Best Country Index

Now let's look at the index from the opposite perspective. Which nationality would be best to invest into?
We took into consideration a different range of factors.
Primarily the nation's absolute values in terms of market share with us (their number of visits and conversion rate) and gave it a value of 3/8th.
Then it's growth rate compared to the overall market share (both in visits and conversions) 2/8th.
It's own growth rate in visit numbers: 1/8th
Finally we looked at the nation's conversion rate and its year on year growth with it: 2/8th.
The outcome is meant to represent the present + near future (growth rate) value of a nationality and therefore how worthy of investment it is.
1- USA: 121
2- France: 111
3- Italy: 104
4- Denmark: 99
5- Australia: 98
6- Canada: 94
7- Norway: 84
8- Switzerland: 83

From there on all values go below benchmark.

Misery Index 3: looking at our own from a different perspective

After a close look at Moody's index (although some critics rightly argue that fiscal deficit has little to do with misery itself unless you link it to other measures) I considered working the index by conversion rate (number of visits by actual bookings). In one word the 'window shopping effect'. There has been some discussing about high streets being as busy as ever only for consumers to end their shopping spree in front of the shop's window and go back home empty handed.

Now if we look at the window shopping (and add the smaller countries Moody's arguably included into their index), our outcome is strikingly similar to Moody's. From worst performing up:
1. Latvia & Iceland & Jamaica (0% conversion, although the actual visitors numbers -except for Iceland- grew respectively by 40% and 66%!)
2. Romania (0.32% conversion against a 300% growth in visitors numbers!)
3. Estonia (0.59% per 100% growth in visits)
4. Greece (0.97% per 75% growth in visits)
5. Spain (1.13%)
6. Ireland (1.20%)
7. Poland (1.35%)
8. U.K. (1.47%)
9. USA (1.49%)

We also looked at it through yet another perspective: 'Price Sorting'. When you do a search on our websites you can sort the reults by price. This feature has been used 35% more this year than the previous, but, most importantly, it has seen a growth in bounce rate (the percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page) of 77%, despite the fact that we have 35% more apartments on offer than last year and prices have, if anything, gone a little bit down. This is a good window to show the crisis effect. Looking at it from this perspective (I only looked at the big numbers this time) the UK is faring particularly badly (67% bounce rate compared to 23% last year), followed by the US (63% bounce rate against 40% last year).

Misery Index by Moody's

Image credit: NYTimes
Chance had it that Moody's misery index came out just after ours ;)
If you look at the attached chart it matches ours pretty well besides the two anomalies noted on our previous post.
Are Americans unaware of their incoming misery and Germans too risk adverse? Or, burning question, are all those indexes just a funny little game for white collars?

Misery Index by Roman Reference's count Vs the official one

Every day we read on financial news the list of countries and nationalities suffering worst from the crisis.

Here in Western Europe we like to think that our welfare system + high private saving society shielded us from the worst, in spite of GDP figures going worse then average. The theory goes that GDP went down because we're export oriented countries and demand from profligate countries fell. Yet, the theory continues, if you look at the fiscal deficit and unemployment growth rate you'll see who are the really sick ones.

Whatever, I'm not going to argue on the general theory, I'd just like to make our experience public as a sort of BigMac Index. Let's see which nationalities really cut spending on holidays in 2009 as compared to a year earlier, worse to best.
WORSE
1. Germany: They lost 7 percentage points compared to a year earlier.
2. Poland: They lost 2.3 percentage points
3. The U.K.: They lost 2.2 percentage points
4. Spain: minus 1.4 percentage points
5. Ireland: minus 1 percentage points
6. Austria: minus 0.5 percentage points

BEST
USA: increase of 6.5 percentage points
France: increase 2 percentage points
Italy: increase 1.5 percentage points
Danemark: increase 1.2 percentage points
Australia: 1 percentage point

One note, this statistic was made using market share, not nominal growth. Therefore those nationalities (like US and Germany) holding large shares of our market were obviously more likely to bigger jumps or falls.

Still, Germany's fall is huge! We all know Poland, UK, Spain and Ireland are suffering (Greece, baltic countries and Island, getting a lot of headlines, are too small in market share to make sense counting in this contest). Nobody told us (in the news I mean) that the Germans were suffering like that! Did we uncover something? Or is it just travel? Or just us?

And the Americans... reading the headlines you would think they're bankrupt. Not on our experience! France, DK and Australia we all know are faring better than others. But what happened to us Italians? We're also bankrupt in the news! What's all this traveling about?

Is TripAdvisor turning into a User Generated Theocracy?

In Washington DC last October after attending a keynote conference by Steve Kaufer I felt uplifted. Here I was, sharing a room with Steve (and 500 other people). Elegant, gentle and soft-spoken he fitted the image I had foreseen. All of us need idols, well, Steve is one of them for me! When he started tripadvisor our website was already a young adult yet I couldn't but look upon the baby genius growing dramatically and way above our head. I was still fiddling with an html booking form when he had invented user generated content and envisioned web 2.0.
Now I wonder, does he know what's become of his website's forums? Namely Rome, but I'm sure it's no different for other destinations. It's a closed club for gossiping with a couple of destination experts (or wanna-be's) bossing around and using the tripadvisor terms as a tool to ban posts or even users they don't like. Going into the forums feels just like entering a Temple now. You go in hesitantly, take off your shoes, feel spied, unwelcome and if you talk the wrong time or the wrong way you immediately get kicked out of the place without explanation. I don't think this is what you wanted, Steve.
Go in unnoticed, if you manage, listen and feel the atmosphere. It reeks theocracy. You're the deus ex machina, so go check yourself the mess your guardians are making of your temple and, please, fix it!

European Green City Index - Rome Faring a little better than expected

Rome ranked 14th overall in the European Green City Index. Mainly just after the major Western European cities and before all Eastern European Capitals + Dublin and Athens.
It ranked among the first 10 for CO2 and Renewable Energy Use (19% of total output, so it ranked 4th) Indexes. Surpraisingly it ranked above average also on public transportation use (44%). Altogether better than expected, praises ofcourse go to the previous administration for the renewable energies effort and to the Rutelli administration for the transportation. To this moment the current administration has done precious little (see almost literally nothing) for better green city standards.

The Vacation Rental Market: A Case Study 1/Critical Mass

If markets were Seas, Vacation Rental would make Financial look like Lake Quiet.
Less murderous? Think again.
Astern Dead Quiet: If we look at turnover there are no waves behind us. Right now I can't figure how to upload the chart to my blog, but if you looked at our growth rate you'd see that wave, three digits high at the end of last century, go flatter and flatter in the 2000s, eventually nearing the treacherous waters of growth 0. And, mind you, that is in spite of expansion to 10 additional cities and 10 different language markets (our website used to be English only until 2006!).
Some waves are actually kicking though: That is, ouch!, expenses. Its growth rate goes more than double as fast vs turnover. And, ah, bookings! Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention, work has actually grown dramatically! Number of contracts per fiscal year has grown to a staggering 130% since 2006. What's going down is the revenue per contract which has shrunk to -40%.
Tsunamis & Giant Icebergs: What's rocking the boat? Are we heading right against the storm or we just passed through it? I mean, we're still alive and kicking, are we bound to drown or are we just fresh off the boat? Is it the Crisis? Lake Quiet? Mmmm, we are all seeing things happen around us, aren't we? Vacation Rental Managers and their websites are multiplying, I see new players everyday pop up online with their off-the-shelf codes and swanky pictures. They're welcome! Maybe the crisis is not all that bad for our market, after all vacation rentals is how you save on hotels, isn't it?
There is something else we see out there in the open Seas, we see listing websites booming and boasting, or rather... aggregating. Listing websites...
Ok, wait a minute, what are they up to? HomeAway is using brute force to eat and digest whatever is moving, Flipkey is getting there virally, shouldered by its buddies... big guys, I wish I had that kind of bodyguards, Tripadvisor and Expedia (oh yes)! These are like giant icebergs rather than tsunamis. They're hanging in there. They won't pop up if you google 'rome apartment' or the like, no, they float like little Worlds and smile at you (managers? you!).
Now Smile. Freeze...
Or, may be, we could aggregate ourselves! Sync our listings via xml files and just funnel bookings directly through to the single manager. This is what would create the Critical Mass we need. Manager? Think about it and... let's talk!