Some websites designed by 'professionals' are amateurish, and some websites designed by 'amateurs' are professional.
I'm not sure your average punter books a holiday because the website has a homemade charm, I'd be amazed if they did and good luck to you if they do. What I do know is we make our minds up as to what is good and what is bad very quickly - how many milliseconds do you have to make an impression? With the amount of competition only being a click away I would not be making too many assumptions that a 'charming' homemade site, call them what you will, is enough to make an impression these days.
There was a survey (Mori?) about people's attitudes towards web sites that revealed 75% of people interviewed judge a web site on the professionalism of the design.
They also said the use of text, use of images and overall layout were important. For me, the most interesting revelation was that 93% said they felt content was reliable if it "appeared" up to date. This is great news for bloggers.
51% said finding the information they needed was "fairly" easy.
Nicola, in my experience I would be one of those people! I'm not a fan of the 'availability' calendar, and from your experience it would seem I'm not alone.In my experience (and I have another site linked to a travel company which does feature an availability calendar and is updated regularly) people ignore the calendars anyway and still contact me!