How many of your guests are from outside your country?

Up, down, could be better? How to get more bookings is our number one obsession. Talk shop here.
ianthy
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Location: Bologna, Italy

Post by ianthy »

100% are outside of the country. Italy - I never get Italian guests. In Dubai never locals all nationalities.
Cotto
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Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:35 pm
Location: Tuscany

Post by Cotto »

Located in Tuscany, never had Italians guests. All of our bookings since 2008 came from outside Italy.
Peggymac
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Post by Peggymac »

Astorchamonix wrote:We have a place in the French Alps. We are in our first season. So far no enquiries from holiday lettings, about 10 bookings from air bnb (mix of English, Scandinavian, American, Canadians......no french!), American enquirers but no bookings from flipkey and a few more English from our agent. I am lost as to how to get the elusive french to book, I speak good French so don't have a problem responding to enquiries. We did list on a local French website and had a few enquires but no booking. A French fried suggested 'registering' the flat with the local tourist board (at a cost of course) to give it a star rating and then going down the tourist office route. I'm reluctant to spend money doing this unless anyone else has had success with this? We are on arbitel via the homeaway network. Has anyone got any suggestions? Also a lot of Swiss and Italians in chamonix but precious little enquires from these too!
I don't think the French use AirBnB (or HolidayLettings or FlipKey) much, what we've found is that they use Homelidays and Abritel, with the former wanting the cheaper holiday (so if you're slightly more up market I would go with Abritel). We started off with HomeAway by using VRBO but for us (away from the obvious holiday making areas - as far as most Americans are concerned) found it a waste of time. The good thing about going direct with Abritel is that they send out your advert to VRBO, HomeAway, Homelidays, Fewo-direct and a multitude of others (and you pay in Euros) and it's based in the country that you are in and are targeting. If we had to dump them all except one, we would keep Abritel, it gets to the French as well as the rest of the world.

Our 112 page website (we've tried to make it the tourist office site for our village) is half English and half French to appeal to nearly everybody and we get a reasonable amount of interest both from french and English through that (we've worked VERY hard on it - 10 weeks to just make it mobile friendly - if only we'd thought about the size of a mobile screen when we started).

The past 2 years we have got more and more bookings via our advert with the local tourist office that automatically sends the listing to the department and the region. We got classified with the local prefecture (initially with Gites de France but WAY too expensive, especially if you have your own website and take bookings yourselves) and we actively want to give the local tourist office money because we are boosting the infrastructure that supports us!

I saw an Italian car here (near Millau, near the Tarn Gorges) last year, but that was the first in 2 years! :? I have no idea where they go on holiday.
Peggy and Lionel

Always do Cooking, Bed Making and Website design with Love and the rest will follow.
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Peggymac
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Post by Peggymac »

Just to add to above here are our current reservations from the beginning of this year broken down by country
France 19
UK 14
Germany 2
Belgium. 1
Israel 1
USA. 1
We have noticed this year that the French have been more pro-active on booking well ahead. The only thing I can think of is that the World Cup caused them to hesitate before booking last year!
Peggy and Lionel

Always do Cooking, Bed Making and Website design with Love and the rest will follow.
www.casteldecantobre.co.uk
www.casteldecantobre.fr
www.facebook.com/CastelDeCantobre
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Casscat
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Post by Casscat »

Easy:

UK = 100%

I am not unhappy because I have bookings, but I had actually expected a few non-UK enquiries. To date I have had precisely one enquiry from outside the UK, and that was for dates already let.
Astorchamonix
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Location: chamonix, French alpes
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Post by Astorchamonix »

Thanks peggymac. We are enjoying the snow and sunshine this week in Chamonix so it seems like a trip down to the mairie to register is the way to go to snare those frenchies!! I find it odd that they ask whether linen and towels included......I suppose as a Brit you would be a bit shocked to arrive In a holiday let with no linen! It's obviously a cultural thing and I make sure it's very clear on the homelidays/arbitel listing (which we get via our homeaway listing).
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Casscat
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Post by Casscat »

Just a point about 'add on' listings that come free with a basic HomeAway subscription - I don't think they add any value at all. Your listing will be right at the very bottom of the pack on sites like Abritel and will only be discovered by the most ardent searcher. Unless you have also done your own translation the ad as it appears via auto-translate will be borderline unintelligible to a native speaker of whatever language site you are listed on. My HA ad appears on dozens of HA sites world-wide but bar the one enquiry (which was useless because the dates were quite clearly already let) I have had no interest whatsoever. This surprised me initially as I am in a part of Spain which is, allegedly, very popular with German and Scandinavian visitors but I now figure that if I want to appear on the radar for these people I have to have a direct listing on a relevant domestic site.
Astorchamonix
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Post by Astorchamonix »

I see what you mean casscat and I will look into it. However we have had enquires from arbitel, the German one (can't remember the name!) vrbo and homelidays in the past week. I suppose if we shelled out for a subscription listing then we may have more interest. It's our first season so thought we would give the pay per booking model a go, but next season may pay for a subscription via arbitel or homelidays and write one in French.
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Casscat
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Post by Casscat »

Have you looked at your listing on Abritel? It will have been translated into French for you, but via a computer and not a person so you may wince at how it reads. My HA overseas ads are dreadful. Because my finca is called Cars-Bonaira all the translations have come up with something that corresponds with Automobile-Bonaira! I cannot get this changed apparently unless I take responsibility for the entire translation, which I cannot due on a wholesale basis due to limited foreign language skills.
Astorchamonix
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Post by Astorchamonix »

Mmmmmmm yes I see what you mean! I've tried to use bullet points to make the translation a little better but some things read rather bizarrely!! Will put a french translation on my to do list! I may get a friend to tackle the German one, but the Italian will have to stay as it is!
stork
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Post by stork »

Probably a few errors in this, but for 2014+2015:

DE: 54
UK: 26
ES: 23
FR: 17
BE: 15
PT: 11
NL: 10
CH: 8

and then some

The great thing by having a spread of nationalities is that if one economy is down (like the UK for a few years), others can help filling the gaps
JanB
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Post by JanB »

Most years, I get more than a few Bookings from US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. This year only one so far.

Where have they all gone?

Nearly all British this year and one from Kenya who is British so visiting family and friends here.

Strange how booking patterns change all of a sudden - and I thought the exchange rate would have made it cheaper for them.
"It's a funny old world...." but full of the most amazing people. :-) Sense of humour essential!
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charles cawley
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Post by charles cawley »

Strangely, only a small proportion. This could be because our area is little known to people in the UK, let alone from overseas.
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