HelenB wrote:Interest seems to have completely dried up, although I am still getting loads of hits on my availability calendar. Despite new listings and special prices, and an ebay listing, there hasn't even been one enquiry.
Helen,
Perhaps this idea is too obvious, but did you think about changing the title on your home page from "Ski Apartment" to something like
"Ski Apartment and Summer Retreat" I'm sure you and our expert copy writers could think of a more imaginative title to grab attention, but at this point, I think you may need to do more tweaking to change it's image into something more appealing for summer visitors. Otherwise folks may feel they are booking the right place at the wrong time of year.
I'd also be tempted to split the home page into two - "click here for winter skiing" and "click here for summer activities" or similar wording, rather than featuring either summer or winter on the home page. You need both, or your summer photo could be sending a negative to those looking for next winter's ski season right now.
The summer photo on the home page is lovely, but it's of a ski lift, and I think the main summer one ought to reflect an activity they can do rather than one they can't do, so I would go for a hiking trail, or the river where they can kayak and canoe and some close up shots of beautiful wild flowers that I know you have in summer.
Using this logic, I think your home page needs both snow and summer flowers/ kayakers, side by side, with equal prominence, and relevant copy under each, then for more information, click the menu bar on the left.
One other comment, and I don't mean to be over critical, only trying to help, but as you know, I was interested in your eBay ad, and quite surprised and a little disappointed when I checked it out. You had the bare minimum of information, like 3 sentences, few keywords and only two photos, one of which was a tiny winter snow scene. It didn't show me that you cared about renting your place and your guests, which was a shame because I know you care a great deal.
The cost for me to put a vacation rental ad on eBay seems to be $100 minimum, so I haven't tried one yet, but I have been trading on Ebay for many years and know it quite well. You need 6 supersize photos to sell a $5 lipstick, let alone a vacation rental.
I think on the European side, you're not paying anything like our costs here in NY, and can run a travel ad for around $10, but whatever it costs you, it's worth putting time into the presentation, trying to recreate a real feel of the place as you have on your own website. You need to pack it with keywords so it will draw people to your ad thru the keyword searches. Those that do find it are not going to check out your website if the ad doesn't grab them and the domain name is not even clickable.
eBay browsers like to stay on ebay, going from ad to ad, so they are not going to click away unless you have already sold to them using the ad itself.
eBay has some reasonably simple and stylish design templates, but here's an example of a property ad I came across recently that is quite bland, but sets the bar quite high in terms of interest and packing rich content onto a page. Check out Item# 4458399066 . I don't see any reason why we couldn't do something like this (or even better) for our place. If only I knew how!
I would be very interested in a thread in the tech section on how it's done if anyone is tempted to start one and would like to bet that the first one of us to run an eBay ad for 10 days of this calibre would definitely get some serious inquiries out of it!
P.S Clive, I love your website, really vibrant.
beautiful part of Italy. We had a holiday many years ago at Lago Maggiore, a small place north of Stresa called Baveno. Do you know it? Bliss, we went in Sept and it was peaceful delightfully warm and not that known then, wonder what its like now, shall remember that trip for ever. My in-laws are Italian from Campobasso they still have a family home there so we can get a taste of Italy now and again. We have found that France like Italy love children and are very family orientated. 
