Life on Easy Street - Vacation Rentals

Hi All,

Well it's been a hectic week, call me crazy but I'm giving up an award winning web site for a whole new booking system that includes a new web site. There is actually more to the story. I have (but pretty soon I'll be saying had, once we launch) a great and very beautiful web site. In fact it won the 2009 Golden Addy Award. Problem is it wasn't getting the traffic I expected, plus the bounce rate was very high. If you don't know what a bounce rate is, which I didn't when I started this search, it is the number of people that did find my site, but left after viewing the home page. What that told me was people were actually finding my web site but didn't know what to do once they got there, didn't find the home page easy to navigate, or couldn't easily find what they were looking for, so left. The other problem was that my current web site was not linked into my data base reservation system or my booking engine, in fact I had three different vendors, one for the web site, one for the booking engine, and one for the data base reservation system, and the three didn't talk to one another, which required a lot of repeat manual entering of customer reservation data by staff. The sad part is I really like my old web site, and thoroughly enjoyed working with the designer.

Deciding to change was difficult, and who to change too was difficult. What I did know is that I needed a system that integrated all three aspects; data base reservation system, booking engine, and web site. The final two candidates was Bookt and LiveRez, and ended up selecting LiveRez because of their pricing system and they had a more complete back-end reservation system.

This past week really has been brutal, if anyone has ever gone through a data processing conversion, you know what I mean. Learning stuff for an old guy like me is not easy. The bad news is it's a lot of work, the good news it will save me a ton of work (when it's operational) and a ton of money. And hopefully increase my bookings. The cost of the new system is one fourth of the current amount I pay for all three vendors. My labor costs should go down significantly as well. I'm not planning on reducing staff, just redirecting their efforts because of all of the new business I hope to attract. At least that's the idea. The other benefit is to the owners of the properties I manage, they will be able to log into our system at any time and see the status of their rental. There are plenty of other features, but I'm just learning those.

The new LiveRez web site, I don't think it will be as pretty or flashy as my old site, but is designed to be a lot more functional for our visitor guest. isn't that how it should be. The goal should not be winning awards, but winning customers. The new site should be easy for guests to search for properties, check availability dates, and reserve homes. It will also be easier to highlight Specials, Things to do in Destin, and offer different amenity packages. I could go on, but if the new system lives up to my expectations, it should pretty much revolutionize our business.

Our market niche is clean, well maintain, pet friendly rental homes in the Destin area. I spend a lot of money on marketing so my web site will be found, and to think people find me but then abandon the search because my web site, although pretty, is hard to navigate, just frustrates me. Although painful, I think this is a step in the right direction. I am so tired of hearing people say they have been coming to Destin for years, but could never find a good pet friendly rental. Here I am! Here I am!

I have some really exciting plans that will be revolving around this new system, and help those folks find us, so stay tuned.

Rick Scali


Rick Scali is the Owner of Easy Street Pet Friendly Vacation Rentals in Destin Florida. Whether you are a family looking for a squeaky clean Destin Rental Home with a Private Pool or a couple looking for a romantic getaway in a Destin Beachhouse, Easy Street Pet Friendly Vacation Rentals will exceed your expectations. Easy Street Pet Friendly Vacation Rentals has the largest selection of quality pet friendly homes in Destin, Florida and throughout the Emerald Coast. Call us toll-free today at 877.432.7978 or email us at info@easystreet-rentals.com - we would love to welcome you, your family AND Fido to join us at the beach.