Do you get many visitors from abroad?

[baltipine]

Reading through a lot of posts on here I get the impression that many of you are regularly getting enquiries and bookings from abroad.

One thing that has always puzzled me about our rental in South Devon is that we so rarely get enquiries (let alone bookings) from outside.....well England actually. None (so far) in 2012 and one from Australia in 2011.

We get most of our enquiries from our own website (via Google Adwords) and OD both of which should be available worldwide. We don't have personal translations of our website but have the Google Translate button on many of the pages which appears to do a reasonable job of the critical bits.

I'm rather curious about this and what we could / should be doing to get more enquiries from Europe in particular.

Does anyone have any comments or suggestions for us?

Thanks,
BP

[kendalcottages]

A very rough (I did it quickly!) round up of our bookings this year seems to reveal:

25 England
5 Scotland
3 Australia
1 Netherlands
1 Hong Kong
1 Thailand

I'm not too sure what (if anything) you can conclude from that. Obviously we are much near the border for Scottish visitors.

I'm not too sure why we seem to get a number of Australians. We seem to get quite a few enquiries from them, too (had one today, in fact).

[Nuthatch]

Just had a quick look at our bookings and we're very similar:

UK 32
Saudi Arabia 1
South Africa 1
Netherlands 2
Germany 1
Australia 2

Of the UK bookings 6 of them had non-UK family/friends with them, either Aussie, USA or Dutch. I was very surprised when we started out how many overseas bookings we got, but that's the benefit of the world wide web!

[Nuthatch]

I should have added that nearly all my non-UK guests have spoken very good english, and many have been ex-pats. We've never had to translate an enquiry.

[B&B netherlands]

most of my B&B-bookings are obviously from dutch guests, i'd say 80 %.

the bookings from belgium and germany are also to be expected, as i am rather close to amsterdam - and a lot cheaper than most accommodation there.

for the rest, my 'foreign' bookings are usually related to local families or friends of guests and consequently holidays, marriages, christenings, tracing long lost relatives back (several guests from canada, usa and australia). some of them have become regulars!

when i started my business 3 years ago i really had no idea about that kind of bookings, and just hoped for a good (...) summer season. i am open year round, which makes it very attractive to have 'a home away from home' when people in and around my village need accommodation for their guests.

i'm happy with this kind of bookings too! usually 3-5 nights. year round...

i do not use a booking agent, do not (yet!) have my own website, but use one paid listing site which is generating a good number of bookings as it's also in german. for the rest, i'm up high on the first page of google, findable on a few free listing sites and during the summer get many direct bookings (sometimes hours before arriving) from cyclists as i host (with a discount) members of 'vrienden op de fiets' ('friends on bicyles') from the netherlands, uk, germany and belgium.

[Windy]

Last year

Saudi Arabia 1
Czech republic 1
Holland 1

UK about 200

Japanese interested in Beatrix Potter 0
(in spite of having Japanese welcome page on one site)

Inbound tourism in self catering in the North of England seems to be something the quangos get rather more excited by than I do.

[falbayview]

this year so far:

scotland - 1
italy - 1
germany - 1
australia - 1
england - 15


next year so far:

england - 1.

[barbersdrove]

The majority this year have come from the UK, inlike last year when the majority came from wither Australia or New Zealand. This year other than the UK it's

Australia - 4
Barbados - 1
Spain - 1
Malaysia - 1
Singapore - 1
Holland - 1
Ireland - 1

[waterwitch]

Roughly, 14 overseas bookings out of 54 in total so far this year. Normally we are around 30% but not had as many Dutch guests booking this year.

German, Dutch and American's are the most popular.

[jenboyle1959]

not only are all my bookings this far from Britain, I would think 90% are from the Glasgow region!! Millport seems to be a well kept secret to anybody even from Edinburgh to be honest...
I had a French couple last year, and an Australian one booked but had to cancel due to illness, bu this year, the furthest flung has been Yorkshire.

[marsh frog]

Our vast majority are from the UK but as we are in the south east of England not far from Dover or Ashford the area attracts a fair number of Europeans too.In the past 1 year [our first year] our overseas bookings have been -

Germany - 3
Belgium - 1
Norway - 1
Australia - 1

[Margaret]

We have at most one non-UK booking a year in Wales: France, Austria that I can think of.

[James3214]

Although it is run by the same company as OD, I would get the German upgrade (and translation) on H-R and maybe the French one as well. I think if you don't advertise in the native language you are missing out on a big market. Germans get some of the longest holidays in Europe. You don't have to talk German to do it as long as it is clear that you only speak English. Devon & Cornwall are popular with the Germans who are continually bombarded on the TV with repeats of the 'Rosamunde Pilcher' novels!

[baltipine]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Reading through the thread it sounds like it varies quite a bit from almost none (like us) to about 30%.

I'm interested in the OD add on and Germany would be my first choice as their school holidays are significantly different from ours and as James points out nice long holidays! I will investigate...

I suppose the question I should also have asked is do visitors from overseas tend to take off peak weeks?

Interesting....

[marsh frog]

We had a lovely German family stay in June and a Belgian family in March so yes they do book other times than our UK school holidays too. Having said that our current guests are a german family