Great news. Our efforts to seek out additional NEW audiences are working!

The approach for our off-peak season is a concerted effort to increase the audiences our area has reached historically. The enhanced exposure should help to offset the impact of the stop movement order for the immediate future and, looking ahead, will help maintain rate integrity. The goal is that our shoulder season success won’t hinge on the extended stays and allow for more short-stays thereby working to extend out peak season and shrink our shoulder season. The audiences we’re focusing on this fall include; European travelers, hotel-travelers, aggregators for loyalty/rewards program networks, event group sales specific to our destination, and short-notice-specific booking platforms. Here’s a breakdown of how we’re accomplishing our goal…

European Audiences

We have begun the onboarding process with HomeToGo. Founded in Germany in 2014, HomeToGo operates local apps & websites in 25 countries across Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Asia-Pacific. The site began as a metasearch aggregator for the vacation rental industry primary focused in Europe which has helped to make them the marketplace with the world's largest selection of vacation rentals. HomeToGo also operates brands such as Agriturismo.it, AMIVAC, Casamundo, CaseVacanza.it, e-domizil, EscapadaRural, Tripping.com and Wimdu; altogether they operate more than 25 travel websites. While our properties were already listed on this site, they were through their metasearch efforts where listings from sites like Vrbo and booking.com are brought onto the site. Currently, we’re building out the direct connection with HomeToGo as directly listed properties receive preferential placement on their sites. Again, this effort is to reach out to the European audience which has been largely disallowed from US travel for 2+ years and are eager to return.

Hotel-Travelers and Loyalty/Rewards Program Audiences

As mentioned earlier, we nearing the end of a very long onboarding process where many of the properties will be available to an entirely new audience through Marriott. This new audience will include more travelers who previously only considered hotels as well as their loyalty program members, Bonvoy. While not all of our properties have qualified to be included on this channel, we will reach out to you if your property wasn’t listed on our first round of onboarding to assist in making necessary changes to ensure that the property can be included should you wish to be on this new marketplace.

Event Group Sales Audience

The connections forged in our local community are very valuable. The time spent as the treasurer, and later as the marketing committee chair, for VisitPensacola all while being the designated representative for all of Perdido Key lodging helped to make the right connections. Most recently we were asked to assist with providing lodging for the upcoming SEC Women’s Soccer Tournament which is scheduled for October 30-November 6 of this year. Pensacola is scheduled to host this event for 2 years with a possible 3 year extension. Sports tourism is a growing source of revenue for our area and we’re hopeful that Pensacola Sports Association continue to attract qualify events. Often, when working with groups sales and events planners, we find that hotels often win in securing their bookings. The reason for this is that their booking policies are more appealing; specifically, that they allow travelers to cancel on shorter notice. As marketplace websites such as Vrbo and Airbnb have continued to impose more lax booking policies on vacation rental operators for years, a silver lining is that it makes the consideration of flexible policies less off-putting. Currently, we are actively working with lodging coordinators for this and future events that are scheduled for our shoulder seasons.

Short-notice (and more Loyalty/Rewards Program) Audiences

As we’re seeing more and more reservations come in on short notice, we sought out a platform which focuses specifically on a short-notice booking window. Hopper, as the number one travel app in North American, excels in generating short notice bookings and functions as a partner for Capital One, Amadeus, Kayak, Trip.com, and MakeMyTrip. This along with the Marriott connection above will bring fantastic exposure not otherwise seen by most vacation rental properties in our area.

Watching the Tropics

While the exposure to these targeted audiences above is great, on the operational side of things know that we’re working through completion of post-summer deep cleans and watching the tropics closely. Below is a snapshot of the current spaghetti models for a disturbance labeled Invest 98L. At the moment, the National Hurricane Center is giving it an 80% chance of cyclone formation within the next 48 hours and 90% chance of formation within the next 5 days. While we’re hopeful that the experts are getting this wrong, and it’s too soon to make a decision on whether or not to begin prepping properties, we’re also ready should we need to begin our hurricane readiness efforts. It’s my understanding that the cool front headed our way will be helpful in keeping it away from our area. Fingers crossed. If the time comes where we do need to begin preparing the properties for inclement weather, my team will reach out and can handle everything here for you.

Thanks for your continued partnership and I look forward to seeing you in Perdido Key again soon!