So, is the vacation rental business on track to outpace hotels?
BS: Awareness continues to increase. If you go back to a few years ago, 7 percent of vacationers were staying in vacation rentals. Now, that number is closer to 10 percent. We think that number can get as high as 20 percent or 30 percent. I think it will continue to grow. We saw an unprecedented construction of new vacation homes in all the coastal markets, in ski areas and all over the world from 2000 to 2007. BW: OK, so the market is in your favor. Are you increasing ad spend as a result of that? BS: Historically, virtually all of our advertising has been concentrated in two areas: search and e-mail marketing. What that has done for us is allow us to manage the traffic coming to our site and the revenue growth of our business, but we’ve gotten to a point now where the company is big enough where we’ve decided to augment that with brand and awareness building programs. Despite our size—and though we dominate this business—our unaided [brand] awareness among consumers is still extremel
