Instant Software, Inc. (ISI), the leading technology solution provider for the Vacation Rental industry, reports that the number of bookings during the first 6 months of 2009 in the U.S. vacation rental industry were down 10% compared to the same period in 2008. Revenue from bookings decreased 15% during that same period as economic pressures drove the average daily rate for Vacation Rentals from a 2008 average of $199 per night to $185 in 2009.
 

These figures come from a Research report published by ISI using reservation statistics from its client base of over 1200 property management firms managing 200,000 properties, the largest aggregated network in the vacation rental industry. Because of the size and geographic range of ISI’s data pool, this is the industry’s only truly reliable and accurate source of vacation rental data. The free report is available on ISI’s website at www.InstantSoftware.com.
 

ISI launched this report as a tool for the vacation rental industry because of the recent issuance of Industry Trend reports that use so few data points that they may be skewed and inaccurate. This resource offers the most accurate and representative stats for companies to make the most informed decisions. ISI aggregates these stats using actual transaction data from the largest data pool in the industry. The data is then cleaned to include only the most representative year-to-year comparisons in the industry so that the stats show true “apples to apples” comparisons.
 

“Beware of potentially skewed and misleading information from companies that draw conclusions from a small data sample,” warns Dave Hopcroft, Instant Software’s CEO. “Making decisions from a small data set may be dangerous and could, potentially, lead you in a direction that could harm your business, rather than help it – Remember, data can easily be skewed by certain outliers. The only way to get reliable accurate data is from a large sample representing different sized organizations across a wide geographic range.”
 

Other interesting trends from the report are that the average length of stay in a vacation rental increased by 2% from 6.4 nights to 6.5 nights, bucking the industry perception that the length of vacation rental stays were actually decreasing. And last minute bookings did not appear as prevalent as the industry thought they would be as the Average Advanced Booking Windows only reduced from 87 days in 2008 to 84 days in 2009.
 

ISI will continue to update its “Research” section of its website and will make more detailed data available specifically for its clients to compare their business performance with more localized stats. 

VIEW RESEARCH & REPORTS