Online enrollment for the Vacation Rental Switch opened at this year's Annual Conference. More than 40 companies have already completed the Vacation Rental Switch (VRS) online participation agreement.

Want to add your company to this list? Contact VRMA’s Business Development Manager, Jamey King, at Jamey@vrma.com. There is no financial obligation to complete the participation agreement, but you must be a current VRMA member and serve as the primary contact for your company’s VRMA membership.

The enrollment form has five simple steps:

1. Enrollment – provides an overview of the process
2. Company Information – Your company information will be pre-populated from the VRMA database. You will need to select or fill in your PMS provider information.
3. Primary Contact Information – This information will also be pre-populated from the VRMA database.
4. Signature – You will need to provide an electronic signature for the terms and conditions of the agreement. The email address of the primary contact will serve as the electronic signature for the agreement.
• If you would like an opportunity to review the agreement prior to signature, contact Jamey.
  
5. Confirm – You will confirm your participation on this tab. At this point you will have completed the VRS agreement. We will send you an e-mail with confirmation of enrollment, as well as a copy of the agreement.

There are two more steps that will need to be completed closer to the implementation of your properties in the VRS.

1. You will be provided a form for completion with your banking information. All fees for the VRS are collected via ACH transactions with your bank. The advertising fee will be billed the month after you activate any property. The transaction fee will be charged the month of the check-in date of the reservation; however you will receive the invoice the following month.  No billing will take place until your properties have been activated in the VRS.
2. You will be provided with a spreadsheet for completion with a list of the properties you are entering into the VRS, with property name, address, city, state, and zip code.

LiveRez.com, a cloud-based vacation rental software solution provider, has signed a distribution agreement with Pegasus Solutions and the Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) that will allow LiveRez.com to integrate with the forthcoming Vacation Rental Switch (VRS). 

This integration will give LiveRez.com's more than 600 professional vacation rental manager partners the ability to seamlessly list their properties in real time on the VRS, a major distribution tool capable of allowing travelers worldwide to find and book professionally managed vacation rental properties online.

"LiveRez is excited to give our partners access to the broad distribution opportunities the VRS will provide,” said Tracy Lotz, founder and CEO of LiveRez.com. "As LiveRez has grown over the years, we’ve had multiple distribution opportunities, but distribution through the VRS is the perfect fit for our partner base. The VRS ensures each of our partners’ individual brands will be highlighted since it is also governed by the world’s largest association of professional vacation rental managers.”

The VRMA has been working with Pegasus Solutions since late 2011. Pegasus initially brought global distribution to hotels in 1989 with UltraSwitch, which now powers reservations for nearly 100,000 global hotels. Pegasus and VRMA committed to build a distribution solution for the professionally managed vacation rental industry at VRMA’s 2011 Annual Conference. The VRS will allow vacation rental software companies to integrate into Pegasus’ switch technology, which will facilitate real-time online booking, payment processing and calendar integration across multiple online channels.

As the VRS nears launch, LiveRez.com is the first property management software company to sign on to participate.

"We process in excess of six billion shopping requests for hotels every month, so we understand how the VRS will facilitate vacation rental distribution,” said Mike Montemurro, senior vice president, product management for Pegasus Solutions. "The industry has a real need for a tool to enable vacation rental management companies to reach millions of consumers who utilize online travel sites to shop for travel accommodations. The VRS will provide these sites with real-time access to rates and online reservations for thousands of vacation rental properties. By pioneering a VRS connection, LiveRez.com’s vacation rental management company partners will be able to automatically update their rates and property availability on the VRS through the LiveRez.com software, ensuring exposure and wide availability with little or no extra work.”     

According to VRMA President Steve Trover, the VRS will allow professional property managers to list and rent vacation properties through channels like online travel agencies, listing websites and local chambers, among others – while maintaining each property management company’s individual brand. He anticipates the VRS will go live this summer in a beta test on the VRMA’s own consumer website, DiscoverVacationHomes.com.

"Building the VRS has been one of VRMA’s top priorities over the past few years,” Trover said. "Now that we’re nearing launch, I’m excited to see LiveRez jumping on board so quickly.”

LiveRez.com’s integration with the VRS further strengthens its relationship with the VRMA. LiveRez.com has been the software gold sponsor of the VRMA for the past two years.

Have a question about the Vacation Rental Switch? Submit it using this form. Questions and answers will be included regularly here in the Vacation Rental Switch blog.

Question: Is there anything I can do to get ready for the Vacation Rental Switch?

Answer: Because participation in the Switch will be available based on a geographic roll out, the date you will be able to register is not yet determined. However, there are certain things that can be done to prepare for participation.

There are certain guidelines or "rules” that have guided VRMA during the development of the Switch. These rules include standards in the system that VRMA has insisted upon to protect each vacation rental manager who participates in the Switch program, such as leaving control of rental rates and blackout dates with the hands of the participating manager.

These rules also provide guidance for the content that will be required.  Vacation rental managers should be prepared to provide the following:

• Description of the Vacation Rental Management Company (75 words or fewer)
• Logo of Vacation Rental Management Company
• Description of the vacation rental unit (75 words or fewer)
• Photographs of vacation rental unit (minimum of 4)
• Floor plan of vacation rental unit (if available)

Now is the perfect time to gather details and photographs in preparation for participating on the Switch.

Question: We use a proprietary property management software. Will we be able to integrate an XML feed of our property data with the switch?

Answer: The Switch is being designed to integrate with a wide variety of partners. Because we want to connect to many PMS partners and distribution partners, we are using standard specifications for integration using an XML feed. This applies to proprietary PMS systems.  Pegasus has a certification process for integration with the Switch that includes a testing process and applies to any PMS provider.

Discover Vacation Homes (DVH) is the consumer awareness initiative of VRMA that benefits all members. DiscoverVacationHomes.com serves as VRMA’s official public resource on vacation rentals.  Since 2009, all public relations efforts on behalf of vacation rental management professionals have been conducted under the umbrella of this program.  In the many published articles, television segments, and online content that resulted from these efforts, consumers have been directed to DiscoverVacationHomes.com as a place for information about vacation rental management companies.

Through 2011, the reach of the DVH initiative was to more than 210 million individuals in total circulation/viewership/unique visitors of the hundreds of publications, television shows, and websites that have at least mentioned Discover Vacation Homes.

DiscoverVacationHomes.com will be updated and upgraded with the necessary technology to become the premier channel for the Vacation Rental Switch. The public awareness efforts will continue and will drive traffic to DiscoverVacationHomes.com.  The site will continue to house resources about professionally managed vacation rentals, as well as other information useful to travelers.  In addition, travelers will be able to find and book a property in real-time on the site.