The study was formulated with a survey set of over 1,300 British travellers that had travelled in the past year. Part of the research study was to determine the relative importance of online travel review sites and their impact on consumer choices. The core of this Orlando vacation rentals site is designed for resort community reviews. TripAdvisor is another good example of an online vacation reviews website.

The biggest impact on travellers by area of influence on their decision-making (in order of influence) according to the study:

• Friends’ travel recommendations or advice
• Posted consumer or professional vacation reviews
• Travel advice from family members or relatives
• Online advertising sources or outlets
• Television programmes specialising in vacations and travel
• Print magazines and/or newspapers specialising in vacations and travel
• Advice from travel agents
• Television advertising or direct mail sources

Our take on this study is that it bears good news for the global vacation rental market. The popularity of vacation villas grows as families and individuals experience them firsthand. Vacation rental reviews typically indicate a very positive vacation experience had by all. Word of mouth is a very powerful force for the vacation home segment to grow and prosper.

As online vacations and reviews sites expand internationally, this should serve to help vacation home rentals in all markets including Orlando. We recently blogged about the rise of online review sites and made some conclusions about their influence. Online review sites will continue to rise in popularity as long as certain conditions are met including consumer trust and relevancy of the posted blog content. This recent study certainly solidifies online travel and vacation review content as a powerful force in global travel decision-making.

This site focuses on resort and community reviews for Orlando, Davenport and Kissimmee vacation villas. Vacation rental reviews on over 80 resort communities are posted on our main page.

Vacation Review Sites

Many of the main theme parks and attractions in the region are adjacent to Kissimmee. This includes Walt Disney World®, Gatorland and Old Town with the latter attraction actually located in Kissimmee. As far as locations in Kissimmee, we tend to break into East Kissimmee, West Kissimmee and South Kissimmee.

• The west end of Kissimmee tends to be the closest to Walt Disney World® and contain the largest number of vacation home communities.
• Many of the newer vacation home resorts are in the southern portion of the city near Poinciana and Davenport.

Kissimmee Resorts

Privacy is also a big factor for many vacation home resorts in Kissimmee:

• You’ll find many gated communities in Kissimmee. Each of our opinion reviews of Kissimmee resorts has a narrative whether the property is gated and/or guarded for your convenience. We recommend you always check when making a reservation to make sure the gates are working and whether the gate is still manned as these can be subject to change at any time.

The selection of a vacation home resort for your family or group is an important decision. Our site contains over 80 reviews of Kissimmee resorts including photos, maps, Google street scenes (if available), videos and other features. All of this information provides you with additional knowledge to help make an informed decision.

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Although the list is long, some of the highly rated vacation home resorts in Kissimmee include Bella Vida Resort, Encantada Resort, Oakwater Resort, Emerald Island Resort, Windsor Palms and Windsor Hills Resort among others. Each one of these resorts is reviewed in individual detail on the main page of our site.

Dr. Muller has lectured on the topic of chain restaurant management in Europe, Asia and The Americas, and is one the culinary industry’s foremost experts. He was recently a featured speaker at the European Foodservice Summit and writes a regular blogspot for the Restaurants and Institutions Magazine. Click here for a review of Dr. Chris Muller’s distinguished professional and academic background at Boston University and the University of Central Florida.

In this VLOG Dr. Muller briefly reviews his favorite Epcot restaurant concepts and the latest Disney World food options you don’t want to miss.

All of the Walt Disney World® restaurants mentioned are located in close proximity to most vacation home communities in Kissimmee, Davenport and Orlando. Each of these premiere casual dining options are highly acclaimed for our Walt Disney World reviews. Some of the more notable Epcot® food and beverage concepts Dr. Muller reviews include:

• The Rose & Crown English Pub (United Kingdom Pavilion)
• La Cantina De San Angel and San Angel Inn Restaurante (Mexico Pavilion)
• Sommerfest and Biergarten Restaurant (Germany Pavilion)
• Le Cellier Steakhouse (Canada Pavilion)
• Nine Dragons Restaurant (China Pavilion)

See The Epcot Restaurant Video Review HERE

Our interest was piqued after a recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers travel research report revealed that these consumer information websites have a rising influence on online travel decision making. In fact, travel infomediaries show strong traffic growth trends, especially in Europe. Click here for this previous blog post.

For this trend to continue, we believe there are at least three ingredients that online travel “infomediary” sites must emphasize for the benefit of online travel consumers. These essential factors include consumer trust, content relevancy and information timeliness. Each of these in their own right have a great influence on Orlando Florida vacation planning, the focus of this website. Click here to connect to the City of Orlando’s official website.

The first and most important feature a consumer must maintain for any infomediary travel site is consumer trust. Any prospective consumer of web content should read the site’s disclaimer and then evaluate the advertising (if any) on the site. This may give one insight or balance for possible commercial conflicts. If the site is a blog, do the content editors disclose particular biases a reader will need to know? For instance, this website clearly indicates our bias towards vacation rentals over hotels. We also clearly indicate that our reviews are opinion based only.

Also, what percentage of the reviews receive 4 or 5 star ratings for an online reviews portal? Persistent high ratings throughout the site may indicate “score inflation”. Consumers should prefer sites with discerning travellers or professionals with variances in scoring to indicate a better indication of true quality designations and preferences.

Content relevancy also plays a key role in the rise of online consumer information websites. Does the content posted vis-a-vis reviews pertain to my own personal prospective vacation at that resort, hotel or vacation rental? A good example of a site doing great work in this arena is the Flipkey rentals site with reviews right down to a particular vacation home.

For a vacation home reviews site, it is important to look at the breakdown by resort or community variables. For instance, this site provides decision variables such as location, community facilities, amenities, and driving distances, and then let the consumer decide. This high level of interactivity ultimately has an impact on personal content relevancy for any successful online travel website.

Information timeliness is the third factor infomediaries must fulfill to be successful. For example, some consumer oriented websites retain posted reviews well over 18 months old. These may provide some insight, but we believe resort and community quality is dynamic over time. If new updates are not posted regularly the reviews lose relevancy. This particularly applies to smaller resorts or communities that often get less than five posted consumer reviews monthly.

As you move forward with your Orlando Florida vacation planning, evaluate information based travel websites carefully. With consumer trust, content relevancy and information timeliness, travel decisions can be strongly aided by online infomediaries.

Feel free to consult this website for vacation reviews of over 80+ resort communities along with news on what’s happening in the Central Florida area. We strive to fulfill traveller expectations with unbiased reviews, continuously updated interactive ratings and reliable information profiles.

Vacation Home Review Web Sites

1. Would you and your family rather stay in a traditional single family home or do you find a condo or townhome (with the key being that many units are attached physically) acceptable? A traditional single family home tends to add privacy to one’s stay. Key: Many resorts have mixed accommodation types. Make sure you verify your physical home accommodations at the time of booking.

2. How far is personally acceptable for your daily drive to the theme parks? Keep in mind that a distance of 2-3 miles can add 15 minutes +/- depending on traffic to the drive each day. Key: Review our vacation community profiles for estimated distances and use Google maps as a tool.

3. Will the community meet your expectations? Key: We suggest you use vacation home ratings and review sites to complement some of the posted consumer reviews.

4. What type of rental home amenities should I request? Key: Only you and your family can answer this question. Keep in mind that there are applicable amenities for the interior of your vacation rental as well as amenities in the common areas of the community. Individual vacation rental amenities could include wireless internet, gameroom, number and size of televisions, pool and kitchen appliances. Common area amenity considerations include, but are not limited to fitness room, concierge, community pool and/or spa, and playground.

5. What size of accommodations should I book? Key: Again, only you and your family can answer this question. However, one critical item you need to think about is privacy in your home, especially with bathrooms. Most vacation house reservations are made with family members, so intimacy is not an issue. However, in some cases for groups, privacy is a major issue. Make sure you clearly understand how many bedrooms and bathrooms are needed.

6. Is it best to rent directly from an owner or from a professional management company? Key: There are great owners out there, but the best management companies in the area can offer a full-time service staff 24hrs a day to support your stay.

Each of these important details are a part of planning a vacation that meets your needs and expectations. As stated before, we are confident that Orlando rental homes can meet your needs in ways many hotels cannot, and it always pays to do a little research first.

Orlando Rental Homes

1606 West Vine Street
Kissimmee, FL

(407) 847-7098

Rating: Best BBQ Barbecue Restaurant in Kissimmee

Vacation home renters around Disney are always looking for good BBQ, and often want to know where to get fast and efficient service.

Fat Boys has been locally owned and operated since 1971. This is down home style old-fashioned BBQ. A large flag adorns the walls of this cafe’. This is honest to goodness middle America food and ambience. Great ribs, giant onion rings and fast counter service.

The restaurant is open 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Lunch is packed on weekdays with a variety of folks stopping in. From cops to construction workers, and with businesspeople to families, the restaurant attracts a wide variety of people to enjoy the food. Our only complaint was that the pie selections were below expectations. Everything else was great.

A BBQ plate with soda will run you about $14 a person. This is for a choice of chicken, ribs, beef or pork. A small salad bar is $2.20 extra. Fat boys can give it their best with the “all you can eat” special prices.

The restaurant is in central Kissimmee, so it is around a 20-25 minute drive from many vacation home area subdivisions depending upon the time of day. If you want a genuine local experience, Fat Boys is a great casual dining option.

Fat Boys BBQ Kissimmee

Fat Boys Orlando

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For our purposes, “vacation homes” are defined as detached dwelling structures with multiple bedrooms and are similar, if not synonymous, to single family residential homes. A complete explanation of the various vacation rental options are contained on a prior posting.

The top vacation home picks in Davenport, Florida based on evaluator reviews are (in alphabetical order:

Solana Resort Community    

Tuscan Hills Vacation Homes 

Watersong Resort 

West Haven (multiple communities)

Click on any of the links above to get a detailed review score, map and video tour of each of these communities.

As we state in our disclaimer, community ratings are objective opinion evaluations. There are additional and notable vacation communities in Davenport, but based on our criteria, these were the best overall.

Each of the Davenport vacation home communities above received a “Good” or “Premium” quality review from our evaluators.

Davenport Vacation Homes

We continue to add video reviews and ratings of new resort communities in Davenport, Kissimmee and Clermont almost on a regular basis. We believe we have the most comprehensive profiles, maps and independent ratings on vacation subdivisions in the Orlando area. Please click on the resort community review section of our website for more detailed information on each subdivision. Premium Orlando villas such as Windsor Hills Resort and Emerald Island Resort are reviewed on the site. Our mission is to be the most comprehensive and accurate vacation guide for potential vacation home renters in Orlando.

<A HREF=”http://www.siterary.com”>A travel directory : Siterary.com </A>

We’ll continue to cover the Orlando vacation home market with a candid and objective approach. We have expanded our coverage from Orlando/Kissimmee to vacation rentals in Davenport and Clermont as well. You’ll find some very nice accommodations in these areas which are accessible to area theme parks and attractions.

Ratings for Orlando vacation homes and vacation home communities are a feature of our website. Although some sites rate individual homes, grasping how resort communities as a whole relate within the metro Orlando area is much harder.

Our ratings evaluators are impartial and have no bias towards any particular community or area, so the ratings system is candid and straightforward for you, the vacation home consumer.

Why is a ratings system better than a simple review by a consumer? Although individual consumer reviews of homes are helpful, most consumers do not have the luxury of seeing or staying in multiple communities like us. In other words, our ratings evaluators have the luxury of seeing all communities and can compare one against the other to better provide you the context of the positives of each community.

Our detailed information also allows you to consider what factor you most value for the choice of your vacation home (i.e. location, price, quality of homes in the community, etc…)  We start with the quality of the communities and then work our way down to the individual home reviews. You might say it’s a “top down” approach versus a “bottom up” approach which can help you make a more informed decision.

As we have stated in many posts, vacation homes can be a much better option than hotels. The key is that you, the consumer, have more information to help make the best accommodations decision based on your needs. Our mission is, and will continue to be, bringing you the most candid unbiased vacation home reviews to help you make the best vacation decision.

If you ever disagree with our evaluations, simply send us an email why, and we will re-review the community.   As always, we would like to disclaim our reviews are merely an opinion, and nothing more. Please read our disclaimer in the top right hand corner of our web site.

Orlando Vacation Home Community Reviews