Strange 2012 so far!

[Tizfata]

This morning I wrote down all my bookings for 2012, with surprising results!
My stat only takes into account the rental price (not the lenght or the luxury of the accomodation).
Australia: 2,43%
Belgium: 2,3%
Estonia: 1,29%
Finland: 0,97%
France: 24,35%
Germany: 46,43%
New Zealand: 4,6%
Nederlands: 4,6%
Switzerland: 2,5%
UK: 5,15%
USA: 5,52%
Considering that in 2011 things were:
France: 29%
Germany: 20%
UK: 17%
I never thought my guests from the US would spend more than those from the UK!
About the sites, the H-R galaxy wins (homeaway, abritel, fewo-direkt...), while I am very disapponted with OD and Homelidays.
Big surprises:
2 weeks in June from Ferienhausmarkt
2 weeks in August from Pureholidayhomes
AND i think I had only a very few confirmed bookings (like 5 compared to the 24 I have now) at this time last year.
How does 2012 look for you?

[nijntje]

Good for you! it is a hard to tell why this happens

I have no stats done yet...but it is looking very good indeed. Just started our second year of renting and have 22 weeks confirmed already (for 1 house). Last year (our first year) we had a total of 26 weeks, which was far more then we anticipated, very pleased with that. It is a little mix of Dutch, Belgian, mostly Uk and 1 American. Unlike you most of my bookings come trough OD, our ad with HR just expired and have not renewed

Also just started advertising our second smaller gite since last week and already got 4 bookings so far and another one in the running. Keep it coming!

[brenda]

It is strange how different advertising sites work for different people / properties.

OD poor for us but Homelidays doing very well as usual.

Too early for us to do stats - with a B+B most of our bookings are made much nearer the arrival date - but, so far, our UK bookings are WAY up (already have more Brit bookings for 2012 than we had for 2010 + 2011 combined). Last year by far the majority of our guests came from France and the Netherlands and not a single enquiry from there yet for 2012. Danish bookings good and 2 Swiss bookings so far that are the first we have had from there.

[clairelou65]

well our stats are still shocking!!!
We are just about to enter our second year and nothing.....nada....not a single booking!
We have not had a booking from cottages for you since October.
I am getting around 15 people a day to the website.... mainly ebay but 3 or 4 from google searches.
Feeling a bit dissheartened now it feels a bit like trying to conceive....the more you try and the more desperate you are the less it will happen!!!
I have even upped the price as the cottage around the corner is double the price of ours and has about 8 bookings this year and they only started promoting through rural retreats in September, the other one at the other end of the village is 25% more than we are now and has been running years with many weeks booked already.

[Nemo]

well our stats are still shocking!!!
We are just about to enter our second year and nothing.....nada....not a single booking.

Sorry to hear that, but hang in there! I see you've changed your website a little because I think you put it in for review before? The obvious bit of information that appears to be missing is how many it sleeps? I know you have put how many beds etc but it just makes it easy for people to have it spoon fed.

How about trying another website? Independent cottages or maybe Last Minute Cottages? Independent is doing particularly well for me at the moment and has a lovely owner to deal with.

[clairelou65]

thanks Nemo i really appreciate your comments, I will add in plain english that it sleeps 4, it does say 2 bedroomed in the heading of the first page and lists double and twin rooms in the photos.
We don't feel able to advertise with another agency yet as if we book more than 4 weeks ourselves hoseasons will charge us ... wait for it... a £75 administration fee for each booking and the usual 28% they would have had from that booking making it a waste of our time. Unless it 2 weeks before the date, there-fore i see my only option ebay, gumtree and preloved to advertise.
We will be leaving them from September but are tied in until then, unless we pay £1000 to exit the contract.
I have put up my prices to hopefully have an advertising budget in the future. (and i hadnt realised we were in breach of our contract to undercut cottages4you)

[Nemo]

We don't feel able to advertise with another agency yet as if we book more than 4 weeks ourselves hoseasons will charge us ... wait for it... a £75 administration fee for each booking and the usual 28% they would have had from that booking making it a waste of our time. Unless it 2 weeks before the date, there-fore i see my only option ebay, gumtree and preloved to advertise.
We will be leaving them from September but are tied in until then, unless we pay £1000 to exit the contract.

That's not great is it! The only way round it at the moment then is if you got a further advance booking, just send them to book via the cottages4u website? It would be worth it wouldn't it just to get a few bookings in? The profit from one or two bookings would probably cover the cost of one new listing site.

No enquiries since October is seriously not good. I would want to mitigate that in any way I could.

Sorry for the TC Tiz!

[la vache!]

Oh dear - I think your cottage looks lovely and it would be exactly the sort of place I'd want to stay in. The problem is definitely cottages for U. Can you speak to anyone to complain and say you want an early release? I'm sure you would do better advertising independently.
Are pets a real problem? Could you accommodate them outside? Its just in your area I'm sure you are missing out on a lot of dog walkers by not accepting pets.
I hope you get things sorted with Hoseasons. What a rip off.

[CharlieOx]

Strange for us too. We've already taken £40k's worth of bookings for 2012. This time last year we only had £10k!

[revdev]

Strange for us too. We've already taken £40k's worth of bookings for 2012. This time last year we only had £10k!

Wow, nice going!

[stork]

I have not done it by revenue yet, but just counted number of bookings. The picture is similar, lots of Germans and very few Brits - have they got house arrest?

Our first season about half of bookings were from the UK, this year so far we have two - and one of these is a repeat, 6 weeks high season.

I know from a local friend who is a travel agent that they see the same - they just do not get the Germans to replace the Brits

[AMC]

Hi Clairelou65

I really feel for you and the lack of bookings. Must be really hard and disheartening.

I can see that you have a lovely looking website although you realy do need some help with your SEO. If you get some assistance with this you will notice a big difference. Promise!!!!

If you would like to pm me i will give you the details of someone who will make a big difference and should ensure more traffic gets to see your site. Its cheap as well!

[Windy]

My cumulative value bookings are coming in about 10% below last year by the end of Feb (we were 6% up in December and 5% down on January) and lo and behold, my web stats reflect this almost exactly.

I've just been looking at my web stats for 2012 to date. What is interesting is a that a year on year comparison shows the last 12 months consistently if marginally better than the previous year. It is only from the beginning of January that the decline in web visitors starts.

I can see this on my individual sites, and, more tellingly, on a listing site I run with 30 properties on it, which gives a better statistical basis.

From this I conclude that people have not been looking for holidays in the same volume as they were this time last year, so it's not surprising that our bookings are slightly down.

Of course it may just be that they haven't been looking at my sites because of changes in Google rank etc (although I am not aware of any reason why this should be).

Do anyone else's web stats tell a similar tale?

[apexblue]

Ditto Windy but worst for us than 10%.

Cannot understand it. Even the repeats are not repeating.

The decline started in the New Year.

We are taking short breaks just in case except July/Aug.

[bruce big bear]

2012 is our second year of letting. We are in Menorca. Use OD and HL. Last year fabulous and having put the villa on in November we were pretty much full for the summer by the end of February with bookings equally spread between the two sites.
I don't have the Dec or Jan comparables on page views but on OD Feb 2012 they are down 42%. Enquiries on both sites for the three months are 4 against 27 last season!
Our pages are very little changed apart from updated pricing and year specific text.
I do a weekly update availability calendars to stay close to the top of the search listings.
Anybody else suffering a similar collapse in interest in Spain or the Balearics? Anybody any thoughts on how I might improve things.
Thanks,
Bruce