A Segmentation Study of Beach Rental-by-Owner Online Inquiring Customers

In recent years, with the movement of vacation planning to the online setting, a segment that has emerged is the vacation rental-by-owner lodging market. Vacation property owners are now often renting their property on their own through the virtual marketplace. Accordingly, this study proposes analyzing the inquiring record data for one beach property in a cluster analysis to determine different types of destination inquirers. Key variables to examine include inquiry lead time, length of stay, size of party, vacation season, pet friendliness, and the region of country. A major potential contribution of a study of this nature is the ability to identify several vacationer types for this destination property and region