Homeowners renting out their property to holidaymakers is predicted by experts to be a top trend for 2014, and there are signs that Bermuda is embracing the opportunities.

A number of online websites have reported an increase in vacation rental listings, and the upward trend has been noted in Bermuda by Fiona Campbell, the owner of BermudaRentals.com.

“I am finding that as vacancies increase, people who have nice properties are seeing that there’s a very nice opportunity to rent them out to visitors, and also to retain the use of the property for their own family and friends when required. When you lease a property out long-term, you don’t have that flexibility,” she said.

Bermuda tourism’s target audience is at a crossroads, according to Mrs Campbell, sandwiched between a generation of baby-boomers — Bermuda’s long-standing visitor demographic — and a largely ignored populace of young professionals.

“The demographic is ageing. We baby-boomers aren’t discotheque-ing anymore, we aren’t staying up all night partying. We want a comfortable bed, a kitchen to cook in, a fridge to keep our insulin cold, and we need to rest. We’ve got the money, but we don’t need all the sparkly junk that everybody seems to think we want. That’s not what we want. We want good food and pretty surroundings, and quite often you find that in a private rental.

“I think the group that has been hurt most, squeezed the hardest, ignored, and kicked to the curb, are young people. When I was selling real-estate I focused on young buyers and now that I’m selling holidays I focus on young people, early 20s young adults, of university age. I figure if I can get them to Bermuda, into a clean, safe, nice place where they can run all over the Island and jump off cliffs and swim with dolphins and do all the other nonsense without having to spend $600 a night.

“If I can get them there the first time, I’ll have them for life. They’ll always remember how pretty it was and whenever they’ve got five or six days and they want to run away when they have their own corporations and when they’ve got young families, they’ll be coming to us first.”

While Mrs Campbell said she has seen “a steady increase” in travellers seeking private rentals, that uptick should be taken with a grain of salt. With travellers increasingly looking for cheaper vacations, stays are shorter, meaning less money for local businesses.

“Five years ago people came down and stayed longer, now they come down for shorter periods of time. So you could have the same number of guests, year on year, but in fact the amount of money they are spending would be reduced if they are staying for shorter periods of time. There are so many places you can go to in the world. Bermuda is so close, for 65 million people it’s only two or three hours away, and if you’re going to have a two-week holiday, that’s the time to go to Istanbul, and if you want to take a long weekend, you can pop off to Bermuda and have a quick vacation.”

The first person to market private home rentals on the internet in Bermuda, Mrs Campbell has 23 years in the business of renting private homes to visitors. In that time, she said only two hopeful travellers have ever asked her about gambling.

“People who go to Bermuda and love Bermuda often want to go back and stay longer,” she said. “I find we have quite a lot of repeat business in that sense, because they realise that if they come down and live more like a local, they can afford to stay longer and they can more leisurely enjoy the many beautiful things they can do in Bermuda. You just can’t see all the beaches and view all the stately homes and go to all the museums, there’s so much to do. I don’t get two people a year asking me about gambling or casinos.

“I get more requests for beach umbrellas and heated swimming pools than I get for a casino. Nobody cares about gaming except the few people who are flogging casinos. If you put a casino on Front Street in the middle of the Island, I don’t think we’d get a huge rise in visitors, I really don’t.”

One of the things that would help Bermuda hugely, she said, is more investment in public transportation.

“An awful lot of people would like to use the bus service up until midnight but it only runs along the North Shore. Clean, efficient, neat, public transportation means more people move around safely and get to more local tourism products. When the bus shuts down at six, what are you going to do, eat dinner at 3pm? And then go sit in your apartment in Smith’s from 6pm on? That or you’re looking at an $80 cab fare.

“If you’re going to do a tourism launch, and you’re going to invest a gazillion dollars, you’d do better fixing the buses and ferries and cutting back on the amount of money you’re spending decorating buses in pink dresses in London for two days.”