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How
did Kauai Vacation Resorts
get started?
  I started the Kauai Vacation Resorts website in 1995
as an html file sitting on my desktop. Back then it was called The Kauai Vacation Rentals List. I used it as a way of listing possible vacation rentals that I personally would like to stay in on return visits to Kauai Island. I’d only been to Kauai once before in 1989. Little did I know I’d be moving to Kauai
10 years later.
On the html page I listed text, photos and prices of the various vacation rentals.
I listed such places around the island as: Princeville
condos rentals, Poipu Beach condos, Kapaa
condo rentals and Kekaha vacation rentals as well
as cottages, condos and other homes around the island that I thought I might like to holiday
in on a return visit.
Back then there were not very many Kauai vacation rental websites. Certainly no one had digital cameras so the quality of photos advertising these vacation rentals were simply terrible. These Kauai rentals were shot with a 35mm camera, and then the small photos were scanned on a scanner, converted to digital files and placed on Internet websites. Scanning a small hard copy photo deteriorates the quality of even good 35mm photos.
In 1998, shortly before I even knew I was moving to Kauai, I purchased my first 1.3 megapixel digital camera for $750; low quality and
really high priced compared to today’s standards. In October of 1999 I arrived on the island with no job. So I decided to do small-time computer consulting, tutoring and technical support around the island. I called myself
Computer Steve and created a website that listed my services.
I was living on the south shore in Poipu Beach at the
Prince Kuhio Resort and shortly purchased a condo there. The Prince Kuhio Resort was an ocean view condo resort complex overlooking Prince Kuhio Park. The building was over 90% vacation rentals. It shortly dawned on me I could take good quality digital photos of the various units and sell them to the owners and management companies to be placed on their websites. So that’s exactly what I did. To get started, I photographed one unit for free and showed them to the owners. They were so impressed; they insisted their
property management company use the photos on their property page. The management company, Kauai Vacation Rentals and Real Estate, Inc was impressed enough to hire me to start photographing all their rentals around the island. One by one more private owners and management companies saw my work and hired me as well.
Shortly after that my photography business really stated taking off so I dropped computer consulting altogether. At that point, and not that my vacation rental photography business needed and promoting, but just the same, as a place to list my rates, policies, terms and conditions, I created a business/portfolio type website called
Kauai Vacation Rental
Photography. I also displayed samples of my photography on this website.
Around this same timeframe is where the “Kauai Vacation Rentals List” came into existence. On the website I listed the various Kauai cottages, condos, homes and houses around the island that I’d photographed. I already knew a great deal about promoting websites, so I started promoting Kauai Vacation Rentals List as well.
Since I was living at the Prince Kuhio Resort at Poipu Beach and was photographing a lot of rentals in the
building for my clients, I created another website called Prince Kuhio Resort and
listed their properties on there as well. In a short time, my main website reached top placement in Google and Yahoo and was generating a great deal of visitors to my client’s websites.
Since my website was generating so much business for my clients, I decided to start charging for this advertising service.
In no time at all the Kauai Vacation Resorts website was listing around 600
vacation rentals by owner as well as for property management companies.
Over the years since I started
www.KauaiVacationResorts.com,
the numbers of holiday rentals on Kauai Island has increased quite a bit. So has the number of websites advertising these rentals, not to mention the competition. As a result, to keep up and on top, and since I experienced a substantial increase in my
Hawaii Car Rentals business after their 6-month Search Engine Optimization program, Kauai Vacation Resorts has once again hired the excellent SEO services of eBrandz to promote my website.
Steve Parquet
President,
Kauai Vacation Resorts
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