As we pass more than 435,000 cases of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the US, these are clearly difficult times for our country and the world. Several recent articles have said that the travel industry has been the hardest hit of any sector in the US economy. Cruise lines have completely shut down and air traffic is likely down more than 75%. Coronavirus is hitting St. George Island especially hard. Vacation rental taxes are $1.4 million of our small county’s budget and is a vi

A movement has been taking place over the last few years. This movement started when Expedia purchased Homeaway in 2015. Homeaway had a simple model. The company would charge a flat fee to vacation rental owners in order to list on their website, and the homeowners would leverage Homeaway/VRBO’s wide reach to attract renters to their vacation homes. At SGI Beach Vacations, we started with Sand Dollar on the VRBO platform in 2011 and were very happy. However, the model ha

It has been a big week as we try to learn more about the damage that has happened as a result of Hurricane Michael. If you missed our blog from last week, you can check it out here. I’m proud to say that our three vacation rental homes sustained little damage, businesses are starting to reopen and things are starting to return to normal on our little piece of heaven called St. George Island.\ I’m also very happy to say that our wind insurance has been restored at Sea Dunes!

It has already been a long week. As I'm sure all of you know, Hurricane Michael made landfall on Wednesday afternoon near Mexico Beach, just ~45 miles from St. George Island. Over the last two days, we have had many, many of you reach out to us to share your support and prayers with us, our homes and the rest of St. George Island. Thank you so much to all of you that have reached out to us! We wanted to give a brief update on the storm and its impact to the island. Genera

Did you know that St. George Island Beach Vacations started on VRBO (part of Homeaway) when the website was actually created for people to rent out their homes by owner? Now, almost all vacation rental homes are listed on VRBO (both rentals by owner and those managed by management companies). Did you that our three homes, Sand Dollar, Sea Dunes and Serene Dream, are some of the highest and most rated homes on VRBO for St. George Island? Did you know that our average rating

Ever wonder what it’s like to be an owner of a vacation rental property? Let me tell you, sometimes it’s really tough. Recently we wrote a blog our experience as the renter of the property. This was one of the most popular blog posts that we’ve written yet (you can read about it on our blog post entitled Being on the Other Side). While we normally post blogs about events, activities and restaurants on SGI, the next few weeks are going to be a little different as we talk s

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, we skipped our normal St. George Island family beach trip this year to go to a family reunion in the Smokey Mountains. It was a great trip! I got to see family members that I haven’t seen in 15 or 20 years and even some new family members (spouses and cousin’s kids) that I’ve never met before. We’ve been owners on St. George Island for nearly seven years now, and we’ve rented vacation homes/condos/rooms from VRBO (and even AirBnB) several