What is a vanity site you ask?
Simply stated a vanity site is is a very simple website for a specific piece of real estate. Usually you would put the address of the property in the domain name (www.YourAddress.com). Here is a basic example of a vanity site (LINK).
Well now to answer the question. In general yes. If you rent the property for vacation rentals or are selling the property and expect it to stay on the market for an extended period of time you should absolutely add a vanity site to your basket of marketing.
A vanity site does several things for you weather you are renting or selling your property. For one it is an excellent marketing tool. You can email a link to the vanity tour and not have competition where you send them. If you send someone to view your property at VRBO or your local MLS your are directing your prospective customer directly to your competition. Not exactly what you want to do. It is also a lot easier over the phone to say my property address is
MyHouse.com
rather than something like this
http://panamacitymls.com/%28hdamkr45q1uyzprrqzjiphif%29/propertyDetails.aspx?mls=391801
You have control over a vanity site unlike posting your listing at other web sites that you do not control. This does not mean do not post your listing at other peoples sites. This is an in addition to marketing tool. If you have multiple properties you can link back to them through your vanity site. You can list the information in a way that best exposes your property.
I am not going to get into the details of Search Engine Optimization but a dedicated website like this can help increase your exposure in search engines dramatically.
Is it the slide show you see on this page?
http://www.ktoris.com/photography/thomas_dr_5417/
or is the 360 you see on this page?
http://ktoris.com/photography/images/mb.swf
or is it something in between?
Regardless of what you consider a virtual tour make sure you are comparing apples to apples.
A slide show should cost considerably less than than a 360 image. You may have your own idea of what a virtual tour is and frankly it is not important how one defines virtual tour. What is important is communicating well with your photographer to meet your needs for your budget.
Many companies in the cleaning service industry require contracts. Why? Mostly because they do not believe they can provide a high enough quality service to retain their customers over the long term. From what I have seen their belief is true. If it is possible in your area it is far more desirable to use a cleaning service that does not require a term agreement. Even if the cleaning service starts out great things change rapidly in the cleaning industry. Employee turn over is high so management must stay on top of things. In the vacation rental business cleaning volume swings dramatically from day to day and month to month. If management is not prepared it will come back to bite them and you in the butt.