Property Owners
WorldEscape is one of the longest established World Serviced Apartments rental sites and is well know and trusted on the net.
Thanks to the advanced WorldEscape.com Reservation and Booking System we deliver bookings without you to worry about sending e-mails or booking management.
We charge owners between 10% and 15% commission for any confirmed booking we get for your property, depending on booking plan you choose. Direct or on request bookings. If you have an apartment, vacation home, holiday apartment, apart hotel, spare room, operate a bed and breakfast, hotel or a hostel in one of the top cities and need some extra bookings WorldEscape.com is the site to add your property. WorldEscape.com receive nearly every inquiry for accommodation in on of the top city through the many sites we operate in. So when you add your property we can guarantee you a high percentage of bookings. As our site caters for all budgets and all accommodation types, we receive all types of inquiries from vacation rentals to hotels and everything in between.
Ways to add your property to WorldEscape.com
Two options
1. Real Time Live Reservations
You are given a username and password on joining and you use this to update your availability on our site. When a guest decides to reserve your property, he enters his credit card details and confirms his booking
10% of the booking amount is charged to his card as a booking deposit. You also receive a confirmed booking mail informing you of the booking you have just received.
You can then contact the guest to ask any questions and to send any directions you may want to and get check in time.
The guest pays the balance on arrival.
2. On Request Basis
When you register you are given a user name or password
using this user name and password you log in and add your property
When a guest wishes to reserve your property send a "Availability request" to you (copy goes automatically to us also. You reply to request (Yes or No), copy comes to us and a copy goes to the guest. If you said YES and the guest wishes to book they just go to the payment link and fill in their details with credit card and the booking is then confirmed. We charge his card 15% of the booking amount as a booking deposit. You also receive a confirmed booking mail informing you of the booking you have just received.
Getting more Bookings
Properties offering Real time booking receive over 50% more bookings than properties on request basis. Guests will just not wait any more, Everyone wants instant bookings nowadays and do not want to wait for replies to mails. If you are an apartment owner and you want to receive bookings from WorldEscape.com
The Three Vital Components of an Effective Accommodation Listing
Over the past decade, the Web has radically changed the accommodation business, allowing independent property owners to challenge the monopoly previously enjoyed (and abused) by hotels. Suddenly, an owner with even just one or two apartments could take on the big hotel chains, reaching out and connecting directly with potential guests from all over the world. Email meant that, even if the owner wasn't always available to take phone calls, potential guests could make enquires at any time of the night or day, 365 days a year. The later advent of online availability checkers and booking systems meant that potential guests could immediately know if their preferred dates were available, saving owners the valuable time they would otherwise waste responding to enquiries that would not result in a booking.
The most innovative independent property owners were quick to spot the potential of the Internet to turn the entire business on its head and adapted rapidly to maximize their new advantages over the staid and slow moving hotels, especially the large international chains who seemed oblivious to the whole thing until just the last few years. By the time the hotels woke up to the Internet - and, indeed, learnt how to use it to their own advantage - the independent accommodation sector had already established itself as a credible alternative and, now, a significant proportion of travelers actively seek out the greater comfort and value of short stay apartments and vacation rentals rather than hotels.
Right now, today, at this very moment in time, people all over the world are searching for places to stay in your city, hoping to discover the ideal place to spend a few days or a few weeks; all you have to do is reach out and give them the details they need, they will be happy to have found you.
As the owner of your property, you are the very best person to write about it and to describe the advantages it offers to guests. In the ten years that we have been in this business, we have learnt a lot about what makes an accommodation listing result in more bookings and we would like to help you to present the knowledge you already have about your property in the most effective manner possible, and there are three vital components:
1. First Impressions
Your introductory paragraph and, perhaps, another short descriptive paragraph, set the tone but you must understand that vast majority of people don't really read anything when looking at websites. Attention spans online have plummeted and most of your listing's visitors will merely skim the words you have invested so much care and attention into. For that reason, it is vital that you keep these one of two paragraphs short, effective and too the point. Don't spend time waffling; the sight of long, tedious paragraphs will merely make people reach for the back button. Instead, spend that time editing your pitch down, making it ever more concise - be economic with your visitor's attention, there isn't much of it to go around. Most importantly, spend some time working out an evocative headline that sums up your property's unique proposition - that headline may well be the only thing that some visitors actually read before impatiently scrolling down to find photos to look at instead.
2. Lists, Lists, Lists
One form of words that people are quite happy to run their eyes over are lists, because they know that someone has taken the time to compile, in the most concise possible form, the nitty gritty of what your property has to offer them.
For instance, what facilities and features does it offer? Take the time to list everything, from the big ticket items such as jacuzzis and televisions, to the small, thoughtful items such as umbrellas, irons and sewing kits.
How about the location? Don't confine yourself to simply listing nearby tourist attractions and transport links, your guests might also want to know about more mundane facilities such as nearby stores, cinemas, gyms, bicycle rental stores etc.
You never know what your potential guest might be looking for, so, list as much as possible, feel free to run amok with frenzied listing - you won't run out of space on the Web!
~ A Quick Digression on Words and The Importance of Keeping Them Attached to Reality ~
The most important thing, in both your opening paragraphs and your many, many lists, is to give a good, clear description of the property itself. Obviously, your instinct will be to describe it in the most attractive terms possible but it is very important not to mislead - nothing upsets a guest more than to feel that they have been conned, even the smallest deviation from what they were expecting can result in a tired traveler, already grumpy after a long flight, being disproportionately disappointed. Be aware, too, that on the Internet bad news travels fast, unhappy customers will be quick to write about their experience and that will turn up every time someone Googles you. Once your reputation has been torpedoed online, it is almost impossible to turn that around, so, it is much smarter to be completely upfront about any aspects of your property that might possibly affect a guest's stay, such as one bedroom being unusually small or overlooking a very noisy street or having no windows. Most potential guests will appreciate your honesty and are mature enough to take everything into the balance when deciding whether your property suits their needs. More importantly, because they have been forewarned, they will not be upset to discover it for themselves, are more likely to enjoy their stay and will be more likely to leave positive reviews on the major travel websites. People don't expect perfection but they do expect honesty.
3. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words ... and a video is worth approximately 12,400 words at current exchange rates.
Of course, your biggest advantage in describing your property online is that you can use photos. Again, your instinct will be to show your property in the best possible light and to be highly selective in the photos you choose to use, but we recommend that you should be as comprehensive as possible, taking the time to give your guests a realistic idea of what to expect when they arrive - guests really, really appreciate photos, they simply cannot get enough of them and, remember, the more time they spend looking at your photos, the less time they will spend looking at your competitors!
You should also consider getting hold of a small, cheap digital video camera and making a quick video tour of your property. It doesn't have to be a highly-polished Hollywood production, people understand that you are not Steven Spielberg and will appreciate the opportunity to get another perspective on what you are offering. Some properties are particularly suited to a casual video, particularly if you do it on a nice, bright day and in a relaxed, perhaps even funny manner. The key points are that it shows you have confidence in your property, it proves that your property actually exists (sadly, phantom properties are a growing problem that threatens to undermine the entire industry) and, again, the time they spend on your listing is time they are not spending on your competitor's listings - all of us have a limited amount of time, if you can manage to draw your visitors in and engage them for five or ten minutes, you have an excellent chance of getting a booking out of it.
Most digital cameras of the past few years have video modes which produce perfectly usable footage, but you can also pick up a new breed of pocket video cameras, about the size and shape of a packet of cigarettes, and costing around $100 - we have a Flip, which we have found very useful and easy to use, but there are many other brands of pocket video camera. The beauty of these cameras is that you simply them in the right direct and press the big red button. You then upload the resulting video to any one of the hundreds of free online video websites, such as YouTube, who allow you to then embed your video into other websites, including your listing here at the Vacation Rentals Club.
Again, honesty is of paramount importance and, although photos don't lie, they do tend to go out of date rather quickly. Over the years, your property changes - furniture is replaced, fittings and flooring becomes worn, walls are painted different colours - and all these changes accumulate, resulting in quite a different look overall. It is vital, therefore, to keep your photos up-to-date and, if you want to keep old ones in your gallery because they are nice photos, date them clearly so that there is no confusion. We recommend taking a few new photos every time any room in your property undergoes a significant change, and photos of the entire property every two years or so. These don't have to be artful shots that take a lot of time, a cheap and simple digital camera will allow you to swiftly capture your property and you can then upload those photos in a matter of minutes.
Videos have a longer shelf-life, because what they do is convey a sense of the properties physical space. It is as much of a problem if the video features wall-paper you changed three years ago, or if the carpet is not somewhat worse for wear, as long as your video is accompanied by more recent photos that make that clear.
Again, being able to show your potential guests photos and videos of the actual rooms in which they will be staying is one of the biggest advantages that the Web offers independent property owners - it is almost impossible for big hotels to show their individual rooms, so, make the most of that advantage!
Bonus tip: an extremely rewarding reason to supply plenty of photos and perhaps even a video or two is that, these days, Facebook and other social networks have become shockingly popular (Facebook currently has over 400 million members!), especially among the demographic of people who travel. If your listing has photos and videos, there is a good chance that, even before their vacation begins, your guests will, in their growing excitement, share those photos and videos with their online friends - that is the sort of exposure and personal endorsement that you simply cannot buy. Providing the photos and videos that allow awareness of your property to spread virally is the smartest move you could possibly make in the current climate.
Final Thought
Your listing is not just about persuading the potential guest to become an actual guest although, obviously, that is important. A well-written listing, featuring plenty of photos to feed your potential guest's imagination, is the first step in their stay, the first exciting taste which they will savour as they count down the days until their vacation begins. Your listing, if it is detailed and conveys a sense of not only excitement but, also, realistic credibility, will be emailed to their friends, their family and their work colleagues. If they are traveling as part of a group, your listing will be what they use to persuade the other members of the group that they should stay at your property rather than opt for the safe but boring option of booking a hotel. Your listing sets the tone for what will hopefully be a wonderful vacation and, if it is, you will benefit from the excellent word-of-mouth generated when they return home and brag about the wonderful place they found to stay (and bombard their Facebook friends with yet more photos and videos!).
If you require any advice or assistance in composing the best possible listing for your property, don't hesitate to let us know, we will be only too happy to look at what you've come up with and, hopefully, give you some useful suggestions.
If you are a property owner and you want to receive bookings from us , click here and register now
request
