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Marketing a unique Mexico vacation rental
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Marketing plan
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Visual branding
During the 80s I used to organize Fiestas Patrias in Tracy, California, a city 80 miles east of San Francisco. For the Mexican-American community these were cultural celebrations that were timed to Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day, the 16th of September. However, we wanted the event’ to cross over to the community at large. They were our target group. During the later part of the decade, Fiestas Patrias evolved into four-day events that drew in thousands of people from as far away as the San Francisco Bay Area. Those Bay Area attendees would arrive by the busload. Why so?
I had promoted the events to Bay Area travel agents via direct-mailers six months before they occurred. My goal was to grow the event and by getting agents to at least mark it on their calendars. Then, enterprising travel agents began offering day trips to Tracy on May 5 and Sept. 16 for people that wanted to experience a traditional Mexican celebration a little closer to home — in the US.
That outcome happened after five years of hard work from a few hundred volunteers and a careful marketing plan that paid the best dividend: major public participation.
In the same spirit, the marketing plans for Casa Abundis are forged. The home is being organized like a living museum. American tourists will be able to stay in a home while visting Mexico that was built by a couple that had immigrated to the United States. Not only will they learn a little about Mexico during there stay there but also a lot about the Mexican people that have immigrated to the US.
Logos
Two logos are needed for this website. One, for the parent organization: abundis.org. The other, for the property we are marketing: Casa Abundis. The abundis.org logo comes from the cursive “A” in the Casa Abundis logo. The cursive type emulates my mom’s handwriting. The violet and yellow colors are derived from the colors of the iris flower. The iris was my mom‘s favorite flower.
The abundis.org logo is understated in the homepage layout but it’s scale and weight increases on the “Familia Abundis” section (Not shown).
Flag
A sticky navigation device is used to jump to important sections of the website. Those links provide different key words or ways to access the Casa Abundis section of the website. The labeling and how information will be indexed is a work-in-progress.
The main art is a photo of my parent's enjoying themselves at “El Parian,” a popular Tlaquepaque tourist attraction today and when the photo was taken during the late 50s. That place is describe in great detail on the “Day Trips” section of the site.
I found a great quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes that described the longing people often feel when thay are separated from the place they consider home. Bundling the quote with the photo allowed me to suggest that a tourist might develop a passion for this home away from home similar to how my parent’s did.
Intro messaging is key
This section of the homepage provides a brief history of my parent’s journey and is used to reinforce the historical aspect of the rental property. It begins with a short and descriptive headline that brands the website while teasing the content. The headline is later used as a slogan in the footer of Casa Abundis pages.
The Casa Abundis logo is prominantly displayed here and is used to connect this message with the home. Finally, the last sentence in the paragraph serves as a transition to the next section of the page.
The flag and this introductory paragraph work together to bolster the historical nature of the property to our target readers: tourists.
Homepage
There are three main links on the homepage. Click on the yellow boxes for more information on those links and other homepage features:
1

Casa Abundis: This is the portal to get information about the property. A 3-D diagram of the house is provided as well as price, availability and booking information. The rooms and spaces in the house are themed to the original family members and those themes and the people mentioned are elaborated on here.

2

Tlaquapaque, Jalisco, Mexico: There are two meanings in this subhead. First, the combination of the three nouns describes where the property is located. Secondly, This section provides information on interesting things to do in the city of Tlaquepaque, state of Jalisco, and in the country of Mexico. This section is targeted specifically to attract potential tourist rentors.

3

Familia Abundis: A brief history of my family and siblings appears here. Also, a password-protected portal resides here where descendants of my parents can trade information and photos, learn about their heritage, and for trustees to dissiminate information on plans for the home.

4

Content description: Carefully written descriptions promote the content to the three landing pages.

5

Links: The icons are links to landing pages. At rest, their opacity is subdued but when a viewer hovers over them they are fully opaque.

Day trips
This landing page, which runs as one long scrollytelling experience, showcases four “Day Trips” one can take within forty miles of Casa Abundis. Starting with homebase Tlaquepaque it radiates out to Tequila, about 40 mile from the home. I created photo montages of each daytrip to generate interest in those places. Highlighted visually are some things one can see, do, and visit while at those destinations.
Other highlights of the daytrips landing page:
1

Besides the photos, there is a brief description of each place that provides a “few good reasons” why one should visit.

2

Even though the photos and description give you a general idea about each place, clicking on the “Visit” links directs readers to a story provding even more information and details.

Day trip profiles template
City profiles are used to take day trips with the reader. We tour all the notable historic, cultural, natural landmarks the can be seen in one city in one day and write about our experiences there. Guadalajara, which takes a couple of days to truly appreciate, is broken down into multiple day trips. Included in each trip are a few popular places to stop for a meal or drink. We offer suggestions to get around and typically leave the driving to others.
Some other unique features of the Day Trip template:
1

If a reader is this deep into the website we assume they are a vacationing rentor or might soon be. The navbar links reflects a renting audience that seeks links with information on places to eat, sightsee, and entertain plus maps on how to get there.

2

To add visual drama, our lead image typically runs the full width of the screen. Our choices for art include videos, powerful scenic images, and in this case, an interactive graphic. This image is a still from an aerial video shot from a drone. It made sense here to use a bird’s eye-view image with tooltips. Most of what can be explored in Tlaquepaque is within walking distance of Casa Abundis. On hover, the tooltips display the name of the place of interest.

3

We found a bunch of 360° views of places we wanted to showcase from Google with free usage rights. Letting readers pan around an area lets them get a good feel about a point of interest.

4

The best way to use all of our photographic art was to create a slideshow carousel. The slideshow depicts pictures of the places we mention in the story that are not already inserted as line elements to break up long spans of text.

5

This is a static map of the walking tour we are taking with readers and also a link to the maps page where a lot of Google-based maps are found on each Day Trip. The maps are indexed with information on places to eat, drink, and explore.

6

The promo boxes are links to the other Day Trips we are writing about. The format of the Tlaquepaque page is repeated on other pages so readers can easily follow a recognizable format.