Summit Pacific Inc. appears to have its roots in the Kauai vacation rentals market. They seem to be expanding into other islands, but their main play in on Kauai with such resorts as Puu Poa, Hanalei Bay Resort and Waipouli Beach Resort. This is an interesting Hawaii travel site to study because the company employs all 4 of our monetization models:
- Cost Per Click (CPC) - They use Google Adsense for their contextual advertising.
- Affiliate Advertising - They have affiliate agreements with several rental car agencies.
- Selling Services - The owner actually books his own rentals on this site, so they offer a vacation rental agency service.
- Direct Ad Sales - They also post advertisement to owner direct vacation properties.
Summit Pacific has done a great job developing useful content around a Kauai vacation theme. They have info for their guest including activities, golf and even real estate for visitors interested in buying a vacation home of their own. At this point, much of this content is monetized using CPC. What really impresses me, though, is how they’ve been able to take their Hawaii car rentals section beyond CPC into an affiliate program.
Likes:
I really like how Summit Pacific is trying all forms of monetization on their site. Also, the content developed around their Kauai vacation rental theme is very strong. This surely helps them in the search engines.
Dislikes:
The site appears to offer vacation rental pages for the other Hawaiian islands. However, the same care for content development has not been taken to support these pages. I also see that that the company has a separate site for Kuhio Shores (resort in Poipu Kauai), and two sites are never as strong as one.
Conclusion:
The current business model appears to be effective. However, I would like to see monetization taken a step further. Just like car rentals, activities could be moved away from CPC to an affiliate program. Also, content development for the other islands should be improved if they plan to tackle these markets.