Hi everyone,
I wonder if I could ask for your opinions. I have listed a weeks rental on ebay for September. I had an ebay member enquire as to whether christmas was available ( a 7 night stay from 29/12) and what the cost would be.
At present we are under contract with Sykes cottages(property ref11299), but this ceases in December. I am in the process of getting our own website up and running, but have not decided on pricing yet. I had a look around other sites to get an idea of what to charge and found very little availability for christmas, so decided to charge £850 for the week. This is higher than Sykes have been charging for a peak week (£735), but on a previous post LMH friends thought that was 10-15% underpriced.
The enquirer came back and said it was more than they wanted to spend. Did I get it wrong? I would appreciate any opinion on what members think is an achievable rate for my property for the christmas and new year period.
Correct pricing?
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Beachcondo
- Posts: 760
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Hi dizza,
Cannot give you any advice pricewise - BUT:
I would not lower my price on account that one potential guest thinks it's too high. There will always be enquirers like that and I think peoples mind will focus more on Xmas once the summer holidays are over.
Cannot give you any advice pricewise - BUT:
I would not lower my price on account that one potential guest thinks it's too high. There will always be enquirers like that and I think peoples mind will focus more on Xmas once the summer holidays are over.
Pessimists only get positive surprises.
I can't advise on a specific rate for your property - you'll probably have a better idea than most people anyway - but if it helps we charge Christmas at peak rate BUT offer anything from 3 days upwards. It's very rare that we get anyone wanting the full week over Christmas; our guests are usually from within the UK and a full week often doesn't fit with time off work over the period.
If someone is only intending to stay 4 or 5 nights, the full week rate is going to seem expensive.
The other point - just because the enquirer says it's more than they want to spend, doesn't necessarily mean it's overpriced.
We still have availability in one of our three properties at Christmas, and that's typical of our experience so far; New Year books out early, but people seem to make Christmas plans later (or maybe realise that they can't face it this year and decide to escape from Aunt Maude).
ETA - I posted this before I read Beachcondo's post - fully agree.
If someone is only intending to stay 4 or 5 nights, the full week rate is going to seem expensive.
The other point - just because the enquirer says it's more than they want to spend, doesn't necessarily mean it's overpriced.
We still have availability in one of our three properties at Christmas, and that's typical of our experience so far; New Year books out early, but people seem to make Christmas plans later (or maybe realise that they can't face it this year and decide to escape from Aunt Maude).
ETA - I posted this before I read Beachcondo's post - fully agree.
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Yorkshire Lass
- Posts: 201
- Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2010 2:08 pm
- Location: North Yorkshire
- Contact:
That doesn't sound excessive to me and I think you will find a lot of people start looking ahead to Christmas/New Year now. I do think you will find a lot of bargain hunting on Ebay - it's the nature of the site but I don't think at this stage you need to include Christmas/New Year in that category. If you are ending the Sykes deal I would advise getting an Owners Direct listing in place soon if you haven't already as they have been excellent for me and I'm in your neck of the woods. I agree that you will find many people want less than a full week over the Christmas/New Year period - I've priced accordingly and then am prepared to reduce by a small amount for a 5 day stay which seems to work.
We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
www.kingshousescarborough.com
www.facebook.com/scarboroughholidaycottage
www.sandsendpavilion.co.uk
www.kingshousescarborough.com
www.facebook.com/scarboroughholidaycottage
www.sandsendpavilion.co.uk
Funny how it goes - we can spit into North Yorks from here, but OD have proven this year to be utterly hopeless for us. They've been okay in the past, gradually getting worse, but now the cost per booking is sitting at infinity (which is a tad expensive.......Yorkshire Lass wrote: I would advise getting an Owners Direct listing in place soon if you haven't already as they have been excellent for me and I'm in your neck of the woods.
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charles cawley
- Posts: 1205
- Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2010 1:53 pm
- Location: Herefordshire, Shropshire, Borders
As an agent, of course, I am appalled you should go it alone!
Owners Direct of Holiday Lettings can get good results. Although it sticks in my throat, it makes sense if you can to avoid the need to use a booking agent.
There are some other useful listing sites and there is some excellent advice about this elsewhere on LMH. One approach is to go in slightly too low and ratchet up the price to meet demand.
This may cost a bit but it is massively better than going in too high and waiting, like a lemon, for nothing to happen for several weeks or months. We use this ratchetting method with cottages new to the market.
A problem often arises with cottages that have sold well at quite high rates for many years and now face greater competition and a declining market. In these cases, owners often cling on for far too long hoping that things will 'right themselves' after a few weeks or months or even 'next year'.
We are often blamed for a short fall in bookings despite the fact that most of our cottages are parallel operations where we contribute to total bookings and do not interfere or try to limit privately found bookings.
On a couple of occasions we have had to show that, contrary to appearances, we have sourced more bookings than the owners.
It is far better to feel out the market by trial and error than to expect to be able to get the price spot on first time. The cost of doing this is a marketing and selling cost which is unavoidable. If you hit the right price first time then you will win, but expecting to get top dollar starting out based on guesswork, alone, is a potential sure fire recipe for lost bookings.
Owners Direct of Holiday Lettings can get good results. Although it sticks in my throat, it makes sense if you can to avoid the need to use a booking agent.
There are some other useful listing sites and there is some excellent advice about this elsewhere on LMH. One approach is to go in slightly too low and ratchet up the price to meet demand.
This may cost a bit but it is massively better than going in too high and waiting, like a lemon, for nothing to happen for several weeks or months. We use this ratchetting method with cottages new to the market.
A problem often arises with cottages that have sold well at quite high rates for many years and now face greater competition and a declining market. In these cases, owners often cling on for far too long hoping that things will 'right themselves' after a few weeks or months or even 'next year'.
We are often blamed for a short fall in bookings despite the fact that most of our cottages are parallel operations where we contribute to total bookings and do not interfere or try to limit privately found bookings.
On a couple of occasions we have had to show that, contrary to appearances, we have sourced more bookings than the owners.
It is far better to feel out the market by trial and error than to expect to be able to get the price spot on first time. The cost of doing this is a marketing and selling cost which is unavoidable. If you hit the right price first time then you will win, but expecting to get top dollar starting out based on guesswork, alone, is a potential sure fire recipe for lost bookings.
No web-site for now.
Advice about holiday letting
Advice about holiday letting