We are a family run business. The website has been designed by Sarah
who is a Florida villa owner and holds a First Class Honours
degree, BSc (Hons) in Computing (Internet Technologies), obtained
at the Humberside University in the UK. She continues
her career by providing web solutions to members of the public
and businesses alike.
The business was started in August 1999 as a result of trying
to find an available villa for our holiday in year 2000.
We found that although the villa magazines are good they don't
show enough detail or photographs of the rental property in
question. This lead us to telephone lots of villa owners
checking availability and then asking for brochures to look
at. More deliberations and then finally we picked a
villa that was just the right size, floor plan and location.
Sarah had already started web designing so came up with the
idea of creating a website where visitors could go to look
at numerous villas at one website. With the added advantage
of being able to contact the owners by email meant that visitors
could use just one connection to the internet to correspond
with many villa owners, thus saving on telephone charges.
We had looked at other websites of a similar nature and decided that we would
not get involved in actual bookings but rather simply provide villa owners with
the ability to get their own bookings. We also noticed that the
structure and design of other sites wasn't what we wanted. We had found
that many people know what area of Kissimmee they want to stay, because they've
stayed there before or it has been recommended, and these other websites did not
cater for this. Internet users want to find what they want quickly and
efficiently without having to trawl through lots of needless useless pages -
visitors will soon grow fed up of that website and not visit again.
After the website had been in operation for several months we decided to make
a new feature for special offers and late availability offers that the villa
owners may have - that odd week in between two bookings, a cancellation
etc. This aspect of the website has proved very successful - after all
even though the booking might be at a reduced rate, a booked villa is better
than an empty villa.
The "special offers" page is marketed aggressively
on the internet to help shift those offers. The "special offers"
page has only have special / late availability offers for those villas that are currently advertised
on FRbVO Villas2000 and whose owners have paid for the additional service. Owners
cannot advertise their friend's villa by saying it is their own. Anyone
who we suspect of abusing the system will face the possibility of having their
advertisement removed from the whole website. The idea
of our website is that visitors get to see and choose the ACTUAL villa that they
are staying in. We do not want to be associated with anyone who advertises
one villa and then accommodates that guest in another.
The special offers are listed in start date
order. Owner will have the responsibility of maintaining their own offers
to ensure that the website is kept up to date. If
visitors to the website are constantly being told that offers no longer exist
then this may result in less visitors returning.
We offer two membership options:-
Standard Membership : Those who do
not and will not be using the specials pages can still join our Standard membership.
Premium Membership : Those who want to be able to place special/late availability offers
on our website can join our Premium membership (see Add
your property for more details).
We also offer discount memberships for owners of multiple properties.
We welcome any comments or suggestions - please contact us.
We hope we provide a friendly, happy service to both villa owners and
visitors alike.
