Villaowners.co.uk

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
Sarah
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Villaowners.co.uk

Post by Sarah »

Hi

I was approached today by a site called www.villaowners.co.uk.
It is apparently a group of owners of upmarket properties in South West France who club together to pay for advertising.

They say that the site lists only around 12 properties and they pool their resources to pay for weekly ads in the Times. The cost is high, around £450 per year.

Has anyone heard of these people?

Sarah.
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Sarah,

Click on the link you posted.......I don't think they are off the blocks yet......
Cheers
PC
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Hanorah
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Post by Hanorah »

I think there was an extra . in the link this link appears to work
villaowners.co.uk . Can't comment on the site I am afraid as it deals with France so out of my area.
Always Learning
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marcus
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Post by marcus »

A nice idea in principle, but £450 pays for a LOT of 'normal' internet advertising - holidayrentals plus VRBO plus HolidayLets, more or less. Personally, I can't say I'd be very tempted.
Sarah
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Post by Sarah »

Hanorah wrote:I think there was an extra . in the link this link appears to work
villaowners.co.uk .
You're right Hanorah, my full stop got included in the link. The site is definately up and running as there was a link with the e-mail which was sent to me and this worked. The site is nothing special, but it was the idea of sharing the cost of an ad. in a National newspaper that interested me.

I don't think I'll bother, because, as has been said, you could pay for an awful lot of internet advertising with £450 and I don't feel that it would be any more succesful in getting those 'out of season' weeks than any of the cheaper alternatives.

I was interested to know whether anyone else had come accross this type of offer before. They have apparently been going for 7 years.
A-two
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Post by A-two »

Hi Sarah,
I have not heard of this before and am always interested to hear of new approaches, so thanks for posting this. I'm not in the same part of the world as you, but this particular initiative gets an "F" for "fail" from me. First, I already know that print advertising doesn't work for me, so it's not something I would consider at any price. Second, on the face of it, this site has 42,000 hits and you say they have been up and running 7 years? That's 1,000 hits per property per year for each of 6 properties. I get that on my site in a month or less. And to put the final nail in their coffin, look at the availability calendar. The symbol keys are on a different page from the calendar itself and it takes far too much effort clicking back and forth to work it all out....conclusion - give it a big miss! Which is not to say that you could not start something like this yourself if you really think you need the print advertising. I'm not sure you would get enough people to agree with you to join in, which is probably why they are soliciting your business. If it was a huge success after 7 years, they wouldn't need you would they?
Just my 2 cents.
Waves from America
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

Sarah,

I think Joanna's two cents is worth a thousand dollars. I got involved in one of these little exclusive club things a couple of years ago and it produced absolutely nothing.

Alan
mvus
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Post by mvus »

Joanna, are you really getting 1000 hits per month? How many rental sites are you advertising on? I've done about 12 private rental sites and the site stats (statcounter) show less than 150 unique hits for each site per month since September but obviously will be more in Jan. Most advertise on owners direct but they are in popular locations so will never be found on google

Just curious
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