Largest Vacation Home Rental Franchise In U.S. Expands Into Cape Cod

Finding and renting vacation homes may have just gotten a whole lot easier on Cape Cod. The Rent My Vacation Home Network, which runs 83 websites and boasts 70,000 customers, has announced the opening of a Hyannis location: Rent A Cape Cod Vacation Home.

Unlike other companies that offer online vacation home rental services, Rent My Vacation Home builds brick-and-mortar stores in each of its locations of operation. The Rent A Cape Cod Vacation Home store, for example, is located at 1070 Iyannough Road, Suite 103, Hyannis. In addition to allowing for a local, personal touch, having a physical location allows for local job creation.

When staffing is complete, Rent A Cape Cod Vacation Home will employ about a dozen people on the Cape. According to a recent press release, the current staff consists of “sail boat captains and others who are from Cape Cod and are realtors and tourist guides in the offseason.”

Unfortunately, when I tried to reach Rent A Cape Cod Vacation Home via their MA-area code phone number, I was not greeted by a salty Cape Cod sailor. Instead, a robotic voice instructed me to either email them or — if I was a homeowner — to stay on the line and wait to speak with someone. So, for a few moments I imagined that I owned a multimillion dollar seaside Cape compound and waited to speak with someone. The resulting conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hello, is this Rent A Cape Cod Vacation Home in Hyannis?”

Company Representative: “What is a Hyannis?”

So much for the local, personal touch. And while Rent A Cape Cod Vacation Home does offer some high-tech perks, such as being able to unlock rental home doors over the Internet, the franchise does not seem to have local Cape Cod home rental agencies fearing for their business.

I recently spoke with Lucienne “Lu” Wilde, who has been running Cape Cod Rentals ‘N Realty out of her Hyannis home for over 30 years. Lu told me that she has “loyal customers” who have been working with Cape Cod Rentals ‘N Realty for a long time. She does not expect any of her customers to be wooed over by the new franchise on the block, Rent A Cape Cod Vacation Home.

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Posted by erik devaney on Aug 26 2011. Filed under Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry