But today’s online customers are pretty demanding. Not only do they want up to date information, pictures and pricing, they want to read reviews from other guests that have used your services. Sometimes, the customer only reads the guest reviews and not any of the marketing material. They trust their friends and other guests more than the advertiser’s pitch.

On RealAdventures, our reports indicate that listings with just one review, get 300% more inquiries than those without a review. Listings that have 5 or more reviews, get 1300% more inquiries.

That’s amazing! I couldn’t believe how much of an impact reviews make on inquiry rates. Incredible.

Reviews are ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL!

I know it may be scary. You might be afraid of getting negative reviews from customers that were just impossible to please no matter you tried. But interestingly, the negative reviews will be far and few between. As long as you are a legitimate business, serving your customers in good faith, you will be able to gets hundreds of positive and glowing reviews. The disgruntled customers will stand out as being impossible and visitors will see through the issue as being them not you.

I can’t encourage you strongly enough to ask your customers to write a review for you. Most will be really happy that you asked them to help you out. It is super easy do on RealAdventures. The customer selects a star rating, enters a comment and clicks submit. Once you approve the review, it is then displayed at the top of your listing page for visitors to read.

To make it even easier for you to ask your customers for that review, we have added a new feature that makes it a snap: Request A Review. This feature lets you enter the customer’s name & email address and send out a nicely formated request for the review with a link to your review page.

The few seconds it takes to send a “Request For A Review” will be returned many times over in the increased inquiries and bookings.

Check out this advertiser’s reviews:

Start asking your customers for reviews!

For quite some time, advertisers have been able to show their property or service on an interactive map. This month, we have taken the map system and completely redesigned it to make it much easier for you to add points of interest. Using this tool you can better explain to potential customers how close they would be to other attractions in the area and help them visualize the possibilities of their travel experience.

With the new interactive map, you can enter a title and an address where you want a pin to appear. Our system will then redisplay the map with a pin located at the selected address. If needed, you can click and drag the pin to move it to a more accurate position.

In addition, you can choose from dozens of icons to represent your property or service. If you want to indicate a golf course, a beach, a monument, or other points of interest that are close by, you can use custom icons as well.

A screen shot of a map is included below.

Editing The Map
To update your map, please login to your account by clicking the following link: My Account.

On the next screen, click on “Update Listing Details”. The first screen will enable you to update your listing title and summary text. On the left column, you will see Option #5 “Interactive Map”. Click on this link to update your map.

To add your first pin, just enter the title and address and then click “Add Pin To Map”.

If you want to customize the pin, click “Select Icon” to change it from a yellow pin to one of several dozen pin options.

You can drag a pin to a different location on the map just by clicking on it and dragging it to the appropriate spot.

Remember to zoom in and position the map so visitors viewing the map will have a better idea of where you are in relationship with major cities.

I would love to hear what you think of the new map, or any other comments or concerns you have regarding the site.

As always, your feedback is very important to me, and I look forward to reading your suggestions.

Have a wonderful day!

As travelers are planning their vacation, they play out the different options in their mind — they take a virtual vacation. In some ways, they experience the entire trip anticipating the excitement and potential problems long before they pack their bags.

While planning their upcoming vacation, they start dreaming about the adventure, romance and relaxation. In their mind, they are imaging themselves and their families happily enjoying the perfect dream vacation.

To fulfill their dream, they scan lots of sites, read the carefully written descriptions, but the most important factor is the images they see — especially images where they can see themselves in that shot.

Images of a beautiful sunset are more appealing than a picture of a condo building. Even better, an image of a couple riding bicycles together is more appealing than a picture of a bicycle leaning on the wall.

Examples Of Great Listings
There are some listings on RealAdventures that are simply gorgeous and so appealing, they get tons of inquiries.

Take a look at the text & images for these listings. Can you see yourself taking one of these trips or staying at the accommodations. Would that be a great vacation? Would your family be happy?

Then take a look at your listing. Are the images exciting, high quality — do they sell your services?

• California Rafting From Mild To Wild

• Oceanfront Cocoa Beach Condo

• Creekside Luxury Log Cabins In The Smokies

Images vs. Inquiries
I just ran some internal reports looking at just our basic listings ($129.95/year) which on average:

With 0 images received 1.5 inquiries/year
With 1 image received 9.3 inquiries/year
With 12 images received 25 inquiries/year

The point being that adding just 1 image increased the # of inquiries 9 times. Adding a few more images increased the number of inquiries 25 times.

I can’t stress how important it is to have high quality, interesting and exciting images for your listing. If you don’t have any, take some. If you can’t take pictures, ask a friend. Be very selective about the images you upload. Make the most appealing image the very first image.

Add Or Update Your Images
Unfortunately, we cannot take images from your website or your emails and add them to your listing for you.

BUT it is really easy for you to add images to your listing. Below are some instructions and a screen shot of the “Add/Update Images” form.

1. When you login to your account, edit your listing and then click on “Images” in the left column. That screen will display any images that you currently have for your listing.
2. Scroll down a bit on the page and you will see the “Add/Update Images” form — it looks a bit like a television screen.
3. Click the round green button with the plus sign. It is in the lower left of the ‘television screen’.
4. Here you can select images from your computer that you want to add to your listing. Click “Open” or “Okay” to add those images to the files that will be uploaded.
5. Now click the “Upload” button on the ‘television screen’. This will upload the selected image to your listing. It might take a few minutes depending on the size of the image and then number of images.
6. When the images have been uploaded, the screen will automatically refresh and your images will be displayed.

Add some images and start getting more inquiries.

RealAdventures has just added an availability calendar to your listing page. Now you can show guests when you are booked and when you have availability. Check out the screen shot below.

The calendar will help reduce the number of inquiries that you get for dates that are already booked. But it will also get you more inquiries as guests see that you are popular and they need to book earlier.

The calendar is designed to be really easy to use and update on a regular basis. Simply login to your listing and select ‘Availability Calendar’ in the left menu. There you can click a date to show it is booked (red). Click the same date again and it will change to reserved (yellow). Click again and it will change to unavailable (gray). Click one more time and you are back to available (white).

You can also click the star (*) to change the entire week’s availability status.

There is no cost for the calendar and it is completely optional.

I’ve talked to a number of our advertisers to see how this feature might be helpful to them. Most advertisers think it will help get them more qualified inquiries that they can convert into bookings instead of having to turn down.

But there are some advertisers that are concerned about displaying their availability for competitive reasons and others are concerned about security (property owners). For these reasons the calendar is completely optional — depending on your needs and situation.

If you keep it up to date, we will display the dates that are available. If you choose not to use the calendar, we will display the dates are available.

Personally, I do encourage you to use the calendar if you can and to update it on a regular basis. It will give customers the sense that your place is popular as demonstrated by how booked you are. This instills a sense of confidence which will increase your booking rates.

Let me know how the calendar works out for you. Please be sure to share your thoughts, suggestions and feedback.

Italian Red Cross volunteers and police have been working around the clock looking for survivors, tending to the injured, setting up tents and caring for the residents. Additional offers of support and aid has been pouring in from around the world. I’m always amazed and proud to see the compassion and care we show for each other in the times of our greatest need.

There are a number of travel services from this region (Abruzzo, Italy) that advertise on the RealAdventures site. As they rebuild their lives and towns, we will be reaching out to them to offer assistance where we can.

Anyone wishing to donate to the relief efforts is encouraged to do so through Red Cross International’s website at:

We aimed to give the site a new look- using bright colors and an updated design to make our visitor’s experience both visually appealing and enjoyable. Not only does the end result look great, but the new design will help users navigate through the site and find the content that they are looking for easily.

The redesign also helps prepare the site for upcoming features we have planned over the next few months. Soon we will be including a section for hot deals and travel communities, where users can upload photos from their trips. As we begin to unveil the new features to the site, we’ll be sure to keep you updated.

To give you a better idea of the changes we have made, here is screenshot of the old RA site:

… And here is a screenshot of our new design:

Nice, isn’t it?

Pretty nice, isn’t it?

We also redesigned the account manager section of the site where you log-in to manage your listings. Now you can access all of your information- including your listings, inquiries and reviews- from one place and can easily jump back and forth between pages, without having to log back into the system. If you have a chance, try logging into the new site to familiarize yourself with the few changes. Once you are logged in- you should immediately notice a bright, yellow toolbar that is displayed across all of your listing pages. The toolbar will allow you to edit your personal information, upload new images or view inquiries.

As I mentioned, we have many more updates on the way and pretty soon the new account manager section will enable you to add an availability calendar, hot deals and blog entries to your profile.

We always welcome feedback from you, so feel free to let us know what you think of the new design and updates to the account manager.

That’s all for now!

The Online Reply System is designed to make it very quick and easy for you to respond to customer inquiries. Now, with just a few keystrokes and in less than 30 seconds you should be able to reply to most inquiries. Not only will this save you time, but the new system should also help you dramatically increase your conversion rates.

How does it work? Very simply, next time you get an inquiry from a customer, in the email you will see a link to the Online Reply System. Just click on that link and you will be taken to a page with the customer’s information, travel dates, message and a reply form (you may need to login first). Select one of three templates, customize the message and click send. That’s it.

The three templates provide typical responses for ‘Available’, ‘Not Available’ and ‘More Information’. Just select one of these templates and adjust the message with rates, dates and other pertinant details. We have provided just sample messages for the templates, but you can change the template to meet your needs.

The customer will get a beautiful email with your reply, phone number and email address along with your listing summary and a link to your listing page. The customer can reply back to you directly by email or phone number.

At any time, you can view the Online Reply System by logging in and clicking ‘Respond To Inquiries’ in the left menu. There you will see all your inquiries and can follow-up with them if you wish.

Trial listings will have to use the Online Reply System. But premium listings owners can reply directly to customers or use the Online Reply System – which ever they prefer.

I’d love to hear what you think of the Online Reply System. What else can we do to make responding to inquiries easier and with higher conversion?

Earlier this year, when fuel prices and airline fares went up drastically, I expected visitors to the site to drop off dramatically. I also expected to see the number of inquiries to our advertisers to correspondingly decrease. But it looks like the troubles in the financial markets are not detracting visitors that use RealAdventures to plan their vacations. Visitors to the site and the number of inquiries being sent every month is actually increasing.

Glancing at our internal reports, customer inquiries range from last-minute vacations to travel planning 6 months or a year in the future. A large percentage of inquiries are being sent by visitors traveling to other countries and other continents.

Looking into the future, if the financial rescue packages have their intented effects, travel forecasts for the next 3 & 6 months look very promising. We expect to continue to experience significant growth over the next year and look forward to sending travelers your way. Please share your experiences with us. Are you booked for the upcoming holiday season? What are you experiencing in terms of slow-down or growth?

Group A, the happy group, tell us that inquiries from our visitors convert better than most of the other sites they advertise on. I’m really happy we can provide a valued service to these advertisers.

But I spend most of my time addressing the concerns of Group B, the dissatisified advertisers. I look at their listings, at the category they have selected, the region, the pictures, the prices and the map. I look for reasons why a visitor would send an inquiry but not book if the property or service is available.

But most of the time, the listings for Group A & Group B advertisers were comparable. They had pictures, were rich in descriptive text, had competitive rates and so on. There didn’t seem to be any reason why one group got 50-80% conversion rates while the other claimed 0% conversion.

Baffled by the difference Group A & Group B experienced, I started looking at inquiries & advertisers’ replies to those inquiries.

Ah ha!!!! The reason quickly became apparent.

Consistently, Group A replies ‘closed the sale’, while Group B replies left the customer hanging or made it harder to book.

Group A replies always:
* answered the customer’s questions
* confirmed availablity on the travel dates the customer requested
* provided rates and the total
* specified any restrictions
* AND asked for a payment to hold the room or spot.

Essentially, they ‘closed the sale’. Here are two real responses from Group A advertisers:

In sharp contrast, Group B replies typically:
* were standard responses that failed to answer questions
* told the customer to check their website
* failed to provide rates or the total
* failed to confirm availability
* failed to provide a phone number or contact information
* AND NEVER asked for a payment.

Here are two responses from Group B advertisers (names have been changed):

I was surprised an advertiser trying to book his property would send this reply. No greeting, no rates, no contact information, no confirmation of dates available, no closing

This one is warmer, but doesn’t answer the inquiry, makes customer go to a website. Don’t send them to yet another website – even if it is yours and you are proud of it. They are interested, book them. Yes that is more work for you, but you’ll get the booking!

I want all of our advertisers to succeed. I want you to be fully booked and I want you to make money. I will help you in every way that I can by continuously working to improve the site, grow our traffic and get you more inquiries.

But I need you to think & act like a sales person – “close the sale”. Look at Group A replies again and consider that the next you reply to an inquiry. “Close The Sale”