How Ideal Vacation Rentals Got Started

In 1997, a Kindergarten teacher in British Columbia Canada put down her chalk and took up html. This was to be the beginning of an exciting new career listing vacation rentals by owner worldwide.

In 1993, Les and Julie Roberts, a couple from Canada bought a vacation rental property in Maui, Hawaii. They decided that instead of hiring a manager to handle their rentals, they would do it themselves. At this time newspaper advertising was the way to go as the internet was only just coming into its own.

In 1997, Julie took out an RRSP to buy her first computer. Before that she barely knew how to turn one on. Little did she know that it would be her vehicle for success. She taught herself basic html and went to work making a website for their vacation rental in Maui. She also discovered that by listing their vacation rental on various vacation rental websites, that they had no trouble booking their vacation home as much as they needed.

One summer day in 1999 Julie’s computer illiterate husband asked her if she might be able to start a vacation rental computer business of her own. They brain-stormed for names and came up with idealvacationrentals. In November 1999 Ideal Vacation Rentals was launched and Julie was in business. She now had to juggle teaching kindergarten with operating all aspects of the business so would get up at 5:00 AM, work on the business for 3 hours and then head off to the school house. At noon she checked e-mails and then in the evening she would again put on the hat of the owner of Ideal Vacation Rentals. It was a joke among her colleagues that it was the kindergarten teacher that everyone went to with their computer problems.

Soon the demands of running a business and teaching young children became too much, so she gradually cut back on teaching and eventually retired in September of 2003 so that she could dedicate all her time to Ideal. As Julie states, “It is rewarding being able to offer vacation rentals by owner as an alternative to staying in a hotel, while at the same time providing owners with a place to advertise their vacation homes.”

As an owner from Hawaii states: “Aloha Julie and Staff at Ideal Vacation Rentals – It is with great pleasure that I can whole heartedly recommend your vacation rental web site. Since listing with your service you have become one of the top three providers of inquiries for our business and one of the best investments of our marketing plan. So long as I own/manage vacation rentals I’ll be looking at your company for marketing above and beyond what is expected.”

In Summary, Julie is proud to join the thousands of women who have succeeded in starting and running their own business.