Business idea, any suggestions or info with any expertise ?

[taylz]

I found a bunch of sites which are all on Villas, and rental properties for people generally looking to save Hotel costs and bring a larger group of people to cut down on there 'Per night' costs.

I was thinking of trying to sell some of these as a part time thing on the side. My idea was to contact owners or the villa sites to make a commission or some sort of flat fee to help them generate more sales throughout the year.

Has anyone here tried that, or any tips or info they can offer me? I have found some sites with Villas/Rental properties with contact information to the owners, so contacting them will be the first step. Given, they usually would rather have someone at least pay a portion of there 'asking rent price per week' then the house to just sit there without any vacancy.

Just wondering if anyone can offer any ideas, or suggestions from experience or anything that could offer any help to me while I try this out!

Thanks again, Taylor.

[GhostFac3]

What I would do would be to contact the villa owners and ask them how much the rent for (or how much they would be willing too) but also have your own guide with sq ft and amnemities and base a price off of that. Negotiate with them and sign agreements of how much the price will be paid between the two parties. Then your money comes from the difference between their charged price and your deemed market price.

[taylz]

Interesting concept, I had a similar idea but I like that rather then a hosting site with a commission based target.

I would think contacting villa owners, rather then websites currently hosting villas would avoid any middleman type of thing. I can't see it creating tons of money, but overtime it would be a nice collection of different rental properties catergorized.

I would think whatever property I advertised for sale, I would put a base price per season, and then make negotiations with the owner & the contact interested at the time.

Any other input is great, I am open to ideas.

[rekid]

I think the idea has potential.

How do you intend on sourcing leads to fill the villas...

[tazman9r]

My friend got married in a villa rental. He booked it for a week, and both families stayed there before the wedding. My sister-in law has spoken about having a family reunion in a villa rental. Certainly there is merit to this concept.

I flew for a guy who wanted to do this with estates/yachts/jets. His plan was good (I'm told, I never actually saw it) but he went with fractional jet ownership first. In retrospect that was probably his mistake, as he went under very soon after I came on board. I'll bet if he started with villa rental and grew into time share estates, then moved into the jet and yacht arenas, he'd probably done much better. Don't let your eyes get bigger than your stomach.

[taylz]

Thanks for the input guys.

Rekid, this, would be the hard part. I would have to contact and gather up and profile a bunch of different villas with information on them. Over the span of a period of time try to make as many contacts with villas and pricing averages (incase they change). Then when clients are interesting in booking, I would contact the corresponding owner, and arrange as best as I can to book them in.

Given, beforehand the owners would know I'm trying to find them extra people, so I would run specials such as 'Week of ''blank'' stay here for 7 nights during ...etc'

The jets/estates sounds a bit riskier, the only thing I have to lose with this idea is my time. Other then that, there is really no big investment here. The only investment is time, and a website. Which would mean I would have to get the money beforehand and have a hell of a collection of Villas that practically sell theirself.

Anyone else care to eleborate, or talk further, im all ears!