Blog Archives - Hunters Friend Resort

Spread out and protect yourself

Blitzburgh — Tue, 12 May 2020 19:55:48 +0000

Planning a vacation can be stressful enough. Don’t add to it by staying in a cramped space.

America is returning to normal and you now have some important considerations to make for the safety of your family. Obviously, one of the most important decisions will be “Where will you stay?” A hotel with nice crampy quarters, hallways, rubbing shoulders, pushing shared elevator buttons,,,, or… a wide open exterior door resort? To us the solution is pretty obvious.

Imagine being on vacation with your family and friends, sharing space with you and 300 “friends”. Are they practicing social distancing? Why are 8 of them piling into an elevator with you? With a hotel you get nice, close quarters, shared hallways, shared elevators, community dining (assuming they provide breakfast) and shared luggage racks. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a massive outbreak because of confined spaces.

Our guests on the other hand enjoy 100% exterior doors, straight in access from their car to their rooms (or condos) individual kitchens and tons of exterior space to keep you much safer. Armed with the knowledge that we were virtually the ONLY resort in Branson to invest in an electrostatic sprayer to disinfect every room and condo between stays, your only worries are “Do we grill or order delivery?”

Our condos are much the same. Depart your car and walk right into your condo with no worries of cross contamination.

From there you can head right out to the lake on your boat – go fishing – or rent a jet ski for the day.

Our pools have LARGE decks allowing everyone plenty of space and no overcrowding. Coronavirus cannot survive in chlorinated water so the threat is removed from there as well. We want you and need you to feel 100% safe on vacation. Consider our resort when you are ready to book a place to stay that is both affordable and safe.

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We take your safety serious.

Blitzburgh — Tue, 12 May 2020 03:28:10 +0000

Rely on our protection to keep you and your family safe on vacation.

The coronavirus has presented many challenges across the United States, impacting every business and profession in unique ways – ours included. During the time of mandatory shut down we used our time to investigate safe methods of reopening and what was working for other similar large scale industries. Clearly, the method that was the hands down winner was a method using electrostatic disinfecting.

Electrostatic spraying involves creating positive charged particles to adhere tighter to surfaces all around. In the case of a door knob, it does not just spray the contact surface, it also “wraps” around the backside and into the crevices. Same for faucets, remote controls, door pulls, etc. It is the #1 method currently used by airlines, schools, manufacturing, etc. The process has been used for years in painting with the common knowledge term “powder coating”. Recently, technology has now brought this electronic marvel to the hospitality sector and we are proud to provide this as a service to our guests.

Because we jumped in on this so quickly, we were able to procure one for ourselves in the anticipation of a market shortage. Sure enough, the same system we paid $1500 for now is sold out and being sold on eBay for $5 – 9,000. Waiting on backlogs puts delivery sometime out in Sept or Oct. 2020.

Our guests can relax knowing that we were ahead of the curve and took immediate steps to protect them as well as our staff. If you are debating on where to stay for your vacation – make sure you ask the hotel/motel/resort “What do you use to decontaminate your rooms in between stays?” If they simply tell you they wipe down surfaces with Lysol or some other method do yourself a favor, hang up and call us. If a business is not willing to invest in your safety – do you really want to stay with them and put your family at risk?

Additionally, you may hear other comforting solutions given as an answer and we will now show you why those are not sufficient.
Starting with the ozone machine.

Will an Ozone Generator protect us from COVID-19?

No, do not use ozone generators in occupied spaces. When used at concentrations that do not exceed public health standards, ozone applied to indoor air does not effectively remove viruses, bacteria, mold, or other biological pollutants. Combine this with the fact that ozone in concentration can be dangerous to humans. They are handy for removing cigarette smoke, fish fryer smell, etc. but beyond that they are fairly useless when used for viruses.

What about UVC?

At this point in time (11 May 2020) there is no evidence that UVC will kill Covid 19 although it is strongly believed to do so as it is effective against other coronaviruses. Having said that, here is what is known. It is horribly dangerous to human skin and can pose a great danger to personnel not familiar in the safe handling of using it. According to the BBC:

In a recent study – which looked at whether UVC could be used to disinfect PPE – the authors found that, while it is possible to kill the virus this way, in one experiment it needed the highest exposure out of hundreds of viruses that have been looked at so far. The amount of ultraviolet required varied widely, depending on factors such as the shape and type of material the virus was on.
“UVC is really nasty stuff – you shouldn’t be exposed to it,” says Arnold. “It can take hours to get sunburn from UVB, but with UVC it takes seconds. If your eyes are exposed… you know that gritty feeling you get if you look at the sun? It’s like that times 10, just after a few seconds.”

We are so committed to our guests safety and to the success of our business, we did not hesitate to purchase an electrostatic disinfector.

When combined with an FDA certified N type disinfectant the kill rate for coronavirus is less than 5 seconds. It is inert and safe for all guests and pets, harmless to fabrics and surfaces and does what it is supposed to do. Kill the coronavirus.

So when you are deciding on where to book your next vacation ask yourself a simple question. “Do I want to take a chance on making my family sick on our next trip or do we want to stay some place where they put the customers and their staff first?”

Hunter’s Friend is the obvious choice. Call us at 800 338 2842 to book your next stress free vacation.

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Is Condo Security Safe Enough? Here’s How to Tell

Blitzburgh — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 13:01:09 +0000

Most condos offer some sort of security. The type of security offered can vary by the size and type of the condo. Since many people pack valuables on vacation, it is important to know if your condo security is safe enough. You don’t want to worry or stress about the safety of your family or your belongings while you are trying to have fun on vacation. Here are a few ways you can check to make sure the condo you stay in is safe.

Check the Crime Rate

Before you visit a condo check the crime rate at and near it. Compare the amount and type of security to the crime rate and decide for yourself if the security is adequate. If you are unsure what type of security is offered, contact the condo’s customer service department and talk with a manager. Luckily, most condos are located in safe areas where their crime rates are low, and there are plenty of people around to help each other out.

Read Condo Reviews

See what other visitors are saying about the condo you are planning to stay at. If you read reviews from visitors who say their items were stolen or they did not feel safe, then the condo security being offered may not be safe enough. Condo thefts and crimes are much less common than most people realize. That is why you usually hear about them when they do occur. You can always count on the reviews of others to help you make a good decision about the condo you want to rent.

Check for Locks and Cameras

As soon as you arrive at a condo, check to make sure there are adequate door locks on the room doors and cameras in the lobby and hallways. If you want to know if these things are present before you book your room, ask customer service. Condo owners want to protect their condos and guests just as much as you want to protect yourself. You will not find a condo without locks and topnotch security.

Trust your Instincts

If you do not feel safe in a condo or are not comfortable leaving your items behind in the room, go somewhere else. Always trust your instincts and never stay somewhere that you don’t feel safe. Your vacation should be enjoyable, and while it’s unlikely that you ever find a condo that makes you feel unsafe, you should trust yourself.

In most cases, condo security is safe and will help protect you and your items. It is always a good idea to inspect a condo before making your reservations. Don’t be afraid to ask questions before you reserve your condo.

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SILVER DOLLAR CITY OR DISNEYWORLD?

mike — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 15:12:40 +0000

You may believe that since we live in the area and own a lodging business which is literally a couple miles away from Silver Dollar City, it’s natural that we help market this attraction. That’s partly true because some of our customers do stay with us for our close proximity to the park. However, we would like to explain to you why we think Silver Dollar City is a better choice than Disneyworld.

We travel quite a bit as a family and there are only a handful of places where we haven’t been to in US. When we lived in California, we visited Disneyland several times and as early as 2 years, we decided to take our little ones to Disneyworld after a 2 week vacation in the Gulf Coast. Orlando was our last stop before returning home to Branson. We figured that we would have the best for our kids the last. We found decent accommodations close to the park and got up early the next day to take our twins to the happiest place in the world! Or so we thought.

After paying more than $400 for four of us, we grabbed a map and tried to work on a plan to enjoy the most rides possible. Remembering from our visit to Disneyland, we decided to locate the fast pass lanes. Wow! Lines at the fast pass lane had more than 100 people at a time. By the time, it was our turn, we saw that most of fast passes were not available anymore except a few rides. Disappointed by determined to show our kids a good time, we tried to get in lines and almost every of them had more than an hour of wait. It wasn’t until after dark where the lines started getting thinner and we were able to ride some rides after less than an hour of waiting at each. While we thought that it was a success that we could ride some of these rides, our kids were in no humor. Waiting, waiting and more waiting took all the fun away from everything and turned them into cranky little people. We, the parents didn’t mind the exhaustion of running around, smelling the full diapers all over the park and seeing many more cranky, hungry, tired kids all around us; after all, this is the happiest place on earth. At the end of the day, we stuck around to watch the fireworks which was the best fun. This at least put a little smile on our twins face.

Perhaps, we should have been better prepared, done more planning by figuring out what to do every minute of our visit. Frankly though, a family trip shouldn’t have to be this complicated and certainly not that expensive. Spending your time trying to make your little people happy shouldn’t have to be this hard.

This is why we will always prefer to visit Silver Dollar City. SDC is nothing like Disneyworld, Disneyland, Six Flags or any other theme parks. It’s a unique park in its own category. Originally built around a cave, the park has grown tremendously to comfortably compete with Disneyworld. The variety of rides is amazing and they keep adding the wicked rides one can think of. I do not dare riding these rides but I watch as one of my twin daughters hop on some of them and scream, laugh and wows like no end. The wait for rides definitely less than what they are in Disneyworld. You don’t see cranky kids at this park. There are different sections. Rides for small kids, rides for older kids and rides for adults and anyone who’s tall enough to ride them. There are plenty of restaurants and cafes. Over 60 stores that offer unique local art and other items. There are cooling stations in the hot months of summer. The park is built on the hills with beautiful landscaping and enough trees to provide shade. It’s clean and there are so many staff to help with questions, directions and anything else. Staff who welcome the visitors with Ozarks hospitality talking and joking with the people. You do not get the feeling that you’re one of the thousands of people just there to visit the park. You feel that you are among old friends who are happy to have you there.

You also do not have to break the ban when visiting Silver Dollar City. The annual passes are cheaper than a one day pass at Disneyworld. You can visit the park as many times as you’d like to March through December.

The park offers different festivals throughout the year. Blues and BBQ fest, the new Wonder Fest, Star Spangles Summer, Moonlight Madness, Southern Gospel Picnic, Craft and Cowboy Fest and several more are available for people with different interests. The one our family enjoyed the most is the “An Old time Christmas” This is actually very popular with visitors. Parades, Christmas shows, over 5 million Christmas lights and a 5 story tall Christmas tree with special sound and light effects. In our Facebook page for Hunter’s Friend, we provided pictures of this event if you’re interested in seeing them.

In the end, everyone would like to visit the “happiest place on earth” at least once in their lifetime but if you’re looking for a place that you can visit over and over again, Silver Dollar City is your park. Southern hospitality, affordability, competitive rides, amazing shows and a time well spent with family are what you will find at Silver Dollar City.

Don’t forget! We are only a couple miles away from the park located on the same peninsula. When you drive to the park from one of our 3 locations, you do NOT fight the traffic. You arrive at the park literally within minutes while everyone else coming from Branson is stuck on Hwy 76 or Hwy 465. Why wait when you can start having fun right away?

What are they building at Silver Dollar City ? We don’t know yet but we are sure whatever it is, it’s going to be amazing as they proved in the past that they are always ready to make it more fun for their visitors. We hope that you get a chance to visit this park at least once in your lifetime too and make everyone in your family happy.

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Best alternative site for VRBO, AirBNB, and FlipKey

mike — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 13:11:57 +0000

There are other options out there to list your vacation home rental. Here is our choice and why we are moving.

As we had mentioned in another post Hunter’s Friend Resort decided to start listing all of our vacation homes for rent with Vacation.Rentals as we felt they were the best alternative to VRBO, FlipKey and AirBNB.

There were many reasons for this but the most glaring was extreme cost vs. low performance. While there is a certain risk to leaving VRBO, we also knew staying with them would mean even more finances flying out the door for us.

There are some definite advantages to listing with VRBO.

20 years the industry leader and is so widely recognized that people use it as an neologism now, simply saying they seen the property on “Verbo”
They are pretty dominant in the SEO market
They are owned by some of the largest marketing giants on the planet.
They have a great website.

At this point the reader would have to wonder “Why should I leave VRBO?” (Or AirBNB – FlipKey for that matter) and it would be a valid question. The answer simply came down to finances. The travelers AND owners are now being squeezed to give more both in the way of finances and ownership of their listings.

3 years ago, matching up vacation travelers with homeowners was pretty straightforward and simple. The traveler would search where they wanted to go, how many people they were traveling with, their dates of arrival and departure and press go. A results list was returned to the traveler where they could refine their search based on location, price etc. The process is pretty standard across the spectrum as it is very similar in functionality to eBay, Craigslist, Loopnet, etc. Search, find, inquire.

Then it all came crashing down. Expedia bought out VRBO and began to change their pricing structure to a way that left many homeowners angry and aggravated with their way of doing business. It was as if Expedia was telling them that they really didn’t know how to run their business and from here on out they would show them how to do it the Expedia way (and at a bumped up price)

Frustrations with VRBO – AirBNB – FlipKey

The frustrations really began to boil over in late 2016, early 2017 when the policies went into effect, which led us to begin searching for alternative solutions as well.

To be sure there were several other offerings out there, but the thing that set Vacation Rentals apart from the competition was it the fact that it was created by actual property owners who had worked in the industry and knew what it was the customer was searching for. They emphasized ease of use, fast returns on searches and great interfaces for their users. But the best part of all and the thing that sets Vacation Rentals apart from the competition is it’s ridiculously low pricing for each property listed. making it just about the cheapest peer to peer offering out there, with maybe the exception of Craigslist. (More to that later)

A catchy URL that hits immediately with the search engines and it has relevant domains tied to it.

Vacation Rentals is literally HTTPS://VACATION.RENTALS There is no dot com, dot net, dot biz – nothing. It is the new generation of gTLDs and they will become more standardized as the years continue on. gTLDs began rolling out in 2015 and some of them have really taken off. Short – easy to remember – easier to say and relevant to what the site is about. In this case, the website is directly involved with homeowners listing their home for vacation rentals.

Throw in the fact that Vacation Rentals is tied to Land.Rentals (For landowners who want to lease out their land to hunters and sportsmen alike) RVPark.Rentals (RV Park owners listing their available spaces for lease to the RV industry) and finally the best affiliate link of them all Boat.Rentals (All sites will be live by the end of 2019. At the time of this writing, only Vacation.Rentals is live and operating)

The combination of all these sites working together to push each other up in the search rankings will only benefit the homeowners who register a membership with them.

An incredible price for value

The site offers virtually every feature you would expect for listing your vacation property. Seasonal rate calendars, interactive media gallery, direct communication between owner and vacationer, and much more. There are no service fees, no commissions, nothing.

If price is the only factor why not list on Craigslist?

For sure Craigslist is a great source of information and everyone on the planet uses it but it has its own drawbacks. To start, every listing on Craigslist expires after 45 days which means you have to relist without fail or risk losing reservations. Craigslist has no listing calendar whatsoever. No way to block out dates, set seasonal rates, nothing. Imagine having a home for rent listed on Craigslist and people are looking for somewhere to go over the 4th of July. Your e-mail and phone would blow up with the inquiries. Non stop people mentioning that they had seen your ad on Craigslist and wanted to know if it was still available to rent. With Vacation Rentals, you block out the dates with a simple 2 click process and save. It is literally that simple and will keep you from wasting valuable time. Another drawback to Craigslist is the unknown. Before we would ever think of renting from someone on Craigslist (and we haven’t) we would want to vet the property extensively. There are endless stories of people who have been scammed on Craigslist. Vacation Rentals inspects each and every listing before allowing it to publish.

For us, the choice is easy. List with a site that saves you (and us) money or continue to be a slave to the grind. We have broken from from our dot com addiction.

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We have found a better alternative to AirBNB and VRBO

mike — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 15:47:00 +0000

Last year, some of you may recall that we had started to list our vacation homes for rent on a new site that was a better alternative to VRBO and AirBNB. The main difference is the amount of money we were able to save the travelers and also to ourselves. Now we have a new listing service that is even better. The site is simply called Vacation Rentals with a dot between the words Vacation and Rentals. (There is no .com, .net, or anything else) Just strictly and only Vacation dot Rentals.

The site offers homeowners a simple and powerful means to list their vacation home for rent with zero commissions or fees and no charges whatsoever to the traveler.

Here are some of the key differences between the 3 sites.

Vacation.Rentals charges no fees to either the homeowner or the traveler. That is a huge reason alone to list with them.
Vacation Rentals offers free website hosting to homeowners who need a venue to display their property even better.
Vacation.Rentals offers homeowners a free customized YouTube video with each listing they provide
They are the only ones who offer a straight forward annual listing fee
The URL is one of the most recognizable and memorable URLs out there currently and was even featured on CNBC and the Florida Business Journal.

The site also allows for 35 images to be uploaded, a video link holder, iCal import, and much more.

The next time you are coming to Branson – book direct with Vacation.Rentals and save yourself the fees in turn

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