The villa rental market: looking back at 2009 and what it tells you about 2010.
2009 was a surprising year. At the beginning of the season nobody knew what to expect. It shaped up all right, but the established way of dealing and old habits changed. Here are the lessons to be learnt for 2010, for owners and for holidaymakers.
At the beginning of the year all was doom and gloom. Many large operators cut back on capacity and car hire firms sold many of their cars expecting lean pickings in 2009. Actually the year was not bad at all throughout the European resorts we deal with and nowhere was particularly badly affected: Spain was up a bit on last year, rentals in Portugal were even, and France down a little bit. But two things were greatly changed:
- All the action was at the last minute: there was great worry about the pound and at one point last Christmas it looked as though we were heading for an exchange rate of 1:1 with the Euro, or worse. UK holiday makers, used to an exchange rate more like 1.40€/£ worried about whether they would be able to afford dinner, and so only booked at the last minute.
- Everybody expected discounts. The recession made people think that the owners would be desperate, when in most cases they were anything but desperate. The false expectation of discounts meant some customers actually missed the boat
What do we know about 2010? We know that however bad the economy, people will go on holiday. We also know that for that reason there will not be an oversupply of good villas and so discounts will be thin on the ground. So more of the same!