My Cottage Holiday Free Listing
My Cottage Holiday Free Listing
mycottageholiday.co.uk
It is better to remain quiet and have one think you are stupid, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt....
The biggest mistake we make in life is thinking we have time.
The biggest mistake we make in life is thinking we have time.
Endorsed by VB ehMyCottageHoliday.co.uk provides users with independent self catering & holiday cottage reviews and is endorsed by VisitBritain
I'm not sure
- * what that means
* if it's a good thing
* how you'd check
After 3 years of doing this thing I've decided no more free sites. They take up too much time and they rarely if ever deliver.
What do the rest of you think?
Only put the very basics on a listing site. Best free site for us is Total Travel according to my stats and there's free last minutes.
It is better to remain quiet and have one think you are stupid, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt....
The biggest mistake we make in life is thinking we have time.
The biggest mistake we make in life is thinking we have time.
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MyCottageHoliday
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 2:42 pm
- Location: UK
- Contact:
Good Evening - My name is Andy, I'm the Editor of MyCottageHoliday.co.uk. I thought you might like to know a bit more about www.MyCottageHoliday.co.uk from the horses mouth.
I'm delighted that we have cropped up on your radar - but not so delighted that we are being lumped in with the free cottage listing websites - I hope and believe that MyCottageHoliday.co.uk is different in a number of critical ways:
1. We are not a free listings site. We are a website where holiday makers can share their experiences of self-catering properties in the UK. We are a holiday cottage review site.
2. In order to offer our users the best experience we encourage owners to list their own properties. There are a couple of good reasons for this - one is that you can provide users with a bit of background, which might help you get people clicking through to your own website. more importantly, if you have listed your own property, you will automatically be told by email if someone leaves a review - and you'll have the right to add a comment.
Reviewers can review ANY cottage - if the property is not already on the site (and we have 4,000 so far) then the reviewer can add it. In this case, the owner may never know that their property has been reviewed although we do actually do our best to let cottage owners know if a review has been added.
There's a good article about the value of reviews for self-catering properties on the site at http://www.mycottageholiday.co.uk/minte ... eviews.php which you might find interesting.
I'm happy to field calls if you have any questions - my contact details are on the site (including phone number) - and I'll keep an eye on this discussion and will do my best to answer any questions you might have.
As for the VB endorsement, it's a long story! We have in fact just changed that statement because whilst they support and encourage us, they are not now allowed to use the term "endorse". This is to do with the EU Laws on competition and is affecting the whole accreditation side of Visit Britain / England / Scotland etc. I'm sure you've read about it. Suffice to say that VB do link to us from their main site and they actively encourage our activities. Again, there is a link to the joint press release we issued with them on the site.
Finally, we have had incredible support and encouragement from many people in the self-catering industry. The Association of Scottish Self-Caterers (around 800 independent owners in Scotland) are fully behind us, as are many of the cottage agencies.
Thanks again for spending your precious time discussing the site. I hope these notes have helped clarify things.
I'm delighted that we have cropped up on your radar - but not so delighted that we are being lumped in with the free cottage listing websites - I hope and believe that MyCottageHoliday.co.uk is different in a number of critical ways:
1. We are not a free listings site. We are a website where holiday makers can share their experiences of self-catering properties in the UK. We are a holiday cottage review site.
2. In order to offer our users the best experience we encourage owners to list their own properties. There are a couple of good reasons for this - one is that you can provide users with a bit of background, which might help you get people clicking through to your own website. more importantly, if you have listed your own property, you will automatically be told by email if someone leaves a review - and you'll have the right to add a comment.
Reviewers can review ANY cottage - if the property is not already on the site (and we have 4,000 so far) then the reviewer can add it. In this case, the owner may never know that their property has been reviewed although we do actually do our best to let cottage owners know if a review has been added.
There's a good article about the value of reviews for self-catering properties on the site at http://www.mycottageholiday.co.uk/minte ... eviews.php which you might find interesting.
I'm happy to field calls if you have any questions - my contact details are on the site (including phone number) - and I'll keep an eye on this discussion and will do my best to answer any questions you might have.
As for the VB endorsement, it's a long story! We have in fact just changed that statement because whilst they support and encourage us, they are not now allowed to use the term "endorse". This is to do with the EU Laws on competition and is affecting the whole accreditation side of Visit Britain / England / Scotland etc. I'm sure you've read about it. Suffice to say that VB do link to us from their main site and they actively encourage our activities. Again, there is a link to the joint press release we issued with them on the site.
Finally, we have had incredible support and encouragement from many people in the self-catering industry. The Association of Scottish Self-Caterers (around 800 independent owners in Scotland) are fully behind us, as are many of the cottage agencies.
Thanks again for spending your precious time discussing the site. I hope these notes have helped clarify things.
Thanks for that
Out of interest what is your stance on owners who choose not to be included on your site?
Can we opt out of being included if we wish?
You will have to point me towards the place on the VB site where it link to your site.
All I can see is a link to http://www.visitorreview.com/visitbritain and that's not you is it?
Out of interest what is your stance on owners who choose not to be included on your site?
Can we opt out of being included if we wish?
You will have to point me towards the place on the VB site where it link to your site.
All I can see is a link to http://www.visitorreview.com/visitbritain and that's not you is it?
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MyCottageHoliday
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 2:42 pm
- Location: UK
- Contact:
Can an owner opt out of being included on the site? That's a good question. I could answer it with another question: Can an owner opt out of anyone posting a comment anywhere on the internet (forums, chat rooms, message boards, blogs etc)? And the answer is clearly not - people will say what they want, when they want, where they want online. If an owner asked to be excluded from the site I would suggest that that is the last thing they should want to do. If they are worried about adverse comments, then those will happen with or without MyCottageHoliday (and you might say, if they are worried about adverse comments then comments on MyCH are the least of their problems). And if the comments are positive, then why limit the exposure? If an owner is on our site they will know about any comments and will be able to react to them.
To answer the question directly, the honest answer is that I don't know. we haven't been asked so we haven't formulated an opinion. But I do know that the site is a platform for holiday makers to exchange their experiences, it's not a site for promoting self-catering properties (it does do that, but that's not it's primary function if you see what I mean). So we'd review the request in that light.
Just as an aside - we check every review and every property added to the site. We try to ensure that reviews are fair and supported. We won't publish any comments that are simply rants or that would not actually be helpful to another holidaymaker. If a property is listed with us and there is an adverse comment, we will always try get the other side of the story from the owner (we had a good example recently where the review was rejected after a conversation I had with the owner). Our aim is to provide an accurate impression of a property for our users - we don't want reviews to be misleading any more than we want owners to make exaggerated claims for their properties. The vast majority of reviews are highly positive - and reflect incredibly well on the very high quality of self-catering accommodation offered in the UK.
We are planning to make a considerable investment in MyCottageHoliday in 2010 to ensure that the site becomes better known. We're already offering owners a great deal of support to help them to encourage guests to add reviews. We're just launching a new system to allow owners to add reviews themselves (we flag these as owner added). Our expectation is that if someone wants to grumble about (or applaud) a holiday property they will do so on MyCottageHoliday.co.uk because that will be the place where most people will read the comment. For that reason I would strongly encourage owners to embrace the site and take control of the dialogue with the reviewers.
(Does that answer the question?)
VisitBritain link to us from here - http://www.visitbritain.com/en/accommod ... -catering/ and there are more links planned.
To answer the question directly, the honest answer is that I don't know. we haven't been asked so we haven't formulated an opinion. But I do know that the site is a platform for holiday makers to exchange their experiences, it's not a site for promoting self-catering properties (it does do that, but that's not it's primary function if you see what I mean). So we'd review the request in that light.
Just as an aside - we check every review and every property added to the site. We try to ensure that reviews are fair and supported. We won't publish any comments that are simply rants or that would not actually be helpful to another holidaymaker. If a property is listed with us and there is an adverse comment, we will always try get the other side of the story from the owner (we had a good example recently where the review was rejected after a conversation I had with the owner). Our aim is to provide an accurate impression of a property for our users - we don't want reviews to be misleading any more than we want owners to make exaggerated claims for their properties. The vast majority of reviews are highly positive - and reflect incredibly well on the very high quality of self-catering accommodation offered in the UK.
We are planning to make a considerable investment in MyCottageHoliday in 2010 to ensure that the site becomes better known. We're already offering owners a great deal of support to help them to encourage guests to add reviews. We're just launching a new system to allow owners to add reviews themselves (we flag these as owner added). Our expectation is that if someone wants to grumble about (or applaud) a holiday property they will do so on MyCottageHoliday.co.uk because that will be the place where most people will read the comment. For that reason I would strongly encourage owners to embrace the site and take control of the dialogue with the reviewers.
(Does that answer the question?)
VisitBritain link to us from here - http://www.visitbritain.com/en/accommod ... -catering/ and there are more links planned.
MyCottageHoliday.co.uk - The independent self catering & holiday cottage review website
Thanks Andy
It answers the question yes.
As to owners reactions to listing sites like TA I suggest you take a look around here - the reaction isn't 100% favourable given some of the less than accurate reviews that owners have suffered.
If you were to carry an inaccurate review that damaged my business you can be sure that you'd hear about it very quickly. It would , I think, then be your responsibility to remove or edit it, regardlesss of who posted it.
TBH I'm not sure how to marry up these 2 statements
You'll have to forgive me for not coming over all enthusiatic, but I think it's the dismal sight of VB yet again seeming to have no direction or clue - what on earth are they doing having a review section and then linking to you as well (no disrespect to you, just disbelief at VB's ineptitude and lack of joined up thinking)
It answers the question yes.
As to owners reactions to listing sites like TA I suggest you take a look around here - the reaction isn't 100% favourable given some of the less than accurate reviews that owners have suffered.
If you were to carry an inaccurate review that damaged my business you can be sure that you'd hear about it very quickly. It would , I think, then be your responsibility to remove or edit it, regardlesss of who posted it.
TBH I'm not sure how to marry up these 2 statements
If they are worried about adverse comments, then those will happen with or without MyCottageHoliday
And like it or not people tend to rant more than they praise. Great fun for the punter. less enjoyable for the owner.Our expectation is that if someone wants to grumble about (or applaud) a holiday property they will do so on MyCottageHoliday.co.uk because that will be the place where most people will read the comment.
You'll have to forgive me for not coming over all enthusiatic, but I think it's the dismal sight of VB yet again seeming to have no direction or clue - what on earth are they doing having a review section and then linking to you as well (no disrespect to you, just disbelief at VB's ineptitude and lack of joined up thinking)
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MyCottageHoliday
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 2:42 pm
- Location: UK
- Contact:
Absolutely. If an owner draws our attention to an inaccurate comment, we would address that immediately.Windy wrote:If you were to carry an inaccurate review that damaged my business you can be sure that you'd hear about it very quickly. It would , I think, then be your responsibility to remove or edit it, regardlesss of who posted it.
The point I was making is that if you have added your property to MyCottageHoliday.co.uk you would know if there has been a review immediately. That review will have been read and amended if necessary by one of our editors before it goes live. You would also know that you have a right to reply and open access to the editorial team if you have a concern.
If we get adverse comments from reviewers for properties that we do not currently list, we do try to get in touch with the owner, but the only guaranteed way for an owner to know about a comment is if they added their own property - in which case they will be advised automatically.
The point about adverse comments was merely that a disgruntled guest has thousands of places where they can complain about a property if they want to - and not just on holiday sites. All bar the very smallest minority of these sites will care, or even monitor, what is written. The internet is full of rants and raves. To address this a little, we hope that MyCottageHoliday will become a credible, impartial location where reviews can be read and where owners feel they are getting a fair deal.
MyCottageHoliday.co.uk - The independent self catering & holiday cottage review website
http://www.mycottageholiday.co.uk/featured_cottages.phpWe are not a free listings site.
You're certainy not just that are you
Wow £2,984 a year at 17.5% VAT for a featured listing.
Is that a record?
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MyCottageHoliday
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 2:42 pm
- Location: UK
- Contact:
We don't actually offer Featured listings any more because we will be amending the look of the home page soon - but your maths isn't wrong.
However, in our view, being featured on the home page of a specialist holiday cottage review site for a month for around £200 was not too bad.
Glad to see you're looking at the site in such detail!
However, in our view, being featured on the home page of a specialist holiday cottage review site for a month for around £200 was not too bad.
Glad to see you're looking at the site in such detail!
MyCottageHoliday.co.uk - The independent self catering & holiday cottage review website
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MyCottageHoliday
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 2:42 pm
- Location: UK
- Contact:
Hi MyCottageHoliday
I've a feeling we corresponded when your site was in its infancy but IIRC I didn't take it much further at the time as there was so little on your site back then (if I have confused you with another site, please forgive me!).
It appears that's all changed. From my estimates, there's not quite the 4,000 properties you claim, but there's a still a reasonable number, though strangely a large number in the Republic given that it's a site that aims "to widen awareness of self-catering in the UK".
Here's the breakdown as far as I could ascertain:
East Anglia - 36
East Midlands - 65
Greater London - 0
NE England - 172
NW England - 184
N Ireland - 7
Republic of Ireland - 725
Scotland - 122
SE England - 21
SW England - 1476
Channel Islands - 0
Cotswolds - 0
Lake District - 0
S England - 28
Wales - 512
West Midlands - 125
(...which I make to be 3,473).
Just out of interest, are you looking to provide content to others running self-catering portals? We already display a limited number of reviews on http://www.ukcottage.com but they are largely of the favourable-only variety as they are sourced from the likes of Hoseasons and Blue Chip Vacations.
We had contemplated allowing people to review properties directly with us themselves but as yet it's not an area we've ventured into...
Feel free to contact me via the form on http://www.dedicate.co.uk if you prefer to exchange correspondence by email.
Thanks and good luck with your site.
I've a feeling we corresponded when your site was in its infancy but IIRC I didn't take it much further at the time as there was so little on your site back then (if I have confused you with another site, please forgive me!).
It appears that's all changed. From my estimates, there's not quite the 4,000 properties you claim, but there's a still a reasonable number, though strangely a large number in the Republic given that it's a site that aims "to widen awareness of self-catering in the UK".
Here's the breakdown as far as I could ascertain:
East Anglia - 36
East Midlands - 65
Greater London - 0
NE England - 172
NW England - 184
N Ireland - 7
Republic of Ireland - 725
Scotland - 122
SE England - 21
SW England - 1476
Channel Islands - 0
Cotswolds - 0
Lake District - 0
S England - 28
Wales - 512
West Midlands - 125
(...which I make to be 3,473).
Just out of interest, are you looking to provide content to others running self-catering portals? We already display a limited number of reviews on http://www.ukcottage.com but they are largely of the favourable-only variety as they are sourced from the likes of Hoseasons and Blue Chip Vacations.
We had contemplated allowing people to review properties directly with us themselves but as yet it's not an area we've ventured into...
Feel free to contact me via the form on http://www.dedicate.co.uk if you prefer to exchange correspondence by email.
Thanks and good luck with your site.