French Connections Improvement

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
Duchess
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French Connections Improvement

Post by Duchess »

FC have amended their site to include a map of France highlighting the regions and geography. It is appreciated that FC have taken on board some of the comments which were raised here.

Since the improvement, we are now receiving a steady enquiry rate some of which have resulted in bookings.

Duchess
Fraise
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Post by Fraise »

Ah- I gather that FC is working quite well for you now again? I've not paid for any advertising yet ( just free trials as I'm a newbie to all this!!) and I'm deciding who to go with- LOL- guess me and tons of others!!! :roll: You are about 30 miles down the road from us but with quite a different type of property, I'm glad everything has picked up again :D

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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Hm, it still isn't working for us that well.

If I measure the success of the FC ad (at least somewhat) by the number of click-throughs to our website, it's dismal. We've only had two this month! Compare that to VRBO and a-gites, where we've had about 40 each.

We haven't had an inquiry from FC in a number of weeks.

It's so frustrating to view the properties for our region and look at some examples of the properties that show up first -- and see that some of them haven't even bothered to fill in the availability calendar!
Brooke
Fraise
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Post by Fraise »

vrooje wrote:Hm, it still isn't working for us that well.

If I measure the success of the FC ad (at least somewhat) by the number of click-throughs to our website, it's dismal. We've only had two this month! Compare that to VRBO and a-gites, where we've had about 40 each.

We haven't had an inquiry from FC in a number of weeks.
Ah ,more food for thought then.I've just checked the Visit France website clikckthroughs and it says we've had 86 in the past 14 days,which seems quite good? I don't really know cos I've got no experiences to gauge it against?I haven't got any statistics from other sites. Click-throughs need to translate to bookings though surely? Don't know what a "normal" ratio would be? Maybe it's a "how long is a piece of string" question??

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kas33
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Post by kas33 »

Last year we got 80% of our bookings from FC enquiries. Since Christmas we have had ONE enquiry from our ad with them....just as well we have started advertising on other sites too. I don't think we will be renewing at this rate
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Brooke,

Good to see A-Gites worked out! not bad for nowt!
Cheers
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Welcome to the forum, kas33! Image

One thing to bear in mind with French Connections is that you won't be getting the same amount of enquiries as you used to - that's simply because they now have an availability calendar. Most enquiries in previous years from FC were probably all for the same peak weeks in the summer, so you couldn't compare the site's effectiveness with others that had calendars. Now you can.
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tansy
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Post by tansy »

Brooke...how do you generate from VRBO...I've 2 ads on there so far 8 enquiries in 4 months - 1 booking and then it was phone calls in the end to USA..they rang me even though I had emailed them 6 times..I have a feeling my emails don't get through..how do you convert - have a look - what is wrong in your opinion? properties 47565 & 47568

I can't believe that we are so unattractive...especially with the amount of business I get from h-r.com....perhaps I've too much English speak on the ad?!! :lol:
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Paul,

I know, I'm pretty happy with a-gites so far! I've had several serious inquiries from them. I think in their case the reason there are a lot of people who view the ad but don't inquire is that we haven't taken the time to translate our site into French as carefully as we could.


Kas33,

Welcome to the forum! :) I know how you feel -- the thing is, I used to completely fill up from FC alone. This season, it's not the case -- so that can't be the availability calendar doing all the reduction in bookings!


Tansy,

I don't have a big conversion rate on VRBO either -- only a few inquiries and one (in progress) booking. That's a *very* low conversion rate considering the number of click-throughs we have! Honestly, though, we copied our VRBO ad from one of our ads on a primarily-british listing site, so it's very possible that it has some "english" vs. "american" terms in it too!

It would be so interesting to find out whether changing your ad's language would make a difference in your inquiries. Let's see if I can pick out the places that ring a bell in my head of "british advertisement!" :)

Property 47565:
  • "large double with an en-suite shower room" - What is a "large double" exactly? Is that what an American would call a queen-sized bed? In the US a double bed is sort of a large child's bed, not something I would want to sleep on with my husband on vacation. I might change that to say "queen-sized bed with private bathroom" assuming the exchange from large double to queen is accurate.

    Anywhere you say "shower room" I'd change that to bathroom.

    *gasp* I see a picture of a toilet! :lol:

    On a different note, I feel like your second paragraph of this ad could be broken up into two -- it's an important one which describes the house and it may be a bit long.
On to 47568:
  • "with views across to Jersey" -- Anytime an American hears "Jersey," their first thought is likely to be "New Jersey," which is stereotypically not the sort of thing you would want to see views of from your vacation rental. If you said "with views across the English Channel to the island of Jersey," that sounds more exotic to a US vacationer.

    This advert mentions something about "this year, 2004," so it appears out of date.

    This ad doesn't appear to have the detailed description of the house the way the other ad does. I liked the information in that other paragraph...
Of course, this is all assuming you *want* to change the ad. Not sure on that, of course!

Cheers!
Brooke
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tansy
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Post by tansy »

thank you....that makes sense...especially the Channel Islands!

That's interesting you are having the same ...is it the dollar or so many houses to choose from do you think?

I do like my loo!! :wink:
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Hm... I think it could be a bit of both. Our prices are in Euros and I've thought of changing them to dollars on that site... not really sure.

I also had an issue once with a VRBO e-mail inquiry not getting back to the client; the e-mail address was correct in the e-mail form but not on the auto-reply, so I'm not sure what that was all about. I had to manually type in the e-mail and it all worked fine.

Possily this should be a VRBO thread, not an FC thread! :)
Brooke
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

I think this is a bad time to assess the effectiveness of a US site, the dollar really does make travel to Europe prohibitively expensive for Americans.

I enjoyed reading Brooke's comments there. The bed thing is particularly one to look out for. Also bear in mind that a UK King/Queen is smaller than a US one, so on US sites you should perhaps state that it's a US Queen or UK Double, etc. Here are the measurements for each bed size in both UK and US:

Image

I found these out there on the internet, I bet you can find different measurements!
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la vache!
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Post by la vache! »

I've just had a 2 week booking in our big house for next year from French Connections, which more than justifies the advertising fee, so despite all my previous worries about their effectiveness, I will be renewing with them next year, maybe things will be better in 2006 with them! Bookings are unpredicable, this year it was the house sleeping up to 8 that got booked up a year in advance, for 2006 it is the big house or indeed all 3 houses together which are getting booked, people seem to be wanting big family/friends holidays for next year so far!
alexia s.
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Post by alexia s. »

"a 2 week booking in our big house for next year from French Connections.... more than justifies the advertising fee"
Maybe - but only if this is for a period you wouldn't otherwise have filled. If this is peak season (assuming you are always full for this) & it is all you get from French Connections, their advertising is not justified.
A 2 week booking off-season for next year would be great!
Best,
Alexia.
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