Lay My Hat Forum

visitslovenija · Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 137 Location: Slovenia

From reading other posts, we seem to be like some others in that April/May/June bookings are down on last year. May especially.

I know the general feeling is that paying extra to the likes oh HL, HR etc for spotlights for example is a waste of time.

So has anybody found a way of pushing, say a "May Special Offer" with extra goodies/reduced price or whatever? ... that works?

Ralph

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Speyside Steve · Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 4:01 pm Post subject:

Not so far ... just NO interest in May at all this year no matter what the price. There is new snow and CairnGorm is open for snowsports so it will be interesting to see if we get any last minute short breaks for a skiing weekend. Fingers crossed!
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brenda · Joined: 07 Apr 2006 Posts: 1257

I put a ´Special Offer´ on our pricing page for May but did not a single enquiry.

I have now removed the offer ad in case people are thinking it smacks of desperation!

I also wondered if it may put people off enquiring about other dates thinking that the price of these may also drop nearer the time.

visitslovenija · Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 137 Location: Slovenia

For the Brits, maybe this is a Jubilee and Olympic effect?

Essar · Joined: 12 Jun 2011 Posts: 549 Location: Bournemouth

I tend to only give Special Offer discounts for fill-in dates, although, this year I built-in a 20.12% discount for the olympic weeks if booked before the end of April.
I use my own website mainly for offers as I now get over 60% of my visits from direct traffic (the rest are referrals).
I also use eBay for the fill-in dates and sometimes Google Ads (limited success). I did use HL for the Olympic offers, not one enquiry.
Steve
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visitslovenija · Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 137 Location: Slovenia

I should have another look at using Ebay. Tried it out a year or so ago and got nothing from it. Won't work well I expect for UK traffic as late availability offers and cheap Easyjet flights are mutually exclusive!

Could have a go at posting on the German version I guess and see how that performs.

Wendy@NarrowsCottage · Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 494 Location: North Idaho, USA

Not sure if I am understanding your question properly but this is what I do when I want to change things up. I will put an offer or mention something special in my title, so for April I changed my title to "Pay for 3 Nights get the 4th Free!-April Special", right now it says "Only 1 Week Left In July and 1 in August". So people, as they are looking down the list of all the rentals, will catch some information that they hopefully will be interested in without having to click on my particular ad (which they might not do...) but hopefully I will have caught their attention so they will investigate further... that is the hope anyway!

Wendy
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Happylady · Joined: 28 Aug 2011 Posts: 302 Location: Filey

Yorkshire Lass · Joined: 06 Sep 2010 Posts: 79 Location: North Yorkshire

I've just had my knuckles rapped by Ebay! I had put a listing but priced it just at the deposit rate making it clear the balance would be separately payable (which I think is an idea I derived from another LMH poster) and apparently this is in contravention of the rules so the listing was removed (it did take them 4 weeks to get round to it though!). They didn't pick up on the fact that I had my website clearly listed which I had gleaned was also verboten. So, if you are planning to post you do need to put the exact rate for an exact period in order not to fall foul of the rules.
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Happylady · Joined: 28 Aug 2011 Posts: 302 Location: Filey

kendalcottages · Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 12:23 pm Post subject:

Those of you in the UK looking to promote offers might like to use http://www.uktraveloffers.com

It's a completely free service but I should point out, in the interests of transparency, that the site is run by my other place of work.

The site gets a reasonable amount of exposure, has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/uktraveloffers with a very modest number of fans, and a Twitter account at http://twitter.com/uktraveloffers with around 10,000 followers.
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Happylady · Joined: 28 Aug 2011 Posts: 302 Location: Filey

kendalcottages · Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 1:09 pm Post subject:

It's live on the site already. Wink

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Margaret · Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 1:14 pm Post subject:

We have given up on price reductions. I became certain that the few people who booked would have come anyway and simply took advantage of the lower price.

We also go only with more nights for the same price : May and june it is 'pay for 7 nights and stay up to 10 nights' which worked for the wedding period last year. Ist week in September (when we have a walking festival in the village) it is 'book 7 nights and pay for only 6'. (1 booking so far).

These avoid weakening the price level and are the only thing which seems to work.
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kendalcottages · Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 1:30 pm Post subject:

I think you're probably right, Margaret. I think discounts only truly work if they're really substantial, and then of course you might be opening a can of worms as far as the kind of guests you attract are concerned.

It's certainly fair to say that the better the offer on UKtraveloffers.com, then the more traffic it seems to attract.
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