St. Barts is a nine square mile island located in the French West Indies. Many people have heard of it, but aren’t exactly sure where it is. It has been an excellent tourist destination and one of the most varied and upscale, with villas, hotels, spas, amazing restaurants in the Caribbean. What is so unique about the island is it is a villa based destination rather than hotels and resorts.

There are well over 450+ villa rental properties for short term rentals. The villa owners look for short term rentals to help offset their operating costs. One of the determining factors of the value of a villa is its ability to generate a consistently high level of rental revenue. The fabric of the villa rental distribution channels has several layers as it is a major challenge to target the profile of potential buyers and renters around the globe.

Generating Media’s knowledge and experience directed our efforts to the database of the owners and past renters. It was not too difficult to predict that a large percentage lived or worked in New York City. While watching a series on television called Selling New York, which is a show that works with property owners to put their properties on the market and then tries to convince potential buyers to make the purchase. Their target owners and potential buyers were exactly the same target audience for St. Barts.

One of our signature goals is to reach out to relevant companies and sources that are already promoting their products and simply bring additional non-completive engaging content. HGTV had developed the Selling New York series to stimulate viewers to get wrapped up in their emotions of living the life in New York City. Our thoughts were to approach HGTV and request they consider doing an episode “Selling St. Barts”.

A quick meeting in New York City with HGTV and Richard Steinberg, who was the star of the series, we were given the green light. The outline was to basically have Richard fly down to St. Barts with a potential buyer to inspect three properties. The show was filmed and ran seven different times. Throughout the episode, we promoted the island, and all it had to offer. In addition, we “pitched” the idea of clients taking a “Test Drive” before they buy, which could be accomplished by renting.

Generating Media looks to “Connect the Dots” for our customers. The exposure and energy produced by this experience would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars if the customer had to purchase it.

In case your wondering….yes, the three properties did sell and additional villa renters have been generated.