Our cancellation policy... and the others

We recently got badly reviewed on flipkey because of our cancellation policy which works (as I copy and past from Roman Reference Q&A) like this:
1- You cancel your booking and your dates are rented to another party. You will be refunded in full.
2- You cancel your booking two weeks or longer prior to your arrival and your dates remain vacant. You lose your down payment (15 to 29% depending on the apartment).
3- You cancel your booking last minute and your dates remain vacant. You lose 30% of the total rental fee.

Ok, since somebody claims that ours is a bad cancellation policy let's compare it to the competition.

To choose the best competitors let's take the most visited keyword attending google keyword tool
'apartments rome' (traffic last may 74,000) and do a search

#1 is RomeCityApartments
They claim a full refund to you, minus 100€ expenses, if you cancel 30days prior to arrival. You pay ca 20% in advance (FYI: the average cost for a vacation rental is 760 euro, so those 100 euro refund means that in roughly 60% of cases the advance will be lost entirely). Attention (this info is not included in the FAQ): if you cancel 30 to 15 days prior to arrival you'll be charged 50%(!!!) of the entire rental fee. If you cancel 15days or less prior to arrival you're charged 100%(!!!) of your rental fee.
#2 is RentalinRome, I copy and paste from their terms:
With at least 30 days notice before the first day of the reservation the deposit will be fully returned, except €50 that will be forfeit to cover the reservation fees.
In case of cancellation with less than 30 days notice before the arrival the client will have to pay the full amount of the booked stay.
#3 is our website
#4 is accomodationsrome I copy and paste
Part payment due for reservation is lost in any case of cancellation.
If cancellation is less than 2 weeks before arrival, then is requested full amount and only refunded if a re-sale is possible
#5 is leisureinrome, I copy and paste
Cancellation penalities are set out in the table below:
a) recess from confirmation up to 120 days prior to arrival - 30% of the entire rental
b) recess from 119 to 40 days prior to arrival - 65% of the entire rental
c) recess from 39 up to arrival - 100% of the entire rental
#6 is romanhomes I copy and paste
Cancellation by you: If you cancel all or any part of your booking, you will not be entitled to reimbursement of the deposit by the proprietors or the agency, as it is an earnest (in Italian "caparra"), which is not reimbursed by the Italian law.

Ok I think 5 is enough to give an idea. Also I don't seem to be able to find FAQ and/or terms on holidayvelvet and hotels-rome which are the following ones.

You're the judge after reading above tell us which is the best cancellation policy. With us you have a worst scenario of 30% cancellation fee if you cancel last minute and a best scenario (73.5% of not-lastminute cancellations got the best scenario in 2008) where you get it all back in case of re-sale. The calendars are public so there is no trick on the apartment availability. The other five don't seem so soft to me on their cancellation policy.

Competitors and prospective clients come forth, you're very welcome to comment on this post.

FlipKey proved me wrong

Finally FlipKey proved me wrong and proved itself right, if you see my previous post about them here.
I had kind of hinted that there seemed to be a 'club' behind it, but it doesn't seem to be true after all, apologies. They let me into their wondrous website and the whole system looks to me, after a month experience, quite innovative and well meant.
Its main flaw is that since it's ourselves inviting the clients to leave a review the clever among us (notably not me, as you can tell from the percentage of not so good reviews) may be tempted to invite only clients they know were satisfied. So for those inviting all clients the chances that the unhappy take proactive action is, attending our own rather long standing experience, 5 to 1 compared to those clients that upon check out had reviewed the apartment and the whole experience highly in the review-form they hand to the agent.
Anyway I do think this is a great service to our industry and that on the long term flipkey may become a must for the savvy traveler.

Roman Reference quoted on frommer's guide!

There is no describing my happiness yesterday after a client pointed out to me that we had been quoted on Pauline Frommer's Italy spend less and see more and Rome day by day guides, by the reputed travel journalist Sylvie Hogg, and I bought the guide. Vacation Rentals are described as by far the best alternative to hotels and Roman Reference as 'the best all-around apartment rental agency in Rome'! 'No-surprises property descriptions' and 'expect transparency and responsiveness'.
Beautiful!

Expedia/Tripadvisor/Flipkey are we looking at the first big player making its entrance into the vacation rental arena?

Expedia: is a giant shadow looming onto the Vacation Rental arena?
There has been a lot of debating in the vacation rental environment lately on and about why the big guys of the internet tourism scene where snobbing our fast growing market share. Most of it was boiling down to the conviction by many of us that the 'bottleneck' of dealing with a vast majority of unprofessional owners would have kept the big guys out of the play. I think we should look again.
Now that tripadvisor.com, an expedia website, has launched flipkey.com I think we're looking at a market disruption in the making. Officially born to cure the SNAD and to be there only for unbiased arbitration, this website, starts showing a trail of much larger than average footprints on the battlefield.
Make no mistake, it's still a baby, Alexa shows it as 111,000 (romanreference.com was 90,000 ony a few months ago), yet it's a Giant's newborn.
To test it I asked them if they wanted to insert our properties, they answered 'sorry' because they think we are a listing website. I objected that we actually own some of the properties listed and many of them we actively manage and we can prove it. On top of it our website descriptions are very detailed, all inclusive prices clearly posted and calendars updated to the minute, as per their guidelines. No answer since (two weeks now, I'll update if I get an answer)(Update on sunday march 23, I got an immediate response to this post and TJ, see his comment bottom page kindly asked me to specify that it infact weren't two weeks yesterday, but 10 days and they were needed to look into the inclusion issue, I must note though that I hadn't been asked to wait).
Yet the entirety of the properties they list for Rome (243 properties) are either, ital accom (Irish/Australian company, 870,000 on alexa, created in 2003) or italy perfect (US company 1,619,000 on alexa, created on 2003) or rentvillas (US company, 368,000 on alexa, website created 1996), ranked for viewers in the opposite order. The above companies can hardly be considered property managers, I double checked with an owner that works with one of them and she confirmed that she saw them just ones over many years of collaboration.
The spontaneous questions then is what determines their choices since it is not what they declare it to be. We can make a few guesses, but I don't think this is what matters now. What matters now is that a giant is clearly starting to pull all its weight on the vacation rental market with an obscure strategy which is slowly unfolding. This may be a good thing after all, let's just hope they will share the belief in the google motto on business behaviour.

Louer direct ou d'une gestion immobilière?

Le New York Times a récemment publié un article à propos de Fraudes des Locations Privées. Cet article relatait des histoires horribles, de voyageurs déçus, et exposait ensuite la principale différence entre une location privée (les gros acteurs aux Etats-Unis sont VRBO.com, Homeaway.com ou Homelidays.com en europe) et une gestion immobilière (pickpackgo.com, forgetaway.weather.com, zonder.com). La première coûte moins mais n'a absolument aucun contrôle sur la qualité, la seconde contrôle la qualité et les services mais à coût supplémentaire pouvant aller jusqu'à 45%. Bien que la location de vacances du marché en ligne a une formation bien faite supérieure, nous nous situons dans la moyenne, devenant quelque chose comme une niche de sites internets. En ce qui concerne les deux, le prix et les services, nous nous situons entre les deux. Prenant entre 15 et 23% (selon la valeur marchande de la propriété et la forme de l'accord passé avec le propriétaire), nous nous distinguons des locations effectuées directement avec les propriétaires de nombreuses façons.

Concernant les Locataires:

a) Nous allons visiter environ 90% des appartements inscrits sur notre site et vérifions leur descriptions et équipements.

b) Nous classons chaque et tout appartement avec nos marques de qualité. Voir Q&A de Parisreference.com pour les détails.

c) Tous les appartements présentent les commentaires impartiaux des clients (voir par exemple le commentaire négatif pour Location Appartement Colisée n°360 et quelques uns des commentaires positifs pour Location Appartement Colisée n°138b et Location Appartement Campo dei Fiori n°176).

d) Nous allons aider les clients en cas de problèmes et modérons en cas de désaccords avec le propriétaire.

Concernant les Propriétaires:

A) Nos clients s'engagent électroniquement à respecter nos Termes & Conditions de RomanReference.

B) Lorsque les arrivées s'effectuent à Rome, nous prenons les coordonnées de la carte de crédit pour la caution.

C) Pour les appartements localisés à Rome, nous aidons en cas d'urgence et notre équipe est constituée de personnes sachant bricoler proprement.

2008: Rome remplace Milan dans les sociétés d'affaires

Alleluia! Rome, qui compte presque 450,000 sociétés en activité entre ses frontières, remplace enfin Milan dans le domaine des services. Ce phénomène, qui devait arriver, montre un intérêt croissant, dont nous pouvons également espérer un changement dans la clientèle. Ces chiffres ne reflètent pas parfaitement l'afflux des étrangers à Rome, car de plus en plus d'entre eux viennent ici pour les affaires. Avec plus de 140 miliards d'euros en PIB, Rome se situe actuellement seulement en seconde position derrière Milan en Italie. Selon RomaEconomia, en comparaison avec les autres villes européennes sur le marché Européen, la totalité du PIB de Rome équivaut seulement aux deux tiers de celui de Paris, mais au triple de Copenhague et au double d'Amsterdam. Le PIB de Rome est également supérieur à celui de Barcelone (de 10% inférieur) et à celui de Berlin (de 20% inférieur). Si l'on compare le pouvoir d'achat à Rome, le pib par habitant diminue dramatiquement, ce qui donne moins d'intérêt à un salarié, mais plus d'intérêt (du moins sur le papier) pour nous, puisqu'il reflète une hausse du coût de la vie et peut donc nous donner une marge supérieure pour rivaliser avec les hôtels. Encore que, la croissance dramatique des revenus ces dix dernières années, a également ici des inconvénients. Les locations étaient si basses en comparaison avec la croissance des locations de vacances en 1997, qu'il était plus avantageux de discuter avec les propriétaires pour louer à court terme qu'à long terme. Pendant une décennie, le prix par mètre carré annuel s'est multiplié par 13 , tandis que le prix d'une chambre d'hôtel (que nous suivons) de seulement 10%!

A Rome aussi, le lobby hôtelier mène une guerre contre les Locations de Vacances

Avec la Norme Régionale n°16, approuvée en Novembre 2008, le lobbying Hôtelier obtient à Rome sa première victoire dans sa guerre contre les sociétés de locations de vacances. Les autres villes sont loin devant dans ce domaine, comme New-York, Copenhague et Amsterdam, où les locations touristiques de courtes durées sont déjà virtuellement impossibles si le propriétaire privé veut respecter la règle à la lettre. Rome prend ce chemin, l'ensemble des permis et documents pouvant facilement couter la moitié annuelle, soit plus qu'une location d'un mois ou deux. Après avoir fait tout ça, vous pouvez vérifier et être content du niveau de température de votre réfrigérateur! C'est la dernière nouvelle récemment entendue et un service sensationnel au lobby hôtelier!

Lobby hôtelier 3, Propriétaires de Locations de Vacances 0.

Hotel lobby wages war to Vacation Rentals also in Rome

With the Normativa Regionale n. 16 approved last November 2008 the Hotel lobby in Rome obtains its first victory in its war against the vacation rental industry. Other cities are far ahead in this like New York, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, where renting short time to tourists is already virtually impossible if the private owner wanted to follow the rule to the letter.
Rome is taking the path, gatering all the permits and documentation can easily cost half a year and more money than renting a full month or two. After you do, you get checked and can get fined for the temperature level of your refrigerator! Which is the last one we've heard of lately, and a stunning service to the hotel lobby!
Hotel lobby 3, Vacation Rental Owners 0.

2008: Rome takes over Milan in business companies

Alleluia! Rome with almost 450,000 of active companies within its boundaries finally overtakes Milan attending Cerved. It was bound to happen and it shows an interesting trend whereby we can also expect a clientele change. More like it already happens in Paris we're looking forward to welcoming some more business clients, as it stands in Rome tourism for us covers over 90% of our clientele. It doesn't exactly reflect the inflow of foreigners to Rome, more and more of which are here for business.
With over 140 billion of euros in GBP Rome currently is only second to Milan in Italy. Attending RomaEconomia, compared to the other European cities we are currently marketing in Europe, the aggregated GBP of Rome is only two thirds of Paris, but three times Copenhagen and the double of Amsterdam. Rome GPL is also bigger than Barcelona (10% smaller GBP) and Berlin (20% smaller GBP than Rome). When compared to purchasing power Rome's compared gbp per head falls dramatically, which makes it less interesting to an employeed worker, but more interesting (at least on paper) to us, since it reflects a comparatively higher cost of life which should give us better margins when competing to hotels. Yet the dramatic growth of income experienced in the last decade here has also drawbacks. Rents were so low compared to vacation rental income in 1997 that is was a leverage when talking owners into renting short term over long leases. Over a decade on cost per square meter in yearly leases has grown 13fold while cost of hotel rooms (which we tag to) a meager 10%!

2008 first year with no growth, was it the Crisis?

We've started RomanReference in 1997 and our website is online since 1998. 11 years on three/two digits growth has been constant. Not so in 2008. +3.94% in turnover (compared to an average growth rate 98/08 of 46.18% per year!); growth in visit to the website was a grim 5.69% (108,088,000 visits against 102,265,000 in 2007). Most notably, while the first half of 2008 saw a year to year growth of ca 30%, the second experienced an equivalent slowdown.
Was it the Credit Crunch Crisis?!
Yes, but not just.
Being an internet based company we're very dependent on the online business, more precisely the organic searches which determine over half of our unique site visits and shows a dismal -0,20% decrease.
What happened?! In March/April 2007 we revolutionized our website. Translating it in over 10 different languages (it used to be english only); creating instant booking, clients' feedbacks and interactivity. Perversely these major improvements, along with a SEO who didn't really know how to cope with dynamic websites optimization (or just didn't care to work properly), affected our google ranking dramatically making us disappear from queries results (only english and italian ones luckily) since the beginning of this year. Google's organic searches alone represent over 40% of our traffic so it's easy to figure how hard a blow...
Since last June we've finally changed SEO and we're slowly climbing back up the ranking mountain.
And the crisis? Hotels are laying off staff by the hundreds in Rome. If I listen to my competitors I should assume that's biting in too. Also looking at the average search volume for queries like Rome Apartment or Apartments Rome if I compare december (which is normally above average) with the yearly based monthly average I see a 20% decrease in searches. Let's face it, we're right in the middle of a consistent slow down.
I guess than it's a combination of the two. Maybe after all the website improvements will help us thread through the crisis period. We'll see.