Lay My Hat

We have a new rental property in Spain (our others are in the UK). It's only recently been advertised and we have had a lot of interest but no bookings yet. I know that less than a third of enquiries then become bookings, but am interested to see why enquirers didn't for this particular property. I have sent follow up e-mails but received no response, so just wondered if anyone had done something similar and what level of response, if any! they received?

No, never done this, it's frustrating not knowing isn't it?

I sometimes get enquirers coming back to me saying "thanks for all the info...we've decided to go to another area this year/personal circs have changed/blah blah"

I guess if we actively asked for feedback from non-bookers we'd get variations on the above theme and perhaps not be much the wiser?

I would love to know too, especially when we've taken the trouble to answer questions and reassure them. When the trail goes cold after a lot of effort, it's rather frustrating. However, experience has taught me the quickest bookers are the best guests. I think they have already done their research and decided it is for them.

Spain Holiday did try to collect this information but you have to doubt the validity of it given this comment about me:

I was told in May, after I had booked all the flights, that the villa was being taken off the books because the owner was being made redundant.

Umm, well its an apartment not a villa and I've not been made redundant and not told anybody that I have been, and I'm still advertising

I doubt it...I think most people don't really have an easily articulated reason, and who wants to write an email to an owner saying "we found somewhere that we like better"?

I used to do this and sometimes actually ended up getting a booking at a later date!. Usually people didn't book because of the price, they told me or their plans changed. Now I don't bother and just accept that you win some and you loose some.

Some people enquire to five or six similar properties in the area and go for the cheapest/better.

Other people are just fooling around, they don´t know if they will get holidays on those dates, haven´t checked for flights, etc.

A few enquirers ask for very specific things that you may not fullfill.

And then, the worst, spaniards enquirers, they never ever convert. They ask you about prices and availability (both things beign perfectly clear in the advert) and that´s it.

I've asked a few times and some say price, others just say they have booked elsewhere but don't give a reason