This week we learned that Golden Arrow Resort has sold and will no longer offer quaint cottages and cabins on Indian Point. From what we gather, the new owners will convert the existing resort into luxury condos and lodges keeping with the trend we have seen over the past 10 years and it got us to thinking; “How will blue collar families vacation in the future with nothing but $400 to $1200 a night lodges and condos taking over Indian Point?”

Indian Point has always been the place to stay on vacation going back for the past 50 years. Yes, there is Stormy Point, Nantucket (nothing like cookie cutter people stacked one on top of the other cramming to make your trip memorable…), Big Cedar, the strip and so on, but when it came to the hands down winner of the best in Branson – Indian Point ALWAYS won out. It simply was a no brainer to be honest. The traveler has Silver Dollar City located at the entrance and the marina at the end of Indian Point.

Situated perfectly between Branson and Branson West – Indian Point offers significantly more to the travelers than any other area in the Branson Tri Lakes area. To be honest it’s not even debatable. Considering that 25% of all tourists to Branson go to Silver Dollar City the proximity of the resorts on Indian Point made it a breeze to get into the park and immediately straight to the festivities. In fact, on busy days it is fairly common for tourists staying in Branson to waste upwards of 2 hours just fighting traffic jams while guests staying on Indian Point are already enjoying their day in the park.

Seriously, think about that for a second. Our guests will leave their rooms at 9 a.m. – in the parking lot by 9:10 a.m. – catch the next tram by 9:20 a.m. and playing by 9:30 a.m. for park opening. Tourists staying in Branson won’t even make it to the intersection at the IHOP before 9:30 a.m. and will spend the next 60-90 minutes fighting stop and go traffic, all while Indian Pointers are laughing, playing, partying and riding. 

Leaving the park is pretty much the same nightmare day after day. Ours are home 20 minutes after they leave the park. Guests staying off of Indian Point probably will make it back home before midnight (or maybe not…)

Indian Point also features the largest portion of Table Rock Lake. Yes, there are large areas by Kimberling City and yes the lake looks lovely over there – but there is nothing there!!! Trust me, I know what I am speaking about – my very own mother and father lived there for years. Great city, great people, zero anything else. The only “franchise” line anything there is a Subway sandwich shop as I recall and that’s it. I don’t believe there is even a restaurant of any measure. Just a very clean, quiet, polite city with nothing else to offer.

Same goes for Nantucket and Stormy Point. Located literally in the middle of nothing and built one on top of each other – I don’t know what to make of the community other than to say it would not interest me to pay such an astonishing amount of money and be so far removed from everything.

Even the Crown Jewel of Branson – Big Cedar – is located miles from anything, not to mention it requires 6 mortgages and 25 paychecks to stay and eat there…. which leads us back to the premise of this blog. 

When we moved here in 2003 it really caught my attention that one of the best qualities of Indian Point was its proximity to everything and affordability for blue collar families. Nowhere else in Branson could you find such a convenient location to the lake, the park, shopping, groceries, fuel – you name it – and still be able to leave without a huge hit on your credit card. It simply didn’t exist. 

We had the Wig Wam Resort – Rockwood – Wolf Ridge – Antlers – Uncle Johns – Golden Arrow – Hunter’s Friend – and DreamCatcher that were all highly affordable (kitchenettes under $100/night) and now we are down to 2. Hunter’s Friend and Marina Inn. 

All of the other resorts have sold and been converted to lodges and condos and charge astonishing amounts per night. It is true that these condos and lodges will sleep many more people and for some guests that is ideal for them. But for families who don’t want to stay with 23 other people in the same unit and can’t afford the extreme expense of a condo – where do they go? What if you are simply a husband/wife with a couple of small kids? Your choices are becoming more and more scarce by the year. Even an “affordable” condo on Indian Point now goes for $200/night and up.

The choices are growing slimmer by the day and the days of affordable nightly rentals on Indian Point are becoming fewer and further between. They can either book with us and stay in a marvelous kitchenette or motel style room that comes complete with pillow top mattresses, 50 inch HDTVs, DVD players, free DVDs, great pool side room, Weber grills or they can save up and blow thousands of dollars on a cookie cutter condo that looks just like one of the other 499 located side by side, on top of one another that are so in vogue now. 

When you book with us you are supporting a veteran owned small business. In fact, we are the quintessential small business owner husband/wife duo offering unparalleled quality lodging at an affordable price. We will continue to offer great rooms at a phenomenal price for as long as we are owners at Hunter’s Friend. If you are truly looking to support small business – book direct with us and create lifetime memories with reasonable rates.

 

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.

 

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.

1. Vacation.Rentals charges no fees to either the homeowner or the traveler. That is a huge reason alone to list with them. 
2. Vacation Rentals offers free website hosting to homeowners who need a venue to display their property even better.
3. Vacation.Rentals offers homeowners a free customized YouTube video with each listing they provide
4. They are the only ones who offer a straight forward annual listing fee
5. 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