Getaway Earth was born out of an idea to build a holiday rental site with more personality and interactivity than other sites on the web. As we begin 2010 we felt like sharing the past year with you; to give you an insight into our world. We’re not going to try and sell to you, nor will we drone on about our unique features (although we do have a few…); we’d prefer instead to talk about the dream and how it shaped into reality. Tell us what you think, we’d really love to hear from you…
The Idea for Getaway Earth
Through years of renting holiday homes we found that listing sites never really captured the personality and knowledge of the owner. The great thing about independent holiday rentals is that you are buying something unique and the owner often has really good knowledge of the local area. But we’ve rarely seen that coming through in traditional holiday rental sites. It’s through that experience that the idea for Getaway Earth began – to build a more personal and interactive site.
Starting a Holiday Rental Site is Easy Right?
WRONG! We very quickly realised it’s a tough business. And, although a simple concept (owner lists, renter searches, the two meet), it’s bloody hard to execute well! It’s also a pretty saturated market. A phrase a chap called “Windy” made on an owner forum called Lay My Hat comes to mind…
“It’s getting very crowded out there with new web sites in our area springing up like mushrooms after autumn rain”.
The phrase struck a chord, as so often the truth does. But we also took that phrase in the most positive way possible – the market doesn’t want (nor need) another mushroom; but it does need something fresh and new that lasts beyond the autumn rain (think spring bulbs that grow and last through all seasons!). The message: Create something different and long lasting.
Create Something Different and Long Lasting
As the meerkat says: “Simples”. Unfortunately not! At the start of 2009, well before the mushroom comment, we wrote a 28 page document on the industry: Who are the market leaders? How much do they charge? What are the opportunities to be different? At that stage it was merely a dream of something different, far from reality. However we all start with dreams don’t we? Isn’t it where creativity takes shape?
The challenge, as we all know, is to act on the dream. But how? With serious full time jobs, family lives, no money to invest, no programming experience, no design experience, where on earth do you start? Another phrase we like comes to mind… “Things are often made very complex – it is simpler to make things complicated than to keep them simple”. So we didn’t dwell on the obstacles and instead chose to begin the journey, trying hard to keep it simple. And of course prayed for some luck along the way!
First Steps
Luck came along immediately in the shape of a developer (and friend) who agreed to build the basic site for peanuts and a designer (and friend again!) who worked for free. It took many months working all the evenings and weekends possible. We made many mistakes, many revisions and had a few cross words!
By the time we reached the summer of 2009 we had a prototype. But it was still our dream, rather than a working reality. So we decided to contact some owners to list with us and provide feedback. That early feedback from people like Richard Lyon, Thomas Dowson, Ros Sones, Mark Burningham and many more was invaluable in finding the bugs, fixing them, refining the site and adding new features. Not to mention the encouragement they gave us for which we’re so grateful.
By the end of the summer we had something more than a prototype and a site we were proud of. It was far from the finished product and we still had so many ideas, but in the end you have to start somewhere! And, as a web based business, we’ve also learnt that the SEO process is a long one, so better to start and build than wait for perfection. One problem: With zero marketing money how on earth were we going to get our name out there in such a competitive market?
Social Media
For people in our position the modern web is an amazing tool because it offers a number of free ways to market your product. You can instantly reach people through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and more. And, with the recent integration of social media into Google results, it can be powerful. The difficulty, though, is in understanding how to use those mediums to generate traffic and listings whilst respecting the no spam etiquette. Well, actually, the moment you spam is the moment people switch off – it’s not just poor etiquette, it’s pointless!
So how do we use social media in the most effective way? We’re relative virgins in this area, so we’re trying different ways and learning by doing. The biggest lesson is not to be afraid of trying since we’re not convinced that anyone yet knows how to use social media effectively in a commercial way. The next biggest lesson we’ve learnt is to engage with people: Be interesting; ask questions; seek feedback; offer help. Web 2.0 is just like life – no quick wins! To be honest that’s the area we’ve not been so good at this far, but the penny has dropped so let’s see how we go.
Blogging
As for the world of blogs, we’re total newbies. But, once again, we have been lucky to receive the very generous support of experienced people like Darren Cronian at Travel Rants who has encouraged us to be more open and engaging (he took a look at our first few blogs and was very diplomatic in guiding us down a different route!). This page is inspired by that direction and we hope that by opening up and explaining our story you’ll see there is genuine desire to create something long term and interesting.
What Next?
And so we arrive at the start of 2010 with just over 250 listings and a handful of people visiting our site each day. That, of course, is a problem – we are up against some sites with over 100,000 listings and 1m monthly visitors! As much as we are proud of what has been achieved so far, we are still at the very early stages. Will we get 100,000 listings and over 1m visits each month any time soon? Not a chance. Does that mean we give up? Not a chance. Will we slowly build awareness, refine the site, add new features and keep trying to build a successful, personal and interactive vacation rental site? Absolutely yes!
on February 3, 2010 at 1:27 am
A refreshingly honest post that gives me hope for this industry. So many listing sites are boring, same-old offerings that give little confidence that the site owners have thought beyond the (few) bucks they might make. I think you are a breath of fresh air and will be interested to see what happens next.
on February 4, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Seconded Heather! Easy to see that Andy is totally sincere and 100% motivated. It’s a very nice site and I think it delivers just what he set out to achieve. I especially like the “Places of Interest” function.
As for financing a new venture, I can relate to his experiences of starting up with zero finance: we’re in a closely related activity as our site offers an accreditation service to holiday rental owners, with a seal of approval that is designed to engender confidence in holidaymakers to book direct-with-owner, since it seeks to identify “owners who care”. viz who want to give their guests a great vacation experience. We didn’t have the benefit of a designer to lend a hand unfortunately, although we have been very lucky to have on board now a holiday rental owner who is also a marketing pro, and the website was built by another owner for the love of it, over many weeks. What a learning curve it proved to be too. If he wasn’t an absolute pro at the start, he sure as hell is now, and we’ve been very lucky.
As for me, I am the sole PR person (with no formal qualifications for the role) and do pretty much what Andy is doing in my spare time; Andy, do you have a day job? Who’s bringing home the bacon?
If you hang in there I’m sure you’ll succeed. You deserve to, – and when you do, don’t allow yourself to be bought out by the dreaded HA group, no matter how many $$$ they offer to throw at you!
I will add my property when I get a minute, and best of British meanwhile!
on February 4, 2010 at 10:26 pm
The comment about the mushrooms wasn’t meant unkindly and I’m glad you took it positively. I very much like the way you have developed this site. It deserves to do well. There a handful of new sites that will outlive the others because they are offering something a bit different to a simple listing and this is one of them. The refreshing honesty of this post perhaps shows why – it’s an attitude thing. I hope that your obvious passion for what you doing pays off. It’s a long hard grind but once you get some traction it should work becsue what you have is a good “product”. As Jane says don’t you dare sell out to HA when it does
on February 6, 2010 at 8:34 am
Thanks to you all for the generous comments. Of course potential needs converting into real results and that’s the toughest part! How on earth do you get that message out there in such a crowded market; that traction you refer to Windy? If you have any suggestions we would of course love to hear them.
We do have a genuine desire and passion to offer something different and we’ll keep developing the site in that vein; we have a few more features to add. As for selling out to HA, that’s never been why we started this. We started it to offer something more personal; to offer a viable alternative to the HA domination. And that’s our focus this year, we really want to succeed and we’re please that, so far, people believe we have a chance (however slim!). Thanks again!
on February 6, 2010 at 10:40 pm
I like this site and wish it well. I had stopped listing on new sites unless I saw some special potential, and this site presented that.
I also think the most difficult aspect of having a vacation rental site is getting owners to list. We have all been disappointed in the past with sites that literally came and went in a flash. Now, we have to be motivated to go through the routine of listing with a new site. It’s got to look good, be easy to navigate, come free of charge for at least a year of trial and have some angle that will help set it apart in some way.
Once owners are on board, the rental guests will follow suit if all the optimization has been done so that they find it and know the site exists.
But even once perfected, a VR site needs to tap the presence and power of social media to really make an impact, IMO.
Best of luck, Andy! Sylvia
on February 7, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Sylvia thank you for the comments. We have aimed from the start to follow a similar route to the one you mention – tried to make it look good, gave away 1,000 free lifetime listings, and tried to create some angles to set us apart.
We aren’t quite there yet but felt that starting was critical in order to build presence on the web and achieve that eventual goal of making our site easy to find by renters in a crowded space.
As for social media, we’re still finding our way. But one thing’s for sure – we’ve been blown away by the response to this blog; so many comments and emails have come in (not all good!) that we feel a follow up post is needed soon…
on February 8, 2010 at 6:01 am
Communication is the key to success!
on February 8, 2010 at 6:04 am
Pursuant to my last remark, I think you need to have an option on this blog where new posts will be sent to those subscribed. I participate in over 50 blogs/forums/chats and those where I am most active are the ones that notify me of new posts/comments, etc.
Again, communication is the key to success.
on February 8, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Thanks Sylvia. We have indeed added a subscribe feature so we look forward to welcoming you as one of our first subscribers! Thanks for the nudge. As for communication, well we’ve just put up a new blog on the power of feedback http://bit.ly/9jVbwH
on February 13, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Well done – you seem to building a community for renters – I know how difficult this is having started a vacation rentals site in 1997 and had one of the first two sites to focus on vacation rentals in France – for a while I had one of the top five sites in the world for vacation rentals with over 5,000 listings (way back in 2001) but made serious mistakes in 2004, got very badly hacked, chose an evil partner so now am back to my little website with our own property and starting over.
I believe the key is to keep in touch with your community and offer ways they can interact plus ways to link and push their property pages out into the other communities (which you are doing
)
The difficulty will be to make money from this, once you have established a free community of owners and renters, getting them to be happy to pay you is tricky. I tried a load of things, the best feedback was a “Pay Per Lead” structure I made – all adverts were always free and an outline details of an inquiry was given so an owner could evaluate it, then they could choose to pay a few cents for the contact details if it looked good. This, plus a community (I still have 10,000 subscribers) and keeping personal contact through newsletters and blogs is my suggestion.
Bonne Chance
Tony
on February 14, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Thanks for the post Tony and the compliments. We’d really like to hear a little more about the mistakes you made and the hacking issue. Any wisdom you can impart to help us avoid similar pitfalls would be really welcome.
As for making money, we’ve said it before and we won’t tire of saying it, this venture was not about getting rich. We simply want to create something that’s more interactive and personal; an alternative to the massive and sometimes faceless listing sites. If we get to 1,000 listings we will start charging, but in a really simple and transparent way since that’s the value base that site has been built on so far. Meaning we’ll go for a straight annual subscription, but a very modest one. And any money will go straight back into marketing.
Your suggestion about keeping personal contact is also spot on. It’s brought us this far and we’re very aware that success only comes by listening to others and building trust. That trust has huge value and we will always respect it.
Thanks again for posting and, as mentioned above, it’d be great if could share your wisdom on the mistakes and hacking issues.
on February 22, 2010 at 8:23 am
re: listing sites never really captured the personality and knowledge of the owner. The great thing about independent holiday rentals is that you are buying something unique and the owner often has really good knowledge of the local area. But we’ve rarely seen that coming through in traditional holiday rental sites. It’s through that experience that the idea for Getaway Earth began – to build a more personal and interactive site.
You are so right ! I am one of those owners who find it difficult to put across that when you rent our apartment in Lyon,France: you are getting more than an apartment. The package comes with my husband and myself and we really do everything we can to make our guests’ stay enjoyable and also we offer an element of comfort for anglophones who do not speak French if they have a problem or an emergency.
The rental listing site is tough but I think there is a market out there for people who are looking for that little bit more and owners who are prepared to give it, because they are proud of their city, their country and want to share it with travelers.
So keep at it.
Dominique