Has Owner Holidays died?

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
Tremewan
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Location: Yorkshire Dales

Has Owner Holidays died?

Post by Tremewan »

Has anyone got any information on Owner Holidays? I know the MD Nigel Goodwin is a member of this forum. I haven't been able to get on to the website lately and emails to their (previously working) address just bounce back as "undeliverable". I signed up with them when they launched for a free year's listing, but in over 6 months haven't received a single enquiry, let alone a booking. If things are that bad I guess they might have run out of funding.
FelicityA
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Post by FelicityA »

I just tried to get in (i think I last logged in about a week ago) and come up with that error message. I hope Nigel comes along to explain.

I really would like to retrieve my text if it no longer exists as I spend hours trying to construct brand new wording for each site I am on and this (two separate listings) could be used somewhere else.

Unfortunately, I didn't save it anywhere except on the Owner Holidays site. :(
Nigel Goodwin
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Post by Nigel Goodwin »

I am very much alive, thanks for notifying problems.

It seems right now the web site is down. I will investigate. The MD of the hosting service is in the middle of moving house, but normally provides great support.

I will have to check the emails. I have got one or two, but there has been a great tail-off since 3 months ago.

I have been very busy, there are now over 35,000 properties on the site, but of course that brings its own challenges. I am doing serious work looking at performance issues.

I also have half a million photos, I have been gradually moving them to the Amazon cloud.

I had to load agency properties (I am an affiliate on one) simply to make it credible. Any site with 1000 properties is simply lost.

I upgraded to a VPS (virtual private server) a month ago.

Run out of funding? I never had any funding in the first place, it is all out of my back pocket lol.

I have a copy of the complete database on my local PC, nothing is lost.
FelicityA
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Post by FelicityA »

Good to hear from you, Nigel. Thank you.

Is anybody reporting bookings through your site, as yet?
Nigel Goodwin
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Post by Nigel Goodwin »

To be honest, as soon as I started charging a very minimal fee, the silence has been deafening. I may have had a grand total of 3 properties paying the £50 annual fee.

I am getting emails, but not from anybody registering properties or hardly anybody with support questions.

This is definitely a long journey, but one I will be continuing with for as long as it takes.

I am not doing a mass email again until I sort out performance issues. I need to rethink how I implement map-based searches.

First step is to analyse again how all my competitors do map-based searches. It is not a trivial analysis. Do markers respond immediately to price range changes? Is there an image when the mouse hovers over a marker? How do you show (a) all properties (b) properties subject to search criteria (c) properties subject to search criteria and on current page. All simultaneously, with different markers.

Funny story, I applied for a data science position with Expedia for fun, part of the recruitment process was an exercise in analysing the results of different marketing strategies, it was meant to take 3 days. I spent an hour and told them it was completely useless and statistically invalid.

Conclusion, people who watch Netflix respond to Netflix advertisements, people who watch normal television respond to normal advertisements. Who would ever have known? Nice to know where your commissions are going.
Nigel Goodwin
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Post by Nigel Goodwin »

It appears the website email function has not been working since I move to VPS end March. My apologies if this has caused problems. It means that all the registration notifications etc. have not been getting through :(
Villarais
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Post by Villarais »

I got onto the site OK this evening, and eventually managed to find my 2 properties, but it was hard work. The website kept doing odd/unexpected things.
Nigel Goodwin
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Location: Newquay Cornwall
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Post by Nigel Goodwin »

Villarais wrote:I got onto the site OK this evening, and eventually managed to find my 2 properties, but it was hard work. The website kept doing odd/unexpected things.
I am on the case. The move to a more powerful hardware platform has resulted in a very serious degradation of performance - IT, don't ya luv it. The good news is that the MD of my ISP provider is very experienced and I have had good personal contact for many years. It will be sorted.
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