Good news, it's Friday!
If you don't already know, we're hosting a webinar this upcoming Tuesday 2/2 at 8:00 AM PST. We'll give a high-level demonstration of how OwnerRez looks across all of its menus and features, and have a Q&A section to answer any questions you have. The session is free to join, but you need to use the sign-up for OwnerRez Demo webinar link to register.
In December, short-term rentals were allowed to operate again on Oahu Hawaii Island and Kauai. Maui County had over 250,800 available vacation rentals, making it the largest vacation rental supply out of all four Hawaiian counties. In December, they had a 41.9% occupancy rate with an average daily rate of $277. Meanwhile, hotels only had an occupancy rate of 23.8%. Shocker: travelers like vacation rentals more than hotels.
Jersey Shore is seeing high demand for vacation rentals in the wake of coronavirus. Not only are they seeing high demand, tourism highs in the fall have broken the previous year's records with a revenue increase of 6.5%. In Cape May County, 47% of homes are considered second or vacation homes, so lack of vacation rentals is not an issue. This increase in demand is being fueled by the flexibility associated with remote work and online schooling.
VRM Intel released a customer survey on how many people traveled in 2020 after March or - as its better known - the start of the craziness known as Covid-19. The survey showed that out of 1,860 participants, 21.5% had traveled somewhere. Of those people, 31.1% chose to stay in a vacation rental versus the 53.3% who stayed in hotels. When you compare age groups, the group that most often chose vacation rentals was the 25-34 age range at 39.4%. Travelers 65+ chose vacation rentals the least often at only 21.1%.
The 4th annual #BookDirect guest education day is February 3rd. This day is meant for vacation rental providers to promote the message that there are a lot of advantages to bypassing third-party channels and booking direct. OwnerRez supports the #BookDirect movement! If you don't know already, you can have your own direct booking hosted website through OwnerRez. We are continually working to add more features to our hosted websites and we have some exciting updates coming out very soon!
