Callling all econ majors

[dreamshark]

Well, now we've had at least one forum member admit to doing an anthropological study of the St. John Forum Cult (and who knows how many other students have been doing it quietly). It's an interesting community, after all.

It occurred to me as I was driving to work today that the St. John villa market would be a great laboratory for studying the evolution of a free market economy. I would imagine that 20 years ago villa rentals on St. John all went through travel agents and a few booking agencies, which made it a very artificial economic model. But with the Internet explosion, it's now a full-blown marketplace that anybody can participate in. There are hundreds of properties changing status every day, and thousands of buyers constantly searching. The high/low season dynamic adds a huge challenge to the property owners. Even if you own a villa that is in constant demand during high season, you have to be constantly innovating to find ways to keep it rented through summer and fall. Either that, or just keep dropping your prices to compete. It's gotta be nerve-wracking for the owners, but it's also an opportunity for owners with the best strategies to really shine. It's also, I suspect, a windfall for simple consumers like me who can now afford a vacation in the most beautiful place on earth as beleaguered property owners compete for our summertime dollars.

Now if there were just some way to get there without having to work through the dubious business model of the airline industry, which seems to be doing its best to merge its way to a virtual monopoly.

[Caw954s]

This forum is really interesting dreamshark! I'm also on FB, linkedin, and a few other business type social networks that I rarely spend time on. However, I so enjoy this forum, we all have the enjoyment of vacationing in St. John in common, but that's not the whole story....people on this forum want to help each other, be happy for each other when we can escape to STJ, and lift people's spirits if they're struggling with something. It's nice, there are nice supportive people on this forum of all ages and backgrounds. I like it.

[ski2play]

not an Econ Major, but I have met some of the nicest people ever on this forum, some I have even had the priviledge to party with in person. The dynamics of this community keep me going between trips as we travel in our quest to retire on the island we all love. 5 more years!

[Knolmom]

We have been renting villas on St John for about 20 years. I do not believe that travel agents ever placed people in villas. Back in the day, you visited the tourist board, got brochures and verbal descriptions of villas from villa management companies and then wrote to them to request a color brochure for each villa. Then you gathered all of your friends, family or couples, laid out the brochures, chose a villa, wrote back to see if it was available and the bookedit but they did not accept credit cards. The old AOL travel board, of which I was a member, exchanged info like we do here now, but STJ and STT were combined.
You could speed up the correspondence if you worked in a place where you could slip in an international call or two. In additional, there were several off island villa brokers located in the US that you could call and they would discuss the villa you were interested in and maybe send you a brochure, but they marked up their properties pretty good so you really did not want to rent from them. And once they sent you a villa they would call you and call again to exert some sales pressure to get you to book from the. Of course Caribbean Viilas had the best operation even back then, as you could call their office in Maine and get the info too.
The fun was really in the planing back then.

[Xislandgirl]

In 1996, I was a rental manager.
We would advertise in Islands and Caribbean Travel and Life. We did the local advertising as well.
Folks would call our office and we would mail them villa brochures based on what was available and fit their needs. We had a binder with a print out of the year for each house and we would circle days in pencil when we sent a contract and then in pen when we received deposit.
At that time, none of the 15+ villas I managed hd any AC, not even in the bedrooms.

We did get quite a few calls from travel agents back then. Because we did not pay a TA commission, they rarely called back.
Most of our business was from folks that were on cruises and picked up a STJ Map or Guidebook.

Once AOL started, actually I was on Prodigy first, I was all over the Travel boards trying to get our villas booked, until we got email and our wesbite in 1998(?) I think.

It was a very different world back then. As a rental manager you worked your tail off. You had to sell a villa to someone that was looking at a brochure with 5 pictures on it. We NEVER offered a discount and no one ever asked. The price was what it was. Owners rarely had their property listed with more than 1 agency. Your management company was the company that marketed for you.

It was very different back then!

[Knolmom]

So ironic that just after my post above about calling companies and having them send villa lists, today I received a bound villa book of villas in St Martin, Anguilla and Nevis. This is the first communication I have recd from them in at least 7 years. WIMCO was one of the large villa brokers. Funny that you mentioned people from cruise ships, Xislandgirl. We were off a cruise doing a day trip on St John and we were walking down the street in Cruz Bay and saw some villa photos in the window of the Tropical Properties Office. We inquired about their cost. Denis Demar of Vacation St John happened to be working that day and he gave us a brochure from his rental company. We rented many villas from them over the years, including the ones we used for our wedding moon in 2000.

[Bigcheeze]

The internet sure has changed the way people market their goods and services. It was on a day trip off a cruise ship back in 2002 that we picked up a brochure at Caribbean Villas and 2003 was our visit Visit of 10 days with a party of 8 in all....what newbies we were back then.

My concern for the island businesses is in the cost to fly. I Know of a few couples who have been on STJ with us and the $900/pp x 4 was too much to bear.

[54b]

I'd like to see someone create a true STJ Villa Search Engine that you could plug in these items:

Dates
Price Range (per day or per week)
Bedrooms/# of People
A/C (Bedrooms, Central or N/A)
Pool and/or Hot Tub
Neighborhood (Cruz Bay, Chocolate Hole, Coral, etc.)
View (high up vs down low vs none)

Could add perhaps one or two more like washer/dryer, but those above seem to be the six make or breaks for most people. If one of those factors isn't of import, you'd just select ANY or ALL.

I like the villa review section Anthony has assembled here, I wonder if it could be put in order by price instead of alpha order. Besides availability, price is always going to be the biggest factor.

Some ideas anyway.

[PA Girl]

Villa Fish has a great search feature and they are on island.

[54b]

Villa Fish has a great search feature and they are on island.

Thank you...that's cool.