The situation is a little different for UK owners responding to US renters. For example, currency is less likely to be an issue. Most UK rental home owners will have a US checking account in order to service their home, so they will happily accept US personal checks in payment. Even so, it is important to make this clear to the enquirer right at the start of the negotiations. If an American enquirer thinks that he may have to make a payment in UK sterling he is likely to run a mile, and you will never get the chance to put him right.

A lot of Americans do not even find mailing anything overseas, even a regular US bank check, a comfortable process. If you can either take an online credit card payment or arrange for payment to be sent to someone in Florida such as your management company, or even transferred directly into your US bank account, this can help a lot. You may just tip the balance with someone who would like to rent your home, but who is still a little nervous about the financial transaction.

Perhaps most important for UK owners is the need to establish credibility. I have already mentioned that Americans will often ask you to demonstrate that you, or more particularly your rental home, really exist. Do not underestimate this as a factor in persuading Americans to rent your home. You need to personalize your emails, to show that the enquirer is dealing with a real, believable person. Make it clear that you take bookings from Americans all the time, and that it is all very easy.

We suggest that you have a page on your web site called Meet the Owners, on which we describe who you are and how you got into the villa rental business. If you do not have the facility to do this on a web site, try adding a much-shortened version to your overseas email replies.

It is worth taking trouble to get the early stages of transatlantic communication right. If you sacrifice all of your overseas enquiries without putting up a fight, because you do not respond to them in an appropriate way, you are immediately losing half of the potential of your enquiry-generating system. Since every rental enquiry costs you, in time or money or both, sacrificing half of them at the start is not good business.