News & Updates

Full-Service Vacation Rental Property Management and Marketing

Member Stories

April 30, 2015

VacasaAt Vacasa, we’re leveling the playing field when it comes to the hospitality industry, equipping private vacation home owners with the same technological advantages that much larger hotels and resorts have traditionally enjoyed…along with the hands-on caretaking and personal service that both guests and homeowners have come to expect.

As a technology startup, we offer full-service vacation rental property management and marketing, with an intense focus on innovation and automation. Our company began in Portland, OR in 2009, and last year, we were honored to be named #9 on Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation—for the travel industry category, we were named #1.

In 2014, we also began offering our management services to homeowners in the San Diego. We now manage more than 40 homes in the area, and are thrilled to be a part of such a vibrant community. Our local San Diego team of property managers, maintenance staff, and housekeepers take excellent care of our homes and handle any last-minute guest issues that may arise, while our central support team in Portland takes care of marketing, reservations, and much more.

We believe this unique combination of hands-on caretaking and tech-focused marketing helps us provide our owners a fantastic experience and a much higher return on their investment. For instance, our proprietary rate optimization system is the first of its kind in the vacation rental industry: rather than setting rates by weekday or weekend, off-season or peak season, our dynamic system automatically updates rental rates four times a day—much like airlines and hotels have been doing for years.

For guests, we provide a sense of security that’s often hard to find, without losing the special experience of staying in a private vacation home. Every Vacasa home is unique, but in San Diego especially, many have amazing amenities that you just can’t get in a hotel: gourmet kitchens, pet-friendly policies, free WiFi, plus the character and comfort of a private home…and many of our rentals have truly amazing oceanfront locations in lively neighborhoods like Mission Beach and Pacific Beach.

Lunch and a Selfie

Policy

April 28, 2015

Congressional Selfie
The Chamber produced its annual Congressional Luncheon with nearly 600 attendees at the Marriott Marquis & Marina on April 27. Congress members Darrell Issa, Juan Vargas, Scott Peters and Susan Davis led a candid discussion on a variety of issues, including reliable water resources for San Diego, national security threats, presidential candidates, and student loan debt.

The Congress members took questions from the audience and the event received quite the attention on social media, especially on Twitter with the hashtag “DCinSD.” In that spirit, Chamber CEO and President Jerry Sanders took a “selfie” with the Congressional delegation.

If you were not able to attend this year, check out this recap by our moderator Gene Cubbison on NBC’s website and watch our highlight video:

2015 California Mexico Trade Initiative

EventsInternationalPolicy

April 24, 2015

11050856_1137400099619705_5455210982954043895_nThe Chamber’s 10th annual California-Mexico Trade Initiative delegation of 75 people included the Mayors of Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and Tecate Mexico, and business leaders in our mega-region’s key industries: high tech, education, energy, real estate, and transportation.

The group had the opportunity to meet with members of the Mexico Congress, Mexico Customs, Secretariat of the Economy among many others. The delegation also had a reception with the US Ambassador to Mexico, toured the Mexico Stock Exchange and the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

The Chamber’s International Business Affairs will be following up with delegates and elected officials from both sides of the border on the many actions we have as a result of our productive meetings.

For more photos, check out our album on Facebook!

Album 1 »
Album 2 »

MosaicVisual Communications: Web – Mobile Apps – Print

Member Spotlight

April 23, 2015

04 MosaicVisualMosaicVisual Communications is a full-service web, mobile app, and print design company in San Diego dedicated to producing results-driven visuals for our clients and partners.

WEB DEVELOPMENT
The perfect blend of form and function. Creating a pleasant and logical user experience for web sites, and print designs is paramount. Strong design improves our customer’s brand and credibility which in-turn gets results.

WEB PROMOTION
Once you have your site build, an important role is the promotion of that site. We can help you create a strategy that works and will get you the desired results you seek, whether that be traffic, registrations, or product sales.

WEB REPORTING
Monitor results and make improvements. It’s not enough to launch your website and wait for your ROI. For best results you must track and report on efficiencies and constantly improve the user experience.

ONSITE S.E.O.
Getting optimal organic search results. Google and Bing are powerful search engines that need help understanding and indexing customer sites. We’ll optimize your websites so they communicate needed information.

OFFSITE S.E.M.
Social Media and other forms of traditional Marketing. We’ll develop campaigns that meet your marketing strategy – PPC campaigns on Google and Bing, Facebook Ads, Display ads in the Google network – we have it all covered.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
Reputation is more important than ever, and more fragile. We’ll develop a reputation recovering campaign to rebuild and manage your online reputation. We’ll monitor the web for anywhere your company is mentioned.

MOBILE APPS
Build relationships with your loyal customers. Mobile Apps are undeniably the wave of the future. We’ll develop custom apps that help your customers stay informed with up-to-the-minute news and other useful tools.

HTML ANIMATION
Multi-media will catch customer attention. Great videos or HTML5 animations can inform, educate, or even close a sale more effectively than any other media. We’ll build videos so you can build your professional image.

PRINT DESIGN
Less work for you at the best prices. As a print broker, you’ll find we can negotiate the best printing deals. It saves you time since we do the work. It saves you money since we get trade discounts and pass the savings to you.

Who is BofI Federal Bank?

Member Spotlight

April 23, 2015

04 BOFI1BofI Federal Bank is a diversified financial services company with over $5 billion in assets, headquartered in San Diego. We provide innovative banking and lending products and services to personal and business banking customers across the nation.

BofI Federal Bank leverages the benefits of a branchless banking system to provide better value to customers through industry-leading products and interest rates. Our experience and drive to provide branchless banking has given us the opportunity to grow into markets traditional banks are unable to do for their customers. With technology every-changing, we feel our expertise will only expand and benefit a customer’s experience.

Our deposit products are offered through a wide range of retail distribution channels and loan products through retail, correspondent, and wholesale channels. This variety allows for a more expanded footprint to ensure our customers need to bank with only one financial institution – thus providing a streamlined banking experience.

The capital markets division of BofI Federal focuses on commercial and industrial loan origination through vertical markets to help customers diversify their loan portfolios, generate fee income, and manage balance sheets.

Join the growing family of customers that call BofI Federal Bank a banking partner and see how we can help you today.

04 BOFI2“We aspire to be the most innovative branchless bank in the United States providing products and services superior to our competitors, branch-based or otherwise.”

Gregory Garrabrants
President | Chief Executive Officer
www.bofifederalbank.com

Chamber Members are Invited to an Open House!

Member Spotlight

April 23, 2015

04 AttentionGettersChamber members Attention Getters Design Inc. are inviting fellow Chamber members to a dual open house/demo event to show off their expanded, cutting edge capital equipment acquisition.

On May 19 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. and May 21 from 2:00-4:00 p.m., San Diego Regional Chamber members are invited to stop in to Attention Getters offices to see—and participate in—a demo of the Epilog Laser engraver, etcher and laser cutter.

Light hors d’oeuvres and refreshments will be provided.

The equipment has far-reaching applications from engraving traditional trophies, awards and gifts, to industrial labeling, parts numbering, and light materials cutting.

Attention Getters’ spokesperson Keith Woolgar, a 12-year San Diego Regional Chamber member commented, “This technology allows us to replicate a company’s logo into everything from a bar of soap to a piece of steel, leather, glass and countless materials in between. We could actually carve something in stone!”

“Further,” he continued, “local aerospace, medical and electronics clients can leverage our added capability to laser cut many plastics and other components and perform parts numbering for example. This is an important expansion of services to our existing customer base and enables us to serve an expanded audience as well.”

Attention Getters, an innovate 21-year old company, has seven employees, mostly graphic artists. The company is most famous for their sign creation, banners and vehicle graphics, which have appeared in events from the Superbowl and Olympics to local grand openings.

Attention Getters is a woman-owned business and provider of innovative “green” banner and mural solutions, listing many Fortune 500 and local companies as clients.

For more information, visit www.attention-getters.com or contact Keith Woolgar by phone at (619)306-3369 or email: Keith@attention-getters.com.

Ardent Hospice & Palliative Care: Boutique-Style Hospice Care

Member Spotlight

April 23, 2015

04 ArdentArdent Hospice & Palliative Care, Inc., was started in 2013, by Susan Compton, a registered nurse with more than 20 years experience in caring for the elderly. Ardent Hospice is a community based hospice located in the Carmel Mountain/Rancho Bernardo area of San Diego, with service covering San Diego County.

The agency is State licensed and Medicare certified hospice, and also received its health care accreditation from the Community Health Accreditation Partners (CHAP).

Having a special focus on maintaining itself as a small boutique-style hospice, Ardent boasts its intentional size, to magnify the importance of ensuring patients and families receive prompt attention to any care needs – regardless of time and distance.

“Given the increased number of hospices in San Diego County, over the past few years, Ardent Hospice sees itself as a viable agency having great potential to impact the community in which it serves; not just by the provision of patient and family care, but through community education events that have end-of-life planning and hospice education as its focus. Far too often, families facing a terminal illness are ill-prepared to deal with and to navigate the myriad health-care decisions that go along with planning for end-of-life. Our team’s goal is to make contributions toward changing this norm,” says Susan Compton.

The Ardent team includes one medical director, an associate medical director, two RN case managers, two certified home health aides, two LVNs, a social worker, chaplain, and two community education liaisons. We also have two volunteers that complement the team, who provide administrative and patient care support.

To learn more about the hospice services offered at Ardent, or educational and volunteer opportunities, contact our office at (858) 952-1786 or visit www.ardenthapc.com.

Locally-Owned Storage in San Diego

Member SpotlightMember Stories

April 23, 2015

morenaMorena Storage opened their doors for business in 1989. Our warehouse was originally the Walker-Scott Department Store Warehouse built in 1957 and was 60,000 SQ FT. We expanded and converted to 180,000 SQ FT for storage with over 1700 individual storage rooms. Locally owned and operated, our philosophy behind our storage business has always been to provide the very BEST customer service or “5 Star” storage.

You will see “5 Stars” throughout our logo, website, products and even on our lobby floor. Our 5 Stars signifies the 5 Star customer service treatment you may expect from a very nice hotel. We make storage easy for our customers. We strive to take the stress out of moving and of other life transitions.

We start by offering a free truck and a bonded professional member of our staff to place your items into storage. Our truck is driven to our customer’s loading site, whether their home or business, and our professional helper loads the items into the truck. Our truck then returns to Morena Storage where we unload into a properly sized, clean storage room, neatly stacked to maximize the use of the storage room and minimize monthly cost.

Once the customer arrives at our facility, we provide all the comforts to help with the moving and storage process from free cold bottled water, music in the hallways, free candy for moving energy and lots of free help to eliminate stress. We also provide free shelving and plastic to neatly arrange and cover the items. In our lobby, we sell a wide variety of boxes and packing supplies at great prices, such as: bubble wrap, tape, blankets and mattress covers.

In addition, we provide free delivery of boxes and packing supplies on certain orders. We provide a protection plan for our customers, with a selection of coverages and no deductibles. Our facility is spotless and secure with our sign-in/sign-out procedure and our double-lock system.

We provide a large staff to assist our customers each time they visit their storage room. We are extremely proud of our locally owned San Diego business and we strive to be the very best in storage. We are always looking for the best ways of achieving our customer service goals and we value each one of our customers as we give them our “5 Star” customer service.

Community Partner of the Month: Challenged Athletes Foundation

Community Partners

April 23, 2015

04 Challenged Athletes Foundation
The Chamber is proud to announce its newest Community Partner, the Challenged Athletes Foundation! The Challenged Athletes Foundation® (CAF) is a world leader in helping individuals with physical challenges get involved – and stay involved – in sports. CAF believes that participation in sports at any level increases self-esteem, encourages independence and enhances quality of life.

Since 1994, more than $64 million has been raised and over 11,000 funding requests from challenged athletes in all 50 states and dozens of countries have been satisfied. Additionally, CAF’s outreach efforts reach another 60,000 individuals each year. Whether it’s a $2,500 grant for a handcycle, helping underwrite a carbon fiber running foot not covered by insurance, or arranging enthusiastic encouragement from a mentor who has triumphed over a similar challenge, CAF’s mission is clear: give those with the desire to live active, athletic lifestyles every opportunity to compete in the sports they love.

Most recently, CAF has proudly announced unprecedented financial support through its annual Access for Athletes grant program, which provides financial assistance for adaptive sports equipment, sports prosthetics, coaching, mentoring and competition expenses for athletes of all ages and abilities who wish to live active lifestyles.

Through the 2015 distribution – the largest grant distribution to-date in the organization’s 21-year history – 1,709 challenged athletes in 32 countries are receiving a variety of grants representing more than $3.5 million in support, and a 16 percent growth in the number of approved grants over the 2014 program. The grants, which are one of the many ways CAF supports athletes with physical challenges, empower individuals to take part in life-affirming sports and fill an important void that otherwise can leave challenged athletes on the sidelines.

“My legs were crushed and amputated in 2012 when a taxi plowed into me, and after many surgeries and physical therapy I have now become able to walk again — often fooling people who don’t realize that I have prosthetic legs,” says 38-year-old Ariel Fishman, a first-time grantee from New York, New York. “I’ve now started to run again, albeit on prosthetics that feel ski boots, but I know that with the proper time, focus and equipment I will be able to return to distance running and the New York Marathon thanks to the help from the Challenged Athletes Foundation.”

For more information about the Challenged Athletes Foundation, visit www.challengedathletes.org, call 858-866-0959, or follow them on social media through #TeamCAF.