The scores on the doors

[Paul Carmel]

Afternoon all,

These are the sites that did it for us this year. Don't use these as a guide as they may not work for you.

1/ holiday-rentals 6 bookings ( one for a month - more of these please)

2/ our own site 3 bookings ( Could do better )

3/ homelidays 3 bookings ( Paolo I think you wanted to know about these guys, we had a good convertion rate for bookings and enquiries )

4/ vacationvillas 2 bookings ( Good for the German market )

5/ ownersdirect 1 booking ( nuf said )

6/ allerencorse 1 booking ( Corsica only site )

7/ casaholidays 1 booking shocking site that I forgot we were on.

Total 20 weeks which is our best yet.

stayrentals more scams than the avarage Nigerian internet cafe. And the biggest let down was VBRO with zilch.

What did it for you?

[tansy]

holiday-rentals.com filled us completely - I'm not sure the exact weeks yet but one house 34/35 weeks the other 22/25 weeks... 25% were repeat

VRBO as you know - ZILCH

Vacation Rentals - 3 month trial - Zilch

Chez Nous - out of date by 3 years brochure 2 weeks!!!!!

Web site - nothing - not even an enquiry as yet!

holiday-rentals 10 weeks already for 2006

2 repeat bookings.

[Sue Dyer]

Around 30 weeks for us + short breaks for Christmas/New Year from just two sites - The Cottage Guide and Internet Cottages. I do get slightly more bookings from Cottage Guide but happy with both sites and will renew shortly when they're due.

I don't know if I've ever secured a booking with my website alone but I think of that to "clinch" the deal with the extra information when referred from the 2 sites above.

[Nightowl]

holiday-rentals: 16 weeks booked. This was our first season and it went online in December 04 - by the end of Feb 8 weeks of summer was booked and the rest trickled in. Very pleased with the response.

vacation-villas: 0 so far, but didn't go on there til about end July, hoping to get some late season bookings from the German market. be interesting to see if I get any bookings when the booking season starts again.

Am also going to put it on costa-luz-holidays.com but that's a site aimed specifically at my area of spain.

So far h-r has my vote!

[Nightowl]

Just realised on reading my last post.. that I gave h-r my vote and yet my site ref is for vacationvillas... there is a reason... I personally like the ad on their site better... wonder if the punters next season will think so too, watch out h-r!!

[Garri]

Knightowl, vacationvillas & h-r look identical websites, are they affiliated in any way?

[alexia s.]

Garri,
I asked the same question.
vacationvillas uses h-r's technology. That's the only "affiliation" I'm aware of.

[Garri]

Alexia, I'm curious about this and wonder exactly how they can use someone elses technology . Do you think they've licensed it?

[alexia s.]

I just know that h-r is aware of it and that it is legal. Perhaps h-r helped them with it.

[Alan Knighting]

Alexia,

The two sites are so similar that I feel there must be some direct connection between them. Whether that is by way of affiliation or licence I neither know nor care but I think it must be by agreement otherwise they would be in litigation by now.

The main focus of HR appears to be UK and that of VV Germany. Is that correct?

Alan

[alexia s.]

Yes, Alan,
It is by agreement with h-r and yes, it is a German-based site.

[Nightowl]

Knightowl, vacationvillas & h-r look identical websites, are they affiliated in any way?
_________________

I don't think they are - I went with h-r first, in December and then went with Vacationvillas about 6 months later. VV's head office is in Germany I think and we paid a german bank account. H-r is UK based. I do agree they look very similar though and that's part of the reason I chose them, I like the look of the site.

The only reason I went for vacation villas is because the area that my house is in is very popular with Germans, particularly golfing parties and I wanted to see if I could get some low season bookings from German golfers as British golfers don't seem to have discovered Costa de la Luz for golf yet (apart from the 'other side of CdeL at Isla Canela). If you are aiming for German punters, then VV seems to be a popular one for german holiday makers to search on, if one believes the advertising blurb. Having said that, my mission has so far failed in that respect cos I haven't had one single German booking at all, high season or no. Had a few promising enquiries but nothing firm.

[paolo]

In this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=191
Ross from holiday-rentals said:
"vacationvillas.net (fewo-direkt) has been running out of our systems since august 2002"

Not sure what that means but he didn't elucidate. You will find that www.cyberrentals.com now uses the same technology, and eventually perhaps all the WVR sites will.

[Clexane]

As things currently stand for next year - our listing sites performances stand at

1. Holiday Rentals 2 weeks

2. Perfect Places 2 Weeks

3. Abritel 2 weeks

4. Vrbo, website or Perfectplaces 1 week (can't tell)

5. Website 2 weeks

6 Locations France nil

7. Holiday lets nil

8. self catering breaks nil

The first three and website I will definetly stick with.

[Emdee]

Apart from Welcome Cottages (and their myriad sister companies), and 2 return visits directly booked, our experience was thus:

French Connections: 10 weeks, 15 enquiries

Visitfrance : 0 weeks, 14 enquiries

HolidayGites: 0 weeks, 1 enquiry

Self Catering Breaks: 0 weeks , 1 enquiry

Own website: 4 weeks, 5 enquiries

Renting-Abroad: 0 weeks, 1 enquiry

In total, we filled 27 weeks, although the season ended earlier than previous years for us.... we normally fill October, but only had one week booked (to a Canadian couple) via FC.

Next year, we have 4 weeks booked through FC, 1 through Welcome and 4 weeks through Rent a place in France!

Just need some bookings through the winter now.....!