In the old days of Homeaway/Holiday Rentals, and other multi lingual sites, our French gites in the Lot, which is not so far from Spain, Italy, Germany, used to get bookings from these other Europeans, but these enquiries seem to have dried up. I manage the language text in English and French, and our property is out there in other languages, without results except from Brits and French, who come via Abritel.
Two questions:
1. Can I improve visibility and enquiries via Homeaway sites in other countries/languages, why are their sub-sites not producing anything?
2. Any suggestions for multilingual advertising sites or advertising sites in other countries/languages which get seen by different nationalities, or sites where I can advertise directly to try to reach these "missing" clients?
How to find EU guests, German, Spanish etc.
I have been asking myself exactly the same question. I have been actively considering using a different email address and doing double advertising on the dreaded Expedia site. I am already on VRBO and am at the bottom of of the pile because I have direct booking and no service fee so I am the lowest of the low in their eyes. My bookings are down about 50% on last year at this time.
I have looked into advertising (with a subscription) on homeaway.at as the last time I looked the sub was incredibly low and wondered if the Germans and the Austrians were looking there for properties in my areas (England and Ireland), would I then come up higher than properties on other sites as there would be so few advertising their English properties directly on the Austrian site. Or....would all the ones in the Expedia 'family' on which a service charge is levied come up before me? It is a very difficult one to work out and I really need one of my children who speak German much more fluently than me to ring up a German or Austrian office direct to get the answer to this.
Are you now advertising on abritel? Or are you on HomeawayUK or OD? My guess is that you come up higher on the primary site. You are an 'also ran' and low down on the sub-sites. I always got the vast majority of bookings from the VRBO site (North Americans mainly) although last year, curiously (testing?) I got quite a few through fewodirekt from Germany, Austria and German speaking Switzerland. Nothing from Abritel. Nothing from Homeawayuk so I am not attracting home grown visitors through there at all as I am on the last page if I can find it all, searching myself. Interestingly if I filter by number of reviews, I come up (apparently) having had 8 views in the last 48 hours whereas a property with fewer reviews (advertising directly on the uk site perhaps?) has had 59 in the same time so that sort of answers your question number 1.
I have looked into advertising (with a subscription) on homeaway.at as the last time I looked the sub was incredibly low and wondered if the Germans and the Austrians were looking there for properties in my areas (England and Ireland), would I then come up higher than properties on other sites as there would be so few advertising their English properties directly on the Austrian site. Or....would all the ones in the Expedia 'family' on which a service charge is levied come up before me? It is a very difficult one to work out and I really need one of my children who speak German much more fluently than me to ring up a German or Austrian office direct to get the answer to this.
Are you now advertising on abritel? Or are you on HomeawayUK or OD? My guess is that you come up higher on the primary site. You are an 'also ran' and low down on the sub-sites. I always got the vast majority of bookings from the VRBO site (North Americans mainly) although last year, curiously (testing?) I got quite a few through fewodirekt from Germany, Austria and German speaking Switzerland. Nothing from Abritel. Nothing from Homeawayuk so I am not attracting home grown visitors through there at all as I am on the last page if I can find it all, searching myself. Interestingly if I filter by number of reviews, I come up (apparently) having had 8 views in the last 48 hours whereas a property with fewer reviews (advertising directly on the uk site perhaps?) has had 59 in the same time so that sort of answers your question number 1.
The primary ad is with homeaway.co.uk, commission based, so as you say, lowest of the low 
my reviews are excellent but only 9, which was once a good score, tbh I only stay on HA because of those reviews and the occasional enquiry, I never had enough bookings from them to merit paying for the ad since they put it up so high plus VAT. I am only appearing on Abritel because it is part of the group, and I do get the occasional enquiry in French via Abritel, although it isn't immediately obvious which site it comes from.
Interesting what you say about the Austrian site being cheaper. I looked into advertising through Abritel to get a full ad but it was expensive, and I get results through other French sites which are much less expensive and still top the searches.
my reviews are excellent but only 9, which was once a good score, tbh I only stay on HA because of those reviews and the occasional enquiry, I never had enough bookings from them to merit paying for the ad since they put it up so high plus VAT. I am only appearing on Abritel because it is part of the group, and I do get the occasional enquiry in French via Abritel, although it isn't immediately obvious which site it comes from.Interesting what you say about the Austrian site being cheaper. I looked into advertising through Abritel to get a full ad but it was expensive, and I get results through other French sites which are much less expensive and still top the searches.
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PortugalGuy
- Posts: 38
- Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2015 7:12 pm
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Little Villa
- Posts: 151
- Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:52 pm
- Location: Motovun, Croatia
HA subsites
We are on OD with no online payments or bookings, and are more or less invisible. We have also now dropped off the subsites, and as Felicity says we appear to have people viewing, but absolutely no enquiries for ages. We had signed up to the extra listing on Fewo-Direkt, which was good, as we had really nice German & Austrian guests from there, but it expired and so we've disappeared from there. Don't suppose there is anything we can do. If there was, I would do it for the German and Austrian guests.
Strangely, I had two enquiries recently, within hours of each other from fewo-direkt. One was for my cottage and one for my Dublin apartment and both turned into bookings, off site of course as I have not got the service fee applied thank goodness. I wondered if there was some strange boost of homeaway/VRBO properties to fewo at the time.
I love having Germans and Austrians and Swiss! My overall experience is that they are all clean, appreciative and charming. I have tried small German sites but they never produced anything but scam or unsuitable (over-occupancy or unavailable periods) enquiries.
I love having Germans and Austrians and Swiss! My overall experience is that they are all clean, appreciative and charming. I have tried small German sites but they never produced anything but scam or unsuitable (over-occupancy or unavailable periods) enquiries.