Holes are Better Than Innovation

It’s hard to find inspiration for your vacation rental website if you’re looking for new products for your customers or new stuff to show on your site. After all, you’ve only got your property to offer, right? Sometimes we miss the obvious stuff though.

Instead of trying to dream up brand new products or topics to write about, try combining existing things or find ways to adapt or improve the stuff that you have already.

In the business world it’s often the innovators that get all the glory, but innovation can be expensive. It’s often easier and cheaper to make your existing stuff better.

Read on for some examples…

If you want to try this, make sure you’re creating something that didn’t exist before, or make sure the combination works better than the sum of the individual parts, or that the new thing makes your existing product better.

It’s a bit like finding holes in your current product list, rather than trying to dream up new stuff.

Here are some ideas for your vacation rental site:

1. Add a blog and write about your place, the area, local attractions
2. Provide an RSS feed from forums where you hang out, e.g. LayMyHat. A lot of caring owners spend time there crafting their offering and making it as good as possible for guests. I’d rent from many of these owners because I know they care about their guests
3. Create a guestbook on your site where existing customers can add comments, share tips and advice on making the most of your place, ideas for a rainy day, or suggestions for improvements
4. Write an ebook of your favorite tips for enjoying your vacation place, and sell it on your site. If you don’t trust ebooks, publish it on lulu and sell it there
5. Create a video of your property
6. Create an audio welcome greeting for visitors to your site
7. Add affliliate links for tickets to local attractions. Make sure you’ve tried them out first and that you truly recommend them

So long as you keep adding value for your customers you’ll end up providing a better overall offering and make yourself stand out from the competition. That might just get you the edge that you need to keep your place full for this season (and the next)

[P.S. I know there's no RSS feed from laymyhat. This is a post about new ideas though]