Florida Property Owners & Suppliers – Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the concept behind the website?
- What do we, the property owner, have to do?
- What is our main responsibility?
- What will we get from Destination America?
- What checks will Destination America carry out on a property?
- How are the arrival instruction and security deposit handled?
- How are bookings processed in respect of property availability?
- How is a booking processed to being a definite one?
- What commission is payable to Destination America for bookings on our property?
- How and when does Destination America schedule payments for bookings?
- Where is the money paid by a customer held until it is paid to the property owner?
- Can we promote special offers?
- What happens if a Destination America customer cancels their booking?
- Can we leave everything to you?
- Do we need to have our own booking conditions?
- We have our own booking conditions? How does that affect things?
- Can we specify a set arrival day and/or a minimum stay during certain times of the year?
- What is in the future planning?
- We have some suggestions for you?
- A combination of two primary objectives: For customers a smart search facility to find the exact type of rental property with the dynamic features they want for their holiday in Florida. For owners a website to promote their property with the unique features it has, stored in our database, ready to match up with the consumer’s requirements. Florida rental properties each have their own unique features which can make a big difference to the individual customer and our search will successfully match the two together. Experience has shown that most customers are more than willing to pay a higher than average rental price if they can secure the type of property with the personal and dynamic features that they require. Therefore the customer uses the smart search and adds their own dynamic preferences until they get an exact (or as near as can be) match to a property owner. Result is a satisfied customer and a happy owner.
- Complete and submit the registration form, and with your e-mail address and choice of password you will be able to login to your own administration area. Add your property details into our template pages – there are 10 easy steps to follow which include a preview page so you can see how your web pages are developing as you go along. Most of the input is a series of questions and answers, with the key dynamic features stored into our database for the customer smart search. The result is a property that is well presented to customers in a standard cohesive and digestible format that looks neat and professional. The most important aspect by far is to keep the availability calendar up to date at all times and to enter rates as far ahead as you feel you can. No rental rates entered for dates put into a search will mean that the property goes to the bottom of the search results as the database has nothing to work with, i.e. no rental rate to quote the user.
- Your main responsibility is to ensure that your rental home is fully maintained and thoroughly cleaned between each rental and regularly checked to ensure that all the equipment is in full working order. Particular attention in this regard should be paid to the maintenance and cleanliness of private swimming pools and during the winter months the heating equipment. There needs to be a responsible person, usually the property management agent, who is on hand and nearby to ensure that any problems that do occur can be quickly rectified. The property keys / lockbox code need to be ready for collection when clients arrive. Complaints about Florida rental properties are happily few and far between and the most common one from customers is about cleaning standards. Another really annoying situation is when the local agent forgets to put the pool heating on ahead of the client arrival, or even worse ‘suddenly’ finds out that the heating equipment is not working. It is absolutely vital to use an agent or local person that is well organised and schedules tasks and maintenance so that these situations are avoided.
- Your own private administration section which you will be able to access online from anywhere at any time, including: Homepage with general information about your administration area with any latest news or updates from us. Access to your registration details to amend or update any of your information. A property portfolio page showing a list of the properties that you have uploaded to the website. A Link to add a new property to the website – there is no limit to the number of properties. A Link to edit an existing property, including updating the availability calendar and rental rates. Add special offer rates for late availability, easily found by our customers. Help information about operating within your administration area. Contact Form for you to send us a message by e-mail.
- We will carry out whatever checks we consider necessary to check the validity of a rental property. Our Florida representatives keep up to date with all locations and the developments and areas where rental properties are generally situated. From time to time we may do a drive by viewing or a personal property inspection through the local agents or person responsible for looking after the property. We do this by the way in the interests of the property owner as much as the customer. Your visitors will have high expectations and dreamed of their holiday, having planned and talked about it among themselves and to their friends and family; it is therefore imperative that the rental property lives up to these expectations. Most visitors will also have undertaken a long journey to the property, often taking an entire day to get there, so the last thing they need at this time of high excitement is any form of disappointment, and excuses from the local agent are entirely unacceptable. First impressions make all the difference and what is nicer than a happy customer! And you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.
- You will provide us with the arrival instructions together with directions and local maps to the property. We will pass these onto to the customers when the rental has been fully paid for. These instructions will probably incorporate the security deposit requirements through the property management agent. We have our own indemnity form which you are welcome to use if you wish. In this case the customer will be asked to complete the form providing us with credit cards details and authority to charge the same in the event of any damages, spillages, unauthorised charges, etc. We regret that, for the ease of administration, we cannot get involved in collecting, either directly or indirectly, money in respect of this security aspect. For the purposes of clarification the property owner agrees not ask any of our customers at any time, prior to arrival or on check-in, for cash up front in this respect. All our customers receive a fact sheet with their arrival instructions informing them how to handle themselves whilst in ‘residence’ in the property and are advised that they are to leave the property in the same condition as they found it, save for obvious departure cleaning requirements.
- If you have opted to keep the property availability calendar up to date then when a customer requests a booking we work on the assumption that the dates are available and that the booking will in the vast majority of cases be accepted. However we reserve the right on behalf of property owners that each booking request is subject to approval and acceptance by the owner as we understand that there will be occasions when the requested booking is not for a suitable arrival date and/or length of stay in respect of the current booking status on the property, or it may be that the make-up of the party is not permitted, and that quite rightly the owner has the final decision. What Destination America will not readily accept is if requested bookings are not available due to the calendar having not been kept up to date and it therefore creating a false impression to both the customer and ourselves. The owner has the alternative option to not keep the calendar up to date in which case both the customer and Destination America clearly knows that availability on the property is on request to the owner. Should a situation persist that when Destination America contacts an owner for requested bookings and it finds that the calendar is not being updated then Destination America has the option to ‘lock’ the calendar in the request mode until such time as the owner re-assures us that the calendar will be kept up to date.
- When a definite booking is requested Destination America will contact the owner by sending a standard ‘booking request’ email showing the booking details. Please note that this email will only be sent when the booking is a definite booking request with payment commitment held by Destination America as we will not contact the owner in this way in respect of availability enquiries only (see paragraph below). The owner replies by either accepting or declining the booking. In accepting the booking it is on the explicit understanding that Destination America will immediately confirm it in writing to the customer and that from this point on it the booking will be honoured without recall for any reason whatsoever, excepting only force majeure events. It is therefore assumed by Destination America that the owner has sufficient control over the reservations placed by this process on the property in the knowledge that no other party involved in providing bookings to the owner, in particular the property management agents, could cause a double booking situation to occur. Destination America in processing the customer confirmation will automatically update the property calendar accordingly. If the booking is declined when the availability calendar shows it as available the owner will be asked to state the reason for this. Should a customer wish to verify a property as currently available (and this will be quite common for those properties where the calendar is not being kept up to date) prior to placing a definite order then one of our reservation team will contact the owner by telephone or send an ‘availability enquiry’ enquiry email.
- Commission is 15% of the total rental amount including any supplements, which is deducted from the owner payment when it is due for payment to the property owner.
- The full payment for a booking is automatically remitted to the property owner on the day following the customer’s departure from the rental property.
- Customer payments are held in a Destination America HSBC client bank account, the funds not being used for any other purpose than payment for that rental booking. This method offers complete financial security to both the customer and property owners.
- Most definitely, and there is no extra charge. There is a special offer section for each property where you can promote any two of five set offers at any one time. Full details will be found on the special offer upload page. Special offers will immediately appear in the overview panel of the property which shows in the search results, therefore a special offer can be up and running within minutes. Reducing the rental price is the only way to get a property to the top, or near to the top, of the search listings – other than if the property has the lowest price anyway. Properties will be shown in the search results by price order, low to high, but can be changed by the user to high to low, a – z or z – a by location.
- There is an automatic policy in our booking conditions which we have built in to protect property owners. Deposit payments are 20% of the total rental cost and are non-refundable in the event of cancellation. Cancellations between 43 and 56 days (6 – 8 weeks) have a 50% cancellation charge. Cancellations 42 days (6 weeks) or less before arrival date have a 100% cancellation charges. All customers are advised that they should have fully comprehensive holiday insurance in place to protect themselves against cancellation charges. When a booking is cancelled Destination America will administrate all the necessary paperwork including dealing with the customer and the insurance underwriters if there is to be an insurance claim, retaining a 10% fee from the total rental price for processing the cancellation, making a total of 25%. The property owner can therefore take comfort in the knowledge that they will get paid the rental payment to us less a 25% fee in the event of a cancellation, the payment of which being processed within 7 days of us having received cancellation instructions in writing from the customer. The property owner is then free to re-let the property, if necessary with a special offer to attract a new rental, including utilising our special offer section on our website.
- Yes. Once you have uploaded your property data and validated it, all the information will be checked, published and then displayed on our website. You can direct any, or all, of your own enquiries to your web page section and instruct your party to telephone the Destination America reservation call centre or to make a booking online. Each property has a unique number that you can refer parties to and this can be entered into the Search by Property number on the top right on each page on the website. We will then process each booking, collecting payment and remit the net rental income when it is due for payment. This enables the very busy owner to place their property on our website and leave everything to us (NB: we do not make any guarantee with regard to the number of bookings that may be achieved, this is not the way we operate).
- No, not if you process all bookings through our system as our standard booking conditions will apply to all bookings on a stand alone basis.
- All bookings that we make on your property are subject to our standard booking conditions. Incorporated into our booking conditions our customers are also made a party to your own booking conditions. For the purposes of the customers that we book into your property our booking conditions are superior as per the owners trading agreement. However, in the unlikely event of a dispute between the customer and the owner, or its property management agent, either during or after the course of the rental, then if need be we will agree to the owner’s booking conditions prevailing.
- Yes, there is an area on the property upload rental rates page where both of the above issues can be addressed. This will help our reservations team identify when either of the above might come into play and affect a booking request.
- Phase 2 is already in the final planning stages and will include some important new features which will enable the property owner to operate a full turnkey reservation and availability system to include bookings from all sources in conjunction with our website rental programme. The owner will be able to process all property bookings through our system if they want to for a relatively low charge. There will also be an area for customers to view their own booking/s which will include access to the property arrival instructions once a booking has been fully paid for. Another new feature will be a facility for customers to pay the rental balances online. In Phase 3 we will introduce an Affiliate commission scheme where members will be able to book any property on the website for one of their own customers. DA Updates will keep owners informed of progress.
- Any suggestions from property owners for possible improvements to our operation are always welcome.
