic</u> went down18% to 20% of total traffic and 21.5% of total revenue. There are explanations to this. A lot of traffic is now stirred to Cities Reference and also SEO efforts are all concentrated on CitiesReference right now, while ad-words is still dealt with at a local level that the closest it lands to the target the better it performs. <u>Facebook</u>, although still tiny as a general impact (~2% of traffic and 1.5% of total revenue), went up 46% year on year. <u>Bing</u> and <u>Yahoo</u> are also growing 100% each, but they remain irrelevant ~1% each. Worth noticing that while <u>CitiesReference</u> last year was contributing almost 5% of traffic this measure went down half percentage point this year giving the measure of which direction is the traffic now going, if you look at it the other way round you see ~30% of CR traffic coming from RomanReference.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/paris" target="_blank">Paris Apartments</a> are 347 now, growing 117% year on year. It's our third destination (after Rome and Budapest) in terms of rental apartment numbers, but by far our second in terms of bookings.<br />
<u>Instant apartment Vs On Request apartments</u> ratio is stable at 12% (slightly down from 13% last year).<br />
<u>Conversion ratio</u> booking requests Vs Confirmed bookings has been booming to 60.2% compared to a meagre 36% last year, which is a great sign of maturity for this destination.<br />
<u>Resident apartments </u>are 55%.<br />
<u>Bookings</u> are 115/month so stable with last year.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/london" target="_blank">London Apartments</a> are 258 now, up 790% compared to last year this time. It's our fourth destination in terms of rental apartment numbers and our 4th in terms of bookings (after Rome, Paris and New York).<br />
<u>Instant apartment Vs On Request apartments</u> ratio is almost 45% which is great.<br />
<u>Conversion ratio</u> is 30%, up one third compared to last year.<br />
<u>Resident apartments </u>are just 15% though.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/new-york-city/search-vacation-apartments" target="_blank">New York Apartments</a> are 192 it grew 335% year on year. It's our seventh destination in terms of apartments (the 4 above + Amsterdam and Istanbul) and third in terms of bookings.<br />
<u>Instant apartment Vs On Request apartments</u> ratio is just 10% (still a 300% growth compared to last year).<br />
<u>Conversion ratio</u> is 50% which is a fantastic improvement compared to last year.<br />
<u>Resident apartments </u>are 36.5%.<br />
<br />
These are our main destinations at the moment (yeah, not the most surprising really) worth a mention are<br />
-<a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/budapest" target="_blank">apartments numbers in Budapest</a>, <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/amsterdam" target="_blank">Amsterdam</a> and <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/istanbul" target="_blank">Istanbul</a> (respectively 2nd, 5th and 6th destinations for that measure).<br />
-conversion rate at 100% in <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/venice" target="_blank">Venice</a>, <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/prague" target="_blank">Prague</a>, <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/florence" target="_blank">Florence</a>, <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/madrid" target="_blank">Madrid</a>, <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/lisbon" target="_blank">Lisbon</a> and <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/san-francisco" target="_blank">San Francisco</a>.<br />
-number of bookings and traffic in <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/berlin" target="_blank">Berlin</a>, <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/barcelona" target="_blank">Barcelona</a> and <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/brussels" target="_blank">Bruxelles</a>.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-35394165034930934742012-04-24T02:24:00.000-07:002012-04-24T13:03:28.233-07:00Kinko Tochi or when the future of cities almost happened - Re-visiting Vacation Rental's concepts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WuP5bAAF22A/T5ZZ6-9Q6HI/AAAAAAAAA4I/DQjXfzYH2A0/s1600/metabolism_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WuP5bAAF22A/T5ZZ6-9Q6HI/AAAAAAAAA4I/DQjXfzYH2A0/s320/metabolism_1.jpg" width="226" /></a><i style="text-align: left;">image credit <a href="http://www.frieze.com/" target="_blank">Frieze</a></i><span style="text-align: left;">.</span> </div>
<i><br /></i>Reading Amelia Groom's essay (<a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/past-futures1/" target="_blank">Frieze march issue</a>) 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 <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/" target="_blank">vacation rentals</a>, are we swimming against or flowing within that vision?<br />
The vision, in Amelia's words, is a promise of<br />
<br />
" <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">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.</span>"<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-48rhACigrcQ/T5ZbgOIhXRI/AAAAAAAAA4Q/EiMQhHHWtbs/s1600/nakagin-capsule-tower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-48rhACigrcQ/T5ZbgOIhXRI/AAAAAAAAA4Q/EiMQhHHWtbs/s320/nakagin-capsule-tower.jpg" width="320" /></a><i>nagakin capsule tower. im. credit <a href="http://stephendavidsmith.net/">stephendavidsmith.net</a></i></div>
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Cities as verbs. Super-organisms evolving and changing. Living as a <i>pret-a-porter</i>, 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 <i>fin-de-siècle</i> (siècle meant as civilization) we're living in.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G7D6234zQsc/T5ZfIR8v5xI/AAAAAAAAA4Y/XTQNCIoduC8/s1600/kenji-ekuan-dwelling-city-1963.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G7D6234zQsc/T5ZfIR8v5xI/AAAAAAAAA4Y/XTQNCIoduC8/s320/kenji-ekuan-dwelling-city-1963.jpeg" width="235" /></a><i><a href="http://relationalthought.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/kenji-ekuan-dwelling-city-1963.jpg?w=710" style="background-color: white; color: #1111cc; font-family: arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">kenji-ekuan-dwelling-city-1963.jpg</a>. Credit relationalthought.com</i></div>
<br />
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 <i>Metabolism</i> is happening and the state-of-traveling ever more is going to be a state-of-being, can living be just a <i>snack</i> that can be cleaned up and served or should it rather be somewhat unpredictable, open, in one word, personal?<br />
'<i>My house is your house</i>'... 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 <i>capsule</i>, you may as well borrow a piece of my own life rather than eat and digest yet one more snack.<br />
Where are we heading? To a post-human that will accept alienation as a state-of-being or rather to a '<i><a href="http://collaborativeconsumption.com/" target="_blank">What's Mine is Yours - The Rise of Collaborative Consumption</a>' kind of future</i>.<br />
We're betting on the latter...<br />
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-44782789541148338482012-04-20T06:33:00.001-07:002012-04-24T00:38:23.372-07:00Cities Reference to include mountains, countryside and seashores into the inventory or the concept of Outer Area.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"<span style="background-color: #e1e4f2; font-family: verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There is more to a city than bricks and mortar"</span></div>
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<a class="bigusername" href="http://www.skyscrapercity.com/member.php?s=9b740cddd1eb6ee7688e89e24e534d22&u=109480" style="background-color: #e1e4f2; color: #ff4400; font-family: verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Bisonblight</a> blogging on skyscrapercity.com - Image credit <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/53268756@N04/" style="background-color: #0063dc; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">shunvision</a></div>
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That's what we were thinking when we finally decided to include '<a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/search-vacation-apartments" target="_blank"><i>Outer areas</i></a>' into our listings a fortnight ago.</div>
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Back in '97, if your apartment was a inch away from <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/sitemap/rome/neighborhood/campo-dei-fiori" target="_blank">Campo de' Fiori</a> you wouldn't get admitted. What the hell was that? Snobbery? That's as anti-our-own-mission as it gets.</div>
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Over the years the radium got expanded, started including suburbs and then new cities and their suburbs. Know what? <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/travelers" target="_blank">Travelers</a> 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...</div>
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And now the '<i>Outer areas</i>', 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.</div>
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How do you do it? Just pick <i>'Outer area'</i> when booking your 'city break'.</div>
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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 <i>'Outer area' </i>you may end up sharing your next<i> Bright lights Big City </i>experience with a bunch of cows<i>.</i></div>
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...Go ahead and flood us with comments (swear words not admitted ;)</div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-17934665938879582592012-03-06T07:07:00.002-08:002012-03-13T02:27:08.942-07:00End of an Era - Survival of the fittest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kE12wMzPdvg/T1YhZCtfjcI/AAAAAAAAAyc/d75pUxC7ySA/s1600/fittest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kE12wMzPdvg/T1YhZCtfjcI/AAAAAAAAAyc/d75pUxC7ySA/s320/fittest.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” (Charles Darwin)<br />
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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:<br />
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<i>'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'.</i><br />
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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?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9PmLkCAeo4g/T1YjZGYzIpI/AAAAAAAAAyk/imz3fS_O4mY/s1600/evolution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9PmLkCAeo4g/T1YjZGYzIpI/AAAAAAAAAyk/imz3fS_O4mY/s320/evolution.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><i> </i><b>Ok here is the announcement followers and fans</b><i>: 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 <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/" target="_blank">Cities Reference</a>, with one and only city-site survivor, of course, <a href="http://www.romanreference.com/" target="_blank">Roman Reference</a>.</i><br />
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I said it. <br />
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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.<br />
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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 ;).</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-64627270692948563202012-02-28T04:11:00.001-08:002014-07-29T05:55:16.410-07:00Long story short: the Press and us since 1996<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cN-_ZGTGXlU/T0yz7AhYxvI/AAAAAAAAAvw/qe_kdSdcsDI/s1600/+BASSA+ritratti-22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cN-_ZGTGXlU/T0yz7AhYxvI/AAAAAAAAAvw/qe_kdSdcsDI/s320/+BASSA+ritratti-22.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a></div>
Since 1996 we've kept <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/about" target="_blank">Roman Reference's main office</a> 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 <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/press" target="_blank">press realeases </a>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...<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rNfVmtgRMAU/T0y3E1TAVrI/AAAAAAAAAv4/TpX8YtjTHd8/s1600/roma+c%27e%CC%80.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rNfVmtgRMAU/T0y3E1TAVrI/AAAAAAAAAv4/TpX8YtjTHd8/s320/roma+c%27e%CC%80.jpg" height="320" width="215" /></a></div>
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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 <i>city reference</i> and the definition still sounds right for times to come, ironical how the vacation rental got mentioned last:<br />
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<i>'Multi-service association for tourists. Services include transportation, interpreters, translators, personal health trainers, tours, long and short-term accommodations and more'</i></blockquote>
From local to national press in 2003 <a href="http://doveviaggi.corriere.it/dove-rcs/home.html" target="_blank">Dove magazine</a> 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<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--YB6G4a2TCM/T0y46yb0fOI/AAAAAAAAAwI/OU0nXh7qzzg/s1600/dove-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--YB6G4a2TCM/T0y46yb0fOI/AAAAAAAAAwI/OU0nXh7qzzg/s320/dove-1.jpg" height="320" width="235" /></a></div>
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But thankfully 2003 was also the year where international press finally took note of us. Condé Nast USA <a href="http://www.gourmet.com/" target="_blank">Gourmet Magazine</a> (the magazine of good living), listed us under the '<i>100+ great things about Rome</i>'. That was nice ;)<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C8BlBWYaFsY/T0y8NGIc5tI/AAAAAAAAAwY/z9I8N6HR9fw/s1600/gourmet+magazine-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C8BlBWYaFsY/T0y8NGIc5tI/AAAAAAAAAwY/z9I8N6HR9fw/s320/gourmet+magazine-2.jpg" height="320" width="236" /></a></div>
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Same year, <a href="http://www.eurowoman.dk/" target="_blank">fashion magazine Sirene from Denmark</a> listed us best accommodation alternative to hotels.<br />
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One more scrap of press we managed to find yesterday is <a href="http://www.cntraveller.com/" target="_blank">Condé Nast USA Traveler magazine</a> 2007<br />
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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 <a href="http://www.cntraveler.com/daily-traveler/2011/12/conde-nast-traveler-behind-the-scenes-audit" target="_blank">behind the scene article</a> here, quote 'I would have gone stir-crazy spending ten days in a hotel room'.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-otwnsgWvgf4/T0zBR_U26OI/AAAAAAAAAxQ/ivMQS80GCfs/s1600/cn_image.size.the-audit-apartment-bed-graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-otwnsgWvgf4/T0zBR_U26OI/AAAAAAAAAxQ/ivMQS80GCfs/s1600/cn_image.size.the-audit-apartment-bed-graphic.jpg" /></a></div>
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In 2008 Sylvie Wyeth of <a href="http://www.travelandleisure.com/" target="_blank">Travel + Leisure USA</a> meet us for a tour of our best apartments and writes a whole <a href="http://www.travelandleisure.com/hotels/villa-fortuny-apartments" target="_blank">article about the Villa Fortuny apartments</a> we list on <a href="http://www.romanreference.com/" target="_blank">Roman Reference</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xdCjUhWNa9E/T08-vY90fyI/AAAAAAAAAyA/hKcnIkpHgyk/s1600/08COVER_NO_UPC_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xdCjUhWNa9E/T08-vY90fyI/AAAAAAAAAyA/hKcnIkpHgyk/s1600/08COVER_NO_UPC_1.jpg" /></a></div>
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In 2009 Frommer's Rome lists us as among the '<a href="http://www.frommers.com/micro/2010/complete-guide-to-vacation-rentals/italian-companies-to-consider.html" target="_blank">5 rental companies to consider</a>' and <a href="http://www.frommers.com/articles/6066.html" target="_blank">'<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">the best all-around apartment rental agency in Rome</span></a><span id="goog_281122060"></span><span id="goog_281122061"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></span>'.<br />
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In 2011 we got listed in <a href="http://www.timeout.com/" target="_blank">Time Out</a> and <a href="http://www.mondadori.it/Il-Gruppo/Periodici/Italia/VilleGiardini" target="_blank">Ville e Giardini</a>. <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WMRqUS-8fO8/T0zDy60xDtI/AAAAAAAAAxo/QiN416A7Zt8/s1600/ville+e+giardini-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WMRqUS-8fO8/T0zDy60xDtI/AAAAAAAAAxo/QiN416A7Zt8/s320/ville+e+giardini-1.jpg" height="320" width="244" /></a></div>
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In 2012 we got mentioned on <a href="http://local.msn.com/travel/blogpost.aspx?post=6adb41e5-4f2b-46e6-b26f-987c7e1ec2a8&_blg=2" target="_blank">MSN Local Travel</a>:<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIhgEB0D2gI/UFmA9FzEJ8I/AAAAAAAAA8A/JPLlQjeJkFY/s1600/Picture+5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIhgEB0D2gI/UFmA9FzEJ8I/AAAAAAAAA8A/JPLlQjeJkFY/s320/Picture+5.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
In 2013 on <a href="http://diario.latercera.com/2013/12/19/01/contenido/mundo/8-153704-9-papa-francisco-provoca-boom-de-visitantes-argentinos-en-el-vaticano.shtml#!" target="_blank">La Tercera</a>, leading Chilean Newspaper<br />
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In 2014 on <a href="http://ppan.it/stories/limprenditore-city-reference-si-costruisce-casa-design-come-biglietto-visita-per-business/">PPan.it</a> our project of launching a vertical section on Villas of Charme is covered</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1890485358495502582.post-714535099351878832012-02-26T01:49:00.000-08:002012-02-26T01:49:15.651-08:00Recently viewed apartments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lle70aS_ufc/T0n8_3rxJUI/AAAAAAAAAvM/wHsk0tC8afk/s1600/Schermata+02-2455984+alle+10.27.56.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lle70aS_ufc/T0n8_3rxJUI/AAAAAAAAAvM/wHsk0tC8afk/s320/Schermata+02-2455984+alle+10.27.56.png" width="320" /></a></div>A Cities Reference FB fan asked how to keep track of the apartments recently viewed.<br />
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We will soon add a '<i>Favorite & Compare</i>' option to further simplify this process.<br />
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What we have in place already is the '<i>Recently viewed apartments</i>' feature which you find bottom right of your screen as per attachment here.<br />
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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.<br />
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If you don't like performing the back and fro, just open a new tab.<br />
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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.<br />
Got questions? <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/contact" target="_blank">Contact Cities Reference</a> and/or <a href="http://www.citiesreference.com/en/support" target="_blank">Find the Answers</a>.<br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06272122483327971040noreply@blogger.com2