Classified Listings

[kevincohr]

Anyone had any success using classified listings (free or otherwise), besides Craigslist, which has already been covered on this forum ?

Thanks,

Kevin

[Mountain Goat]

Kevin
What sort of classified? Print or web or both?

Goat

[kevincohr]

Was thinking more web than print.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Mountain Goat]

On the web I've only tried classified with slowtrav.com with highly successful enquiries, but not brilliant (early days - only been using them a month) on conversion to bookings.

In print, tried Sun. Times, Sun. Teleg. (web and print), Spectator mag., Financial Times, local UK village rag, British Airways inhouse newspapers and mags, British Airline Pilots mag. and compared with web I find that print is the nearest thing I know to spending a quiet evening setting fire to 50 quid notes, but maybe I'm doing it wrong.

I'm trying to make contact with the Harvard Review for both print and web, but can't get them to reply.

To be fair, we were trying to flog a ski chalet late in the season, and it's really too early to make a fair judgement on this.

I find (1) Personal contacts/friends/friends of friends best, (2) the web good and (3) Print just not worth it.

I know (1) is not classified ads.

We've only been doing it a couple of months, anyway.

Goat

[Alan Knighting]

Goat,

I’m not a world renowned expert at letting holiday accommodation. I’ve been at it for seven years and many have been doing it for longer.

My experience tells me that the personal approach is the most productive followed quite closely by Rental Listing Sites.

For me, newspaper and magazine advertising is a licence to print money, unfortunately it’s their licence and their printing machine but it's my money.

Other owners will have a different story to tell.

Alan

[Giddy Goat]

I find personal contacts/friends/friends of friends best

Agree, Goat, re classified ads, and putting in enough content to tempt the reader to contact you for more info usually costs more than a mere £50 note in any publication with a decent sized circulation. Last year, I ran a lineage ad of 30 words twice in The Lady, spent around £130, received 3 inquiries. One converted to a booking, so can't grumble, but £200 spent on a listing site produced many more inquiries and bookings. Two sites just about covered all 16 weeks' worth of bookings.

This is our second season, and from our experience to date of personal recommendation, the prize for the guests from hell went to close relatives of the vendors, with whom we'd remained friendly. Not only did they need reminding to pay the deposit to secure the reservation, but required several more nudges before stumping up the balance - then left the house in a state. Last straw: although the caretakers (who don't live on site) had requested that they secure all windows and doors on leaving, failed to do so. This year I've had relatives who, much as I care about them, haven't seemed able to take our letting of the property as a business seriously, and were very casual in firming up their dates with me, despite the fact that they aren't being charged (for this Sept, which is still a good letting month for us.) It was embarrassing, having to hassle them. It's equally embarrassing when people you know use the property and something major gets lost or damaged.

I enjoy the personal contact with guests - but let 'em be neither friend, relative, nor colleague! For me, listing sites win hands down!

[A-two]

Kevin,
Our advertising is 100% internet based because it works. Our print advertising is 0% because it doesn't work. We do not run classified ads of any kind. Craigs List does not work for us. The Lady doesn't work for us. We learned the hard way like most people.

I cut my advertising back this year to 3 paid listing sites and a couple of new trial sites, and I dropped the 900lb gorilla everyone in the US is supposed to have, VRBO. I haven't missed anything about VRBO except the number of wasted hours I spent last year fielding inquiries from time wasters that didn't convert into a booking, some of whom were competitors looking for my terms and conditions to copy. I also became increasingly annoyed that they are not updating their software or reinvesting profits in the site. My property actually looked awful there compared to other more progressive listings site, hence I dropped out not only to distance myself from copycats, but also to lose poor quality photos of my property and bad design.

The same reasoning can also be applied to print classifieds. Poor presentation doesn't work in 2006 when everyone has a computer and enjoys browsing as much if not more than watching TV or thumbing through a magazine or newspaper. There's absolutely nothing you can get into a classified ad to compare with a high quality personal website and I wouldn't rely on anyone clicking the link from an online classified ad to your site. Why compromise and sell yourself short when you don't need to?

In case you're wondering how this strategy has worked out for us in practise (and you're welcome to check our availability calendar), we are currently fully booked from now until mid October except one week in September. Christmas 2006 and New Year 2007 is already booked and I am now fielding inquiries for Spring 2007 and Summer 2007.

I would say to someone who is not getting enough bookings, if you are new, you do need a year or two to establish a presence and build a reputation, but that's not a problem that can be fixed by print ads. It's more important to put the time and energy into improving the online image, especially a personal website for the property, and try to add to it and update it regularly. People can tell if a website is "stale".

Kevin, you made a comment on another thread recently that I found interesting, about how you thought there was going to be some consolidation in the listings sites. The perspective from here is the opposite. I forsee fragmentation as property owners and holidaymakers alike seek out small boutique listing sites that specialize in themed and/or high end self catering accomodations, e.g. responsible-travel, Your Holiday Matters, Alistair Sawday etc.

This industry is worth something like $2billion a year, yet it is not regulated and there are some pretty obnoxious owners out there with coal holes to rent who do the rest of us a disservice. Both we and our guests are looking for ways to distance ourselves from the bottom of the market and boutique listing sites like YHM with its Charter of Quality is one way of doing it. That's exactly the same way classified ads evolved, so it's the natural progression of things: but as we all know, the net is not yet fully evolved. At the end of the day, I sense we will both be proved right regarding the evolution of the listing sites, but I still don't see any future for classified ads, at least not in their present form. Do you?

Joanna

[la vache!]

I had a great response for a one off newspaper ad at the end of May for a late cancellation, but it was for a week in the school holidays, so no surprise there. Someone who has a gite business similar to mine in this area claims he gets all his bookings from The Lady and Chez Nous (brochure and bad website) and he has a very good rate of bookings, so it must work for some people. I tried a few weeks in the Lady this year but got nothing, so I'm sticking to Internet rental sites from now on. One of my French websites actually has a cap on the number of properties which can advertise per department, I don't know if this is coincidence, but I get far more hits on my site from them than any other rental listing site. I like this approach.

[enid]

Joanna - thank you - that's a reassuring post from an experienced renter.

[

[Giddy Goat]

Someone who has a gite business similar to mine in this area claims he gets all his bookings from The Lady and Chez Nous (brochure and bad website) and he has a very good rate of bookings, so it must work for some people.

Susan, to get the required number of bookings, your neighbour would without doubt be spending a lot more on advertising than he needs, I think.

[kevincohr]

Kevin,
Our advertising is 100% internet based because it works. Our print advertising is 0% because it doesn't work. We do not run classified ads of any kind. Craigs List does not work for us. The Lady doesn't work for us. We learned the hard way like most people .........

At the end of the day, I sense we will both be proved right regarding the evolution of the listing sites, but I still don't see any future for classified ads, at least not in their present form. Do you?

Joanna

Joanna,

Thanks for a thoughtful and interesting post.

When I initiated this thread, I was primarily considering online classified, as I agree that print is in serious decline for all the reasons you indicated.

I was also sceptical about online classifieds, but had heard good things about Craigslist and wanted to see if there were other classified options that work.

The feedback I have received is that Craigslist does indeed work for many people (a fact that surprises me, but Craigslist does get lots of traffic from renters) and I've heard some good things about USFreeAds, but other than that, classifieds are not very effective.

Regarding the industry consolidation, my main point is that there are currently too many "me too" sites, all going after the same market for both owners and renters. For the smaller sites, the way forward is to find a way of differentiating themselves from the competition, and hence I agree sites like YHM etc have a good chance of carving out a distinctive niche.

If you are interested, you can read the full text of the article I wrote on this topic here :
http://www.compareownerholidayrentals.c ... siness.htm

Regards,

Kevin

[marcus]

It pains me to relate this story because I have always been very critical about press advertising, and enthusiastic about internet marketing (not a big surprise) but...

Someone I know bought a flat in SW France in the spring, placed one ad in Lady magazine, and got booked up for the summer, and much of late spring and autumn, from that one advert (no, it wasn't underpriced). Even more amazing, she turned down people if they couldn't speak French, on the grounds that the other apartments in the block were owned by French people, so they wouldn't fit in if they couldn't speak to them.

So I wonder sometimes, is there a large group of 'non-internet' holiday makers who we are all abandoning in our rush towards internet advertising? I'm not going to throw money away trying to find out, but others experiences would be interesting to hear.

[Mountain Goat]

There's one type of classified ad which might work for some of us: airline in-house newspapers.

The downside about airline staff, in general, is that they wouldn't dream of staying anywhere without a reasonable 'travel-trade' discount. Certainly they are used to meaty discounts with hotels, car-hire chains, airlines etc.

Upside is (a) they can travel at short notice, no nonsense about having to book, as 95% of their holiday travel is on standby tickets. This means they are not put off by the very high cost peak airfares which can appear at, say, half-term during the ski season to Geneva. It's £50 return, ish, as opposed to £500-600 on EasyJet or BA; (b) they look after the place (sweeping generalisation, and prob. wise to avoid single-sex groups).

What I'm getting at is that if you've got last-minute availability which you're willing to discount, but not keen to put on a public rental site (and your non-airline guests could get a bit shirty looking at heavy discounts) you could stick them in, say, BA News (weekly circ.25k ?) and offer special rates. There's also Touchdown for retired staff.

Just a thought. My experience is BA, but I assume British Midland, Easy, Virgin etc. all have similar inhouse rags.

BALPA's (British Airline Pilots' Association) monthly mag. The Log is another good one, and gets to a niche group with all airlines.

All three have the same ad agency, LPC, @lpc.co.uk or email direct to admin@lpc.co.uk who are a trifle spaced-out with providing invoices etc.

Goat

[Giddy Goat]

Someone I know bought a flat in SW France in the spring, placed one ad in Lady magazine, and got booked up for the summer, and much of late spring and autumn, from that one advert (no, it wasn't underpriced).

I'm very surprised - Marcus,do you know what sort of ad she took out - semi-display or a lineage ad? I think semi-display ads tend to be more at the top of the page too but I could be wrong, and it's possible that because she was advertising a bit later than most of us, and only the once, that she was prepared to take a chance and spend more, which would obviously make a difference. And perhaps there was something unique about the property? The story is so exceptional, there has to be a logical explanation!

[Hells Bells]

Goat, I'l look into that as my bruv-in-law works for BA so may be able to sort something out.