Kigo Blog

Optimizing Your Vacation Rental Website with A/B Testing

Website optimization is the practice of modifying your website content and testing variations to find the copy/image/call to action that is the best at converting website visitors into bookers. A/B testing programs will split your webpage traffic into 2 groups (or more depending on the number of variations you are using), and shows each group different content, after a period of time, you will be able to determine which content piece converts the most.

Many vacation rental marketing professionals neglect A/B testing, having confidence in their content, and often overlooking the diverse needs of their website visitors. Remember that what seems logical and good to us, is not always what will convert the best.  That is why A/B testing is so important for marketers.

ab testing sample

A/B Testing Combination Samples:

With A/B testing you can test a combination of content variations: Read More

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By: Francesca Nurlu

Vacation Rental Scams and How to Combat Them

The internet; a land of opportunity for vacation rental advertising and unfortunately, vacation rental scammers. In recent years there has been an increase in vacation rental scams threatening the vacation rental industry. Fraudsters are using elaborate phishing schemes to obtain personal information from property owners to imitate genuine vacation rentals. By using holiday home owners’ property photos and information, scammers are operating fraudulent vacation rental businesses and tricking vacationers into sending over money.

vacation rental scam

Scams are becoming even harder to filter out for holiday hunters and regrettably they can often end up victims of vacation-rental phishing. The increasing exploitation of vacation rentals is a warning to vacation rental owners to tighten up on online security measures to prevent identity theft and violation of their businesses. Read More

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By: Chloe Young

Staying In The Loop: This Week’s Vacation Rental Industry Buzz

Industry-NewsHouseTrip’s new loyalty program, global travel trends for 2013, the constant legal battle of Airbnb with city housing regulation and its outcome in Amsterdam, and emergency preparedness for Vacation Rentals have taken the spotlight this week in vacation rental industry news.

Whether you want to show your industry expertise, or you want to be in the loop with the latest industry legislation as it relates to your vacation rental management, you won’t want to miss these news snippets.

Industry Buzz for June 7-14

HouseTrip rewards loyalty with new program

In order to increase loyalty among its customers, HouseTrip has launched a new loyalty program where guests receive 1 night free when they collect 10 nights. The program is free to join, and all HouseTrip members are automatically entered to win. According to Tnooz.com, to celebrate their current and past customers, HouseTrip has offered up 3,000 free room nights as part of the program’s introduction. Read More

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By: Francesca Nurlu

Google Adwords for Vacation Rentals: Understanding Different Google Advertising Options

Google-Adwords-TypesAs our Vacation Rental Marketing blog has illustrated, there are many ways in which you can advertise and promote your vacation rental properties. If you have an independent vacation rental website, you are already ahead of the curve and building your brand reputation while increasing leads.

The digital Vacation Rental landscape has become quite competitive. If you have newly launched your own vacation rental website, it may take time before you start seeing the results in terms of ranking high on search engines. A quick and easy fix for this is to advertise on search engines through Google Adwords, Bing Ads and Yahoo Ads. Due to its high market share, this week we will focus on setting up a Google Adwords account.

Types of Google Ads: Image, Text, Animated & Video

There are different ways in which you can advertise your property on Google’s search engine and its partner networks. Read More

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By: Francesca Nurlu

Kigo Vacation Rentals Workshop: Paris

Kigo Vacation Rentals Workshop: Paris

The Kigo team is very excited to announce July's educational workshop for vacation rental managers. Register now to secure your place at the Kigo Vacation Rentals Workshop which will be hosted in Paris! Places are limited, but there are still some free tickets available for you to register your agency and discuss the biggest issues and innovations within the online travel industry today.

We’re bringing together some of the biggest names in online travel, so in addition to key members of the Kigo team there will be representatives from Homelidays, Cities Reference, RentXpress, Only Apartments, Holiday Lettings (from TripAdvisor) and many more to discuss the main topics at the heart of the industry.

Following the success of the first Kigo Vacation Rentals Workshop last month, we are pleased to announce the second; in Paris on June 26th. We’ll be meeting at InterContinental Paris, 64 Avenue Marceau, 75008 Paris, from 2pm and we really hope you can make it.

The tentative event schedule for the day will be:

  • The event will open up with an overview from Kigo CEO Shawn Convery,
  • Only Apartments opens the discussion on How to Maximise the Marketing Potential of Data and Analytics
  • A brief showcase of the Kigo system.
  • Networking break with refreshments for our guests to meet the portals and the Kigo team
  • We will then break up into smaller groups to discuss key industry issues like SEO for vacation rentals agencies, how to maximize your email marketing and how to get the most out of analytics, and many more. Many key figures from the portals will be managing these workshops, including Guglielmo Parasporo (co-founder of Cities Reference) Ramon Glieneke (Commercial Director of Only Apartments) and many more. Once the workshops are complete, each group will then present their conclusions to the rest of the groups.
  • This will be followed by a networking break for all the agencies and portals to meet face-to-face and make valuable new connections over a cocktail or two. It will be a really useful opportunity to meet new contacts and connections and give your views on the industry.

If you are interested in this great educational seminar, please join us at InterContinental Paris, Avenue Marceau  at 2pm. We look forward to welcoming you there on June 26th. If you would like to register (which we highly recommend) for the event, please do so here. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email us at contact@kigo.net.    

Posted

By: Anthony Dodd

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