Tourist Accommodations - Vacation Rentals and B&Bs - and Travel

If you rent a vacation home or operate a bed and breakfast, a web presence is now essential. Most tourists today plan their trips using the internet.

While search engines bring in some traffic directly, visitors to vacation home sites often arrive via provincial or state tourism publications or websites, and by online listing agencies such as CyberRentals, Cottage Link, VRBO and others.

These sites may show a few photos of your property, but if you have your own website you can have a lot more photos, convey a feeling about the place and describe the area on your own terms.

HomeAwayConnect.com provides an availability calendar and a guestbook that site owners can link to and maintain themselves, and a very informative newsletter that is worth reading if you're in the holiday rental business.

When designing a website for a tourist accommodation business, I strive to convey a feeling for the scenery and/or the decor of the house in the website. I figure that the people who will want to stay there will be attracted to a website that reflects the house's personality. Expressing that personality in the website's design is a most enjoyable part of what I do.

Also in the Tourism category, Travellers Joy offers shamanic pilgrimage tours to ancient sacred sites in places such as Ireland, England and Mexico and is also developing "Sacred Nova Scotia" as a tourism destination.

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