As lodging professionals, we are all faced with a similar problem. GETTING RID OF UNSOLD INVENTORY!   You have “windows of opportunity” (how about that for a nice euphemism for low occupancy periods?) when you would be happy to sell one or more rooms for a few nights or more during the off season or any other time of the year.  What are your options in today's marketplace?

• If you live in a city and have a big hotel you can use Priceline.com
  
• You can list a 25%, 33% or 50% off discount on a special section of your web site - but then we lose the rest of the units you [could] have sold at rack rate
  
• You can put a sign outside of your property listing your discounts (but this has the same problem as above AND it upsets your neighbors!) 

Welcome to Bid-Vacations.Com, now you can:

 1. Guide more people to your own web site

• Every time you post an auction, your property is exposed to thousands of people surfing the Internet looking for travel bargains!
  
• Remember that each listing has a hyperlink to your site
  
• Point directly to your web site in your auction copy paragraph(s)!
  
• Refer to other types of units not in auction to drive people to your web site
  
• Give customers the opportunity to buy time periods (prime time) and to upgrade to a non-auction unit as they visit your regular web site

2. Sell people a vacation unit at your property for their highest bid

• This speaks for itself. With Bid-Vacations you deal directly with the high bidder using all of your regular policies (advance deposit, pets, smoking, etc.) with the winner.
  
• You will receive the name and contact information about the winning bidder immediately after the auction closes. It is highly recommended that you email them at your earliest convenience.

3. Sell people a vacation unit at your property immediately at a known price

• This may be the most underrated tool at Bid-Vacations! You know at what price you will sell inventory that you think would ordinarily be empty.
  
• If you have more than one unit available during a specific time period (say 4 weekdays in mid-Spring), list your first auction at the lowest price that you want (say 50% or 60% of rack rate) and then each time that you sell a unit, increase the “Buy It Now” price by 5% or !0% or even more! Wouldn’t it be nice to start a time of traditionally low occupancy with 10 extra units sold?

4. Allow you to market your vacation unit to unsuccessful bidders

• This is perhaps the biggest marketing tool available to you as a member of the Bid-Vacations family. At the close of every auction in which your reserve bid was not met, you will receive a list of all of the bidders, their email addresses and how much they bid for that auction.  This is so important that it bears saying again - you will receive a list of all of the bidders, their email addresses and how much they bid for that auction!
  
• It is highly recommended that you develop a special email that you will send to each of these unsuccessful bidders. You may wish to give them any number of reasons why you will offer them some type of discount to come and visit your property even though they did not win the auction!

5. Not disturb your regular customers in residence (who paid rack rate)

• It will happen. Someone who purchased their vacation at your property through one of the Bid-Vacations marketing steps will brag about the price that they paid for their unit versus the rack-rate full price that their neighbor paid. When handed a fistful of lemons, make lemonade!
  
• Explain that the loudmouth who paid the special price (and by the way, it is not a bad idea to politely suggest that they keep their “bargain” to themselves) was part of a special marketing promotion helping you get rid of some “excess inventory” that became available (this is all true!). Then tell the guest that you would be happy to take his/her name and email address (or phone number) and notify them the next time that you have a “window of opportunity” available (there’s that euphemism again) and would like to offer it to them at a special rate.
   
• This now gives you yet another option to get rid of excess inventory! 

Sign Up Now at a Special Introductory Rate

For an introductory annual registration fee of $39, you can post an unlimited number of accommodations auctions to our Internet based auction forum. There is an additional charge of $10.00 for each accommodation you successfully sell. 

High rankings in the Internet search engines and strategic links to several regional portals insure a steady stream of accommodation seekers interested in discounted vacation accommodations. Property managers finding themselves with vacancies especially during the "shoulder months" of the tourist season will want to try this innovative, low cost service.

If you sign up by April 30, 2002 we'll place your Website banner with a link to your site on our homepage for only $125 for an entire year! This is a savings of 50% on this banner.


Sounds great, I'm ready to make more money!. Take me to the Registration Page.


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