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

The basic question is: Does size have any real impact on vacation home community or subdivision quality? The answer is both yes and no.

Let’s take a look at some of the top rated Kissimmee vacation home reviews and the size of these communities from a previous post. There are eight short term rental subdivisions in Kissimmee that we have rated Good or Excellent Overall. Of those resorts on that list, only Acadia Estates would be considered a small community. As a review, our vacation home ratings criteria considers several factors including location, holiday home quality, common area amenities and maintenance of common areas. 

Smaller communities are not disadvantaged to larger ones in the area of location or quality of the underlying homes. However, larger subdivisions typically have more extensive common area amenities due to the fact that they have a larger homeowner base to support those amenities financially speaking. This includes staff to regularly clean and maintain those amenities. Therefore, smaller communities can possibly be at a disadvantage in the area of resort amenities although some of the best communities are small ones.

Conversely, just because a subdivision is large does not necessarily mean that the resort amenities are extensive. If that particular aspect is important to you, consult our community reviews for specific information for each subdivision. Common area amenities including pools are an area we research for you.

The great thing about the Orlando vacation home rentals market is the variety of choices available. Please visit our community reviews section that profiles over eighty (80+) vacation home communities both large and small. Florida holiday houses are a great value for the consumer. This empowers you as the prospective renter to make your own decision as to which factor is most important – location, amenities, maintenance or cleanliness.

Does Orlando Vacation Home Community Size Matter?

We continue a theme from a previous post due to reader comments and e-mails. As a former hotelier, it was not uncommon for some media companies to actively solicit written reviews about our hotel on various travel web and review sites. At the time, it was described as “reputation management”. Packages typically came in number of reviews per month (i.e. 30 reviews a month would cost $150). A small price to pay for those who desired to drive reservations to their hotel via higher consumer rankings on the website. This may come as shocking news for some people.

Individuals expressed concern to the professional review writers that multiple reviews from one IP address (its like a computer phone number) would be detected by the review site, but managed review writing is now so advanced that every post can be written by the same author with a different IP address. 

I always declined such offers due to ethical reasons, and often can spot anomalies when I personally review hotel ratings on some sites.

The UK Times Online recently exposed a similar practice in the hospitality industry (read here) putting into question the reliability of some consumer review sites.

As technology junkies, one of our favorite technology review sites is CNET. This site not only provides consumer reviews, but is balanced by a professional and independent review from CNET itself (see it here). As a technology consumer, we always look at the professional review first (given their purported independent level of knowledge and expertise), and then look at the consumer reviews for possible other nuggets of information.

As a result, we think it is credible for review sites in the vacation home industry to have an independent knowledgeable review / opinion first, and unbiased vacation reviews as a follow-up. This could be applied to reviews of Orlando, Clermont, Kissimmee and Davenport Fl vacation homes. Let us know if you have any comments.

Vacation Home Reviews

Like promoting any hospitality product, having great vacation home video and photography to highlight benefits are a must for any vacation home owner.

However, we always recommend the vacation home rental consumer check several reviews from the vacation home and/or community before they book in addition to reviewing the photography and video available. Today there many review sites on the internet.

It is easy to market Florida with pictures of beautiful blue skies, clear blue pools and great camera angles to make a standard holiday rental in Orlando look palatial. However, you want to make sure that what you see is what you get. Get on-line and check out the reviews of Orlando villas..

One additional way get some assurance you are booking a great product is to reserve with a credible and reputable vacation home management company. Ask for references and check out their professional memberships and affiliations on their website.

Vacation Home Photos - Check out the Reviews First and Book with A Credible Vacation Home Management Company

After our recent post on monitoring Orlando vacation home community ratings, we were curious to see how stringent some travel review websites are for evaluating Orlando area vacation home communities.

 After evaluating several travel website’s vacation home rating systems, here are our conclusions:

• Some sites need to be more comprehensive. We evaluate over 80 communities on our site based on various factors. Other travel review websites typically have less than half that number evaluated.
•   Some sites could rate vacation home communities much more stringently. Our quality breakdown is roughly 25% Good or Best, 50% Average and 25% Value. Some other review based sites tend to be far more lenient with 35% 4 or 5 star and 65% 3 star on average. None rated communities at the 2 star level or less which seemed unusual.
•  The other striking takeaway is the fact that some smaller vacation home communities are at a big disadvantage on major vacation home review sites. Many of the best vacation home communities near Disney are some of the smallest, at least in terms of the quality of the facilities. In fact, many of our readers often prefer the smaller communities.

Our conclusion after reviewing some of the travel review websites is a need to be far more comprehensive in terms of the number of communities evaluated, more stringent regarding quality designations, and to be more inclusive of the smaller vacation home community resorts.

We always strive to continuously improve the website, our blog and our evaluation opinions. If you do have any elements or areas you wish to see added, please provide us your feedback and ideas.