Lay My Hat

Interesting thread on Mumsnet today about what guests are expecting in a holiday cottage post-Covid. Seems many are just expecting normal standards of cleanliness, and don't fully appreciate what problems owners might be facing this year (or next!) https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3938324-What-wil...

Several of our Spanish friends have told us that the Spanish are desperately looking for rural houses to rent at the moment. It may be that rural holiday lets become far more popular than hotels while the Covid situation continues. Given the history of the hotel industry lobby pressuring the governm...

From trawling internet forums I get the impression that most people are resigned to not having a summer holiday this year, but are waiting for airlines/villa owners to cancel first as they believe that they will get full refunds in those circumstances. We have some final balances due in June (for Au...

That's reassuring to know. Unlike AirBnB's stance which was just to roll over. These platforms need to remember - 'don't bite the hand that feeds you' (i.e. us property owners, because without us they have nothing). Actually all that has changed since HA announced their new policy on 18th March. Yo...

And here's the answer to my previous question! "Here’s how HomeAway will enforce the policy stated above: HomeAway will reward partners with additional visibility in traveler searches. The more partners do now for travelers, the more we will reward them moving forward (so a 100% credit/refund w...

This appeared on the HA 'Discovery Hub' todayhttps://www.homeaway.com/discoveryhub/tips-and-resources/improve-performance/covid-19-updates : March 18, 2020 Today, we are introducing our COVID-19 Emergency Policy, a series of measures designed to help navigate these extraordinary circumstances. If a ...

Unfortunately, most of our bookings are from HA, so I'm assuming that guests will cancel before the 2-month cut off time for cancellation (we have a strict cancellation policy). For those who don't, I have no intention of giving refunds. We have, as usual, incurred considerable costs over the winter...

Without a doubt, people who rely on guests flying from overseas are going to be badly hit this year. Looking at internet forums, people are more worried about catching the virus at airports and on planes than whether the actual destination has been affected. Also people are concerned about being qua...

volcano wrote: Thanks Gazpacho for your explanation - doesn't look good for this year. Are you also on other lists and do you have there the same experience?

Yes, we're on Airbnb (which is useless for us) and Homeaway, which provides most of our bookings, but things have fallen off a cliff in the last few weeks.

I have the most expensive listing but last year it did not produce results and I probably won't renew it. The uncertainty over Brexit certainly didn't help either for 2019 and 2020 bookings. As for this year, because of the coronavirus I'm expecting some cancellations and no new bookings, at least f...

Spain-holiday.com works well for us. They still offer a subscription listing. You can decide which requests to accept as the guest books direct with you. They seem to be switching to commission-based listings gradually so I don't know how long the old system will last!

The usual post-Christmas surge definitely hasn't materialised yet. We are in Spain. Since we usually get large family groups I think that the current instability means that some family members may be uncertain about booking, so the group decision gets postponed (or they decide to holiday in the UK i...

If you get a VTAR licence (rural holiday rental) you don't have to have air-con. We have one of these. We didn't get it from the town hall. Our gestor went down to the Turismo office in Malaga to get it. It was surprisingly uncomplicated!

Vera thank you, that's interesting!

Thank you! Yes, I think I'll ask the installer for some advice on this.