Vacation Rentals Directory
URL: www.vacationrentalsdirectory.net
Currently the only human-edited web directory for the self-catering and holiday rentals industry. The site has been online since 2004 and has hundreds of listings across a huge number of countries.
What it does
The Vacation Rentals Directory is a classic web directory, similar to DMOZ in ambition, aimed purely at the rentals market. We list holiday rental websites across the world, organised by geographic destination.
There is no charge to list a website, although we do make a nominal charge for express approval and multi-category listings.
Problems
We first launched the directory with the intention it may form a natural hub for the market. Unfortunately this was held back by the success of España Breaks (which kept our hands full!) and some problems with the listing management.
Bogus submissions
The first issue, and one for any directory site to beware of, was spam. The free nature of the site unfortunately makes it a target for listings from unrelated and dubious sources. The sheer volume of these severely impacted our ability to review all applications in a timely manner.
No paid links!
The second issue was one of customer expectation and Google's paid link furore:
Google hates paid links because it can distort their search results - fair enough. Unfortunately many webmasters want to be able to choose the keywords on their listing which brings us into direct conflict with Google's policy.
In order not to damage the site's reputation with Google, we stuck to our guns on the editorial policy and haven't accepted paid text links. However we DO now make a one-off charge for reviewing the websites listed.
New horizons?
The market has changed substantially since we launched The Vacation Rentals Directory so many years ago and we believe new opportunities are opening up for it to find its rightful place.
The rise of big players such as HomeAway is raising the profile of the industry as a whole and we see opportunities for sites that can aggregate news and information.
At the same time, monetisation opportunities are getting more exciting as more rental websites jump aboard the affiliate bandwagon and provide a means for referring sites to generate income.
With this in mind the directory was completely overhauled in May 2010 and we're adding new features incrementally.