JZ Vacation Rentals Blog

We love to hear our guests’ travel stories! To know why they’re in town and who they came to see. Mostly, what they’re most excited about doing while traveling through St. Louis. We also love recommending our best day trips while they’re in our area!   Many of our guests are return visitors. And well, we’d love to give ourselves credit for that, but we know we can’t. At least...

Purchasing a vacation rental takes you back to buying your first home. Ahhh, the excitement! The fun of decorating your own space never really goes away. You look back on all the home improvement store runs with fondness. But did you ever consider safety precautions? Because in a vacation rental, you must.   In your vacation home, you get a second chance at designing your dream home. Select just the...

When you think of today’s travelers, who comes to your mind?   Are you picturing your 18-year-old niece boarding a flight to London for a college semester abroad?   Or is it that 20 something-year-old solo backpacker you follow on social media? It’s fun to watch him eating and drinking his way through Italy, France, and Spain, right?   Perhaps it’s business travelers, taking to the skies to close the...

What does the average day of a vacation rental property owner look like? Are you waking up before the sun and kids to have a bit of quiet time to organize your accounting books? Or perhaps you sneak out during your lunch break to check in new guests to your home? Later that night do you stay up after everyone has gone to bed watching The Late Late Show, while...

Last summer a friend called me and asked if I wanted to accompany her to Mexico City to live and work remotely for the summer. Without hesitation and a strong craving for authentic Mexican food and some sunshine, I packed my bags and hopped on a flight two weeks later.   As someone who works online from their laptop, and really only needs a strong wifi connection to make a...

How often do you hear a new vacation rental property owner asking where they can cut cost due to the already demanding property start-up costs of renovations, amenities, and rental necessities? More often than not, in any business or industry, especially vacation rentals, the expenses get cut from the growth budget… AKA marketing and sales. And we understand why: A decade ago with traditional marketing, marketing expenses were a sure...

If you’re currently working in the vacation rental industry, it should come as no shock that more and more studies are coming out of the woodworks that center around the desire to stay in a vacation rental over a hotel movement. On average, these statistics are showing that about 54 percent of active travelers prefer to stay in a vacation rental over the 23 percent of whom prefer to stay...

I remember being told stories from my grandparents, and even my great grandparents, about what it was like when they were growing up. You know, the stories of “I had to walk 10 miles up a hill both ways to get to school.” Oh yeah, you can bet I heard that one almost every time I would even THINK about complaining about anything.   What really stuck out were the stories...

One of the biggest misconceptions people have when starting a new venture, such as starting a business, losing weight, or hosting your very own vacation rental, is that if you fail, that means you should not continue. Making mistakes in a new venture is one of the most critical ways we learn and become more successful down the road, but through a little research, some can certainly be avoided. So,...

Ever since the turn of the century, everything, obviously, has moved online. Can you think of anything you CAN’T do online? We do our banking online, never having to see a physical dollar all month if we choose. We can order trinkets from Asia or Latin America and have them in our home the following day, just by the click of a button. And who are we kidding, we all...