Super Bowl bound -- HomeAway online rental network to buy ad spot

The competition for second-home and vacation home rental listing must be getting ferocious. One of the largest web conglomerates, HomeAway.com, announced today it's going to kick off its most extensive national advertising campaign yet with a spot on the Super Bowl 2010 telecast Feb. 7th.

HomeAway (that's its logo, above) has consolidated a number of popular vacation home rental sites under its wing -- including VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner) and VacationRentals.com -- to become, according to its own literature, "the worldwide leader of online vacation rentals, representing more than 425,000 vacation rental home listings across more than 120 countries."

No matter what other TV spots it might buy, this surely will be its most expensive entry ever into national markets. In recent years, a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl has cost in the neighborhood of $2.5-million to $3-million. One Website that has made a Super Bowl appearance for the past five years is the domain name host and Internet registrar GoDaddy.com.

For mom-and-pop outfits that buy into the HomeAway.com network in hopes of getting better visibility for their services, the Super Bowl spot may or may not translate into more, or more easily convertible, clicks by consumers. However, the HomeAway announcement sure raises the stakes for all Web-based vacation home market sites.

Less than a year ago, HomeAway made a splash with the announcement of an infusion of $250 million in private financing. The Austin-based outfit says that private home and condo rentals is the travel industry's fastest-growing segment.

FlipKey rates vacation homes as TripAdvisor does hotels - almost

Many vacationers rely on TripAdvisor for reviews of hotels written by authentic travelers just like themselves. Now, as more tourists choose vacation homes as their accommodations rather than hotels, FlipKey, a TripAdvisor-owned service, welcomes the same type of peer reviews of thousands of properties.

"We have over 100,000 authentic guest reviews on our site," a spokesman for FlipKey wrote me in an email, but he added that "coverage can vary quite a bit depending on the area."

What makes TripAdvisor so valuable is, in part, its sheer quantity of hotels and reviews. It has 450,000 hotels from around the world in its listings, according to its press material, with millions upon millions of reviews. (TripAdvisor also lists and ranks restaurants and attractions. It is owned, as is FlipKey, by Expedia.)

FlipKey is not there yet. Many properties listed have just one or two reviews. It will take a while before scores of guests judge and post reviews for a single vacation home or condo. Nevertheless, it's making progress toward a critical mass. Some properties in such locations as Disney World and Gulf Shores, Alabama (where the condo pictured above is) have up to 19, when I checked today.

To make properties trustworthy, FlipKey offers a verification program for professional property managers. To make reviews trustworthy, it only allows verified previous customers to post reviews through an email invitation system. However, owners or managers pay for a property listing itself. Properties in a given area -- Disney World, Lake Tahoe etc.-- are not shown ranked by popularity as hotels are in TripAdvisor. And a huge number of reviews I looked at were super-positive (5 stars.)

Still, feature-rich FlipKey provides details of rooms, baths and amenities in each property plus photos, prices, location, availability It indicates whether homes are managed by the homeowner or by a management company.

Given time, FlipKey could develop into a must-check website for discriminating travelers, just as TripAdvisor is.

Ski Helmets Mandatory for Kids at Vail, Aspen, Tremblant, Whistler

Thinking about winter travel? For those who own or rent vacation homes in ski areas, it's time to think about ski helmets.

Aspen requires children and teens who take ski or snowboard lessons on any of its mountains -- Aspen, Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass -- to wear helmets.

For winter 2009-10, Vail Resorts, too, has made helmets mandatory for children and teens who take group lessons. (Vail Resorts operates Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado and Heavenly in California.) In announcing the helmet rule, Vail also said its employees would be required to wear helmets while on the job.

In Canada, Mt. Tremblant and other resorts owned by Intrawest joined the kids with lids bandwagon Oct. 1. The company announced that children and teens who take lessons at any of their mountains must wear helmets, as must its instructors in those programs.

Tremblant, of course, is the Quebec resort where actress Natasha Richardson fell while taking a lesson without a helmet last spring and later died.

The Intrawest rules applies to all its properties including Winter Park, Copper Mountain, and Steamboat Ski & Resort in Colorado; Stratton in Vermont; Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia; Mountain Creek in New Jersey; Panorama Mountain near Invermere, British Columbia; and Whistler Blackcomb, which will host alpine events for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Photo courtesy Aspen/Snowmass

Equity Estates - destination club thrives with fiscal transparency

While the economy takes its time to recover from recession, the destination club Equity Estates is thriving, with 30 new members since the start of 2009 and two more luxury properties in its portfolio -- one in La Jolla and another in midtown Manhattan near Times Square (pictured above.)

CEO Philip Mekelburg calls Equity Estates a luxury residence fund."We re typically cash buyers of homes – we leverage the minimum amount of 23 percent," he told me not long ago. As a result, the company has remained in sound financial condition while other larger, highly leveraged clubs struggled, he said.

Mekelburg points out that Equity Estates is dedicated to fiscal transparency so members know their money is safe. The company puts 80 cents of every dollar into real estate, compared to the 50 % level maintained by some other clubs. It now has 10 residences, with an average price of $3 million. Full members are entitled to 30 nights a year in any of the properties, while executive members get 15 nights.

But perhaps the most unusual thing about Equity Estates is that it has an exit strategy. Starting in 2021, says Mekelburg, the club will start selling off its properties and distribute the proceeds among its member owners. Full membership requires a capital contribution of $375,000 to join. Its properties are in typical luxury vacation areas, such as Turks and Caicos (Caribbean) Deer Valley (Utah) and Hilton Head (South Carolina).

Destination club Ultimate Escapes to be acquired by public company

In the latest news from the sometimes troubled luxury destination club market, the leading club in terms of properties -- Ultimate Escapes -- is getting a big new public partner.

Secure America Acquisition Corp. has announced it is about to invest a minimum of $20-million in Ultimate Escapes, which itself is in the process of absorbing Private Escapes, another destination club. Ultimate is the second largest club in terms of number of members, with more than 1300 members. (Number One is Exclusive Resorts, with more than 3,000 members.) The club has handsome homes in desirable locations such as Nevis, pictured above.

The deal means that Ultimate Escapes not only gets a cash infusion but becomes a public company. Time will tell if that is good for members. In the short run, it undoubtedly is good for Ultimate Escapes, which lost over $15-million last year,according to the Washington Business Journal. As for Secure America, its previous acquisitions have been in the field of homeland security. Guess you could call this one "vacation homeland security."

Vacation Home Inventory Glut in Steamboat Springs, Colorado

One real estate agent in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, notes that at the recent pace of property sales in that mountain second home community (163 sales in the first 2 quarters of 2009) he expects to see only about 320 sales in 2009 total. Yet there are more than 2,300 listings available in the community, including commercial. This, says Doug Labor, broker-owner of Buyer’s Resource Real Estate and manager of MLS statistics as quoted in the Steamboat Pilot, translates into an inventory that would last about seven years, he said. A typical rate of supply is about a year, Labor said.

Aspen Cheap -- $475,000 for 355 sq. ft Studio

So what's the least you can spend for full ownership of your Colorado dream hideaway in Aspen? Looks like some studios have shown price drops to below $500,000, including this one on the Original Curve of Main Street (in what's known as Aspen's "Core"). The online offering from Morris & Frywald shows a handsomely redecorated space including a full bed, although it is not clear whether that's the living room couch artfully made up or a separate piece of furniture within the 355 square feet.

Note to buyers: the MLS for places like Aspen and Vail is chock full of listings that seem to be going nowhere. Price drops, anyone?