Lay My Hat

Hello, Is anyone using Business Manager for their accommodation Facebook page? Would love to know feedback, particularly if there is any interference with the existing business page after setting up. I help with the FB marketing for Orroland Holiday Cottages (https://www.facebook.com/OrrolandHoliday...

I have three cottages and would like to upgrade our guest toiletries to full sized bottles of one of the recognised 'luxury' brands or something eco. I'll provide soap and/or liquid soap and bath/shower gel. If you have researched supplier products and prices and have a recommendation I'd love your ...

I'm refurbishing a sitting room at the moment and trying to decide if it's best to go for leather sofa and armchairs or washable fabric ones.

I've never had leather furniture before - are there special considerations or treatments needed?

Which wears better?

Thank you!

Most of our customers place their bookings on our website so they have a mandatory screen presentation of our Ts and Cs that they have to accept in order to place the booking. For those that book by phone I attach our Ts and Cs to their booking confirmation so every customer that comes has had sight...

Sorry it's taken me ages to get back to this ... Firstly, I couldn't agree more that I should have included information such as the sample size in the blog post. Thanks for the grilling, I won't make that mistake again! SuperControl users do know that their data is shared in aggregated form and of c...

The first thing I always do is offer late availability weeks up to my past customers, selectively so that it seems like an exclusive offer to our best customers. I discount the weeks well - normally around 30% off. I only do this 7 days prior. Take-up has been excellent. I was worried they would the...

No this is ALL guests visiting UK properties sleeping 12+ people. Lorca, this isn't a professional survey. It's some findings I put together requested by someone who has a property that sleeps 12 people. I just thought other rental owners might find it interesting so I popped it in our blog to share...

Yes these are aggregated data from properties using SuperControl booking system. The figures relate to all bookings for UK properties sleeping 12+ people. The reason for restricting it to UK properties is that there are fewer anomolies relating to travel, ie flight / ferry prices. It's a combination...

You may find this useful. I pulled this information together for an experienced rental owner who has just started a new holiday rental for 12 people. If you own or manage large holiday rentals (12+ people) here's a real heads-up re the importance of Fridays: http://bit.ly/iPIGqh Let me know if you h...

La Vache - re chicken and egg - I had a look at the situation for fixed change-over day and also for fully flexible operators. The picture was very similar, with the preferred days in the same order as shown. I was surprised there wasn't more variation. I agree that there is likely to be an element ...

Thanks for your feedback Lorca. I'm glad you found it interesting. Shame they only pose the following question and don´t actually suggest an answer! "Want to know the effects of offering year-round flexibility on occupancy and revenue?" I felt it would be best to focus on one subject in th...

It's taken me a while to get to this but I have had a look at bookings made through SuperControl online booking system to find the 'on paper' answer. This is what I found out from looking at the last 135,000 bookings for UK properties ... http://bit.ly/lC138h I hope this is useful and interesting to...

Our aim is 85% occupancy. We're currently on 57%. Our short breaks were down in March and we have a bad blank patch in May for one cottage which is a worry in achieving this aim. Of course it has to be the cottage that's had all the money spent on it this year too! I'm not doing much advertising - I...

I would definitely suggest a mix of own w/s and listings. Booking a rental home is an emotional buying decision and your website is by far the best place to present the character of your business, have the flexibility to update content and show lots of photos and area information, availability and s...

I'm interested in finding out about awards that are relevant for self-catering businesses. Regional and national.

Which awards have you entered or won or are you aware of?