Using a US listing site to advertise a European property

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

On others saying vrbo.com I've just paid out $500 and so far in 5 weeks 1 enquiry for height of summer which is booked anyway!
Tansy,

How did you spend so much? They only cost about $150 per ad don't they?

Two things I would say about this...

- give it a while, this is not necessarily when people are sorting out their holidays.

- vrbo is primarily good for non-UK English speakers, especially North Americans. If your location is not on the tourist trail for Americans, you face an uphill task with vrbo.

vrbo is much the biggest rental listing site. It has 30,000 properties and more traffic than any other site. That is not necessarily great if you are in a very popular area like Orlando because you will be up against so many others. But for European properties there is less competition on vrbo. And you still take advantage of:
1. vrbo's high search engine rankings;
2. the fact that vrbo is well known as a name means that you are not solely relying on search engines delivering traffic. People will go straight to vrbo when they are looking for holiday accommodation, and see what's there for the location they want.
Paolo
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tansy
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Post by tansy »

Paolo - it was for 2 houses 8 photos..thought I ought to publish pictures! Well both houses are in an area attractive to the Americans as one is ON Utah Beach the other on the route General Patton took - both near the invasion beaches and American Cemetery.

Last night we had dinner with some friends - we're obviously English, our host from Belgium his wife from Holland the other couple she is Begium and lastly one Frenchman!

Our host asked us how we get our business - so obviously I said internet - oh go to google - (we went google belgium/nl & France) and type in Utah Beach....guess what - vrbo didn't even show in first few pages (we got bored), holiday rentals came up when we modified the search to include house on Utah Beach on google.com- but if our friends weren't so familiar with French geography we wouldn't have found it at all!

2 years ago if we put in Utah beach we came up on first page as clear as anything...no wonder our bookings are not so bouyant off season...I shall be emailing our findings - and will be launching a new web site - if I'm allowed to say Aaron a very professional reply I shall be taking things further.

So it seems to me that we have 2 areas of concern...loads more competition with the influx of new houses etc. and the web sites not popping up in competitive positions all the time!

BTW BungleBob - I didn't realise you were just doing Spain...I thought from your post it was all over and you wanted feedback of our thoughts...but it does show how much notice I take of emails coming in offering free advertising - if you say it wasn't you - I can't say who it was as I wasn't tempted - so apologies if I besmirched your company ethics. My mother in law used to live on the Costa del Sol...I can see why some properties as you say bomb...it would help if they were looked after!
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Tansy,
Our host asked us how we get our business - so obviously I said internet - oh go to google - (we went google belgium/nl & France) and type in Utah Beach....guess what - vrbo didn't even show in first few pages
Were you searching like an American or like a Brit? First of all, use google.com, not google.fr (though this shouldn't make a difference unless it's filtering out English-language results).

Search engines assess the content of a site for its relevance to any particular search (that is not the only factor). Vrbo is American so is ‘optimised’ for Americans seeking holiday accommodation. The words an American types into Google are not the same as the words you would naturally use. They will type in ‘vacation rentals’ where you might type in ‘holiday rentals’ or ‘self catering’.

You will not find vrbo ranking as high for any ‘holiday rentals’ type search as for a ‘vacation rentals’ type search.

Here are the results (this morning at least) for these phrases on Google, with the position of your vrbo ad:

‘Utah beach vacation rentals’: position 15
‘utah beach vacation home’: position 11
‘ bayeux vacation rentals’: position 2 (your category, not your ad)

That is not too bad, although you really want to be on the first page of 10 results if possible. There may well be better placed sites for these searches, you have to make a note of the top ten and compare.

Another factor with vrbo is that they are the biggest listing site, and the best known in the US. So as well as finding your ad through a search engine, some people will also just go straight to vrbo and work their way through the categories to France > Normandy > Utah Beach and get to you that way.

That’s certainly how I look for rental accommodation – I go to sites I know and like, and see what they have. Then I do a Google search as a next step.

By the way I think you are right to pay extra for the 8 photos - you get 3 for free with vrbo, and that isn't enough. Most people don't pay the extra ($18 per pic?) so this is a good opportunity for your ad to stand out from the competition.

Take two equal houses, one with 3 pics, one with 8, and the one with 8 will get all the enquiries.
Paolo
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tansy
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Post by tansy »

Paolo

The point I was trying to make is how the continentals would look for a holiday - this is how our dinner host was saying it to me - it opened my eyes how they think! They don't know the sites we are all talking about so would automatically go via a search engine....normally their own country's.

Our belgium friend is an international properyt dealer for one the biggest companies in the world, constantly travelling - but he didn't know h-r.com or vrbo.com - he showed me how he would go about finding a property in Normandy near a beach - then our French friend did the same exercise ex IBM (without watching the first attempt) - he too came up with negative - they have both had lunch with us in our Utah Beach house so know it well and it's location!

I've always thought as a British/English person...but I would love more visitors from the continent as every time I have had someone from Holland/Belgium or Italy the house has been left in such an immaculate state with huge congratulations I've always felt after - yes it is worth doing it!

Also the continentals understand what the weather etc is going to be like and seem to accept it better if the weather isn't wall to wall blue skies the whole week!

So maybe the moral of the story is to find a continental site to compliment USA & UK...
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Tansy,

A Frenchman or a Belgian would not find your vrbo ad unless they searched like an American.

To get Europeans, you would indeed need to advertise on either a pan-Europe site or sites from individual countries in Europe.

But to find the best ones you'd need to search like a native of the country you are targeting. You would then need to write an ad in that language (unless they offer a translation service). And then you'd have to be able to respond to enquiries in that language (unless they speak English or French).

Not so easy! But if you can do it of course it makes business sense to expand your market as wide as possible. I think an awful lot of gite owners rely exclusively on the Brits coming over. They completely ignore the great pool of the European market, which is less fickle than the British - no reliance on ferry routes and low-budget airlines.
Paolo
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DivineMrsM
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Post by DivineMrsM »

I'm tempted to suggest to my sister that they advertise on vrbo, following on from your rave comments Paolo.

However, we are a big house and seeing that Tansy's properties are quite large and that she hasn't had much joy with them yet, does anyone think that it might be a waste of money for us?

I know that the Americans love France and the Dordogne, but for logistical reasons I don't picture them holidaying in large groups in the way that the Brits and Europeans do. Is that just me being silly?

By the way, we will be welcoming our first French guests in June 2005, as a result of a free listing on perfectplaces.com! I'm also tempted by the German/Danish/English site cottage-rentals.com that was mentioned in another thread.

We are booked up for 13 weeks of 2005 already (solid between June-Sept) so it's the lower season that we are looking to fill.
Lynne
for Metropolitan Retreat in London https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/6712284
and
Le Cheval Blanc in France https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/6714302
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

I know that the Americans love France and the Dordogne, but for logistical reasons I don't picture them holidaying in large groups in the way that the Brits and Europeans do. Is that just me being silly?
I think you are right - not that I have any data to back that up. But with the dollar where it is, big groups are even less likely.

But IF the non-UK, English-speaking market is a meaningful one for you, AND vrbo ranks well for typical search engine searches for a property like yours, then I can vouch for vrbo as a great site.
Paolo
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