“We started almost 50 years ago selling second homes,” said Sheila Hodges, the company’s owner. Many of those homes were purchased to become rental properties, and with owners away for many months of the year, they needed someone to take care of them.

As a result, the company grew its services, and today Meyer Real Estate specializes in three areas – real estate sales, resort accommodations and community management. “We just expanded our operations to meet the needs,” Hodges said.

As with any real estate company – traditional or non-traditional – Meyer Real Estate has felt the economic downturn. “We had a more severe impact from the economy on real estate sales than a metropolitan real estate company would have,” Hodges said.

“Resort real estate is not real estate you have to have,” she said. Because it’s often bought as an investment to diversify a portfolio, she added, “it is the first to be hit.”

Meyer Real Estate has taken several actions to address the changing tide.

“On the sales side, there’s been a real effort to get in touch with past client bases,” Hodges said. Perhaps these clients didn’t buy because the price was too high, but now that prices are down to what they were a few years back, this could be the right time for them to reconsider. “We know that the prices are now in their price range,” she said.

“This year it’s looking a lot more positive,” she said. With prices reduced to the levels they were in 2003 and 2004, people are buying good deals, she said.

On the rental side, Meyer Real Estate has felt the impact of travelers spending less days traveling. They’ve also dealt with a market where competitors are offering bigger discounts to lure customers. To counter that trend, they’ve employed technological efficiencies to improve booking, marketing and other operational processes.

“We’re successful at that,” Hodges said. “We’re having good bookings.”
For example, this past winter the company did a major overhaul of their website’s internal workings. Among the changes, Meyer Real Estate replaced third-party software with proprietary software (via in-house programmers) that allowed more control over the booking process. The company also created customer-oriented software that better communicated the status of a web booking to a guest.

The marketing department is able to use the updated website to track unique visitors to the site – identifying parties by metro areas and vacation search dates – which is information that can then be used to e-market to that metro area. The information technology improvements even extend to the development of proprietary software that assists in the systematic packaging and delivery of linens based on individual property requirements.

Even in an economic downturn, being in an area well-known to tourists is another benefit for Meyer Real Estate. “As times improve, they’ll come back, stay longer, do more things, and we’ll continue to have strong tourism,” she said.

Hodges is an active member of the BCA board of directors. Of her BCA membership, she said, “It’s 100 percent more important than I thought it was going to be when I joined years ago.”

Her original purpose was to participate in the Alabama Self-Insured Worker's Compensation Fund. Soon after, she said, “I began to find out what a vital resource they are.”

She pointed to the action BCA can take in the legislative arena. “When your industry has a need – a political need – they’re incredible,” she said. She’s also benefited from networking and the knowledge base of other members.

“I had no idea when I joined how integral they would be to my business,” she said.