Need advice re more bookings!!!!!

[KathyG]

Hello All,

This is our first year and we were a bit late getting sorted with advertising but finally got a listing with HR early July, from that we've had 4 weeks of peak bookings - thank goodness for the people who leave it to the last minute!! Since then, a couple of enquiries for Easter and June next year that are still making their minds up but I wonder whether our prices are too high and we're destined to be a last resort when nothing else is available.
I'm also on with Homelidays and have had a few strange enquiries, none of which have led to a booking.

Having looked at some of your own sites and checked where they're listed, quite a few of you are listed on just about every listing site going! This must be costing a small fortune, well a large fortune actually! Is this what I should be doing? Would you mind letting me know specifically how much you spend per year on internet advertising? Or as a percentage of bookings? Then I'll have a rough idea of what I should be spending, is there anything else I should be doing?

Thank you,

Kathy

[Marion]

Kathy,
I have two apartments in Nice and spend about £500 on advertising. I use holiday rentals which has consistently out-performed the other sites, holiday lettings, owners direct and vacation rentals. Today I have just advertised on Homelidays to try to encourage more European guests. This is about 2-3% of the rental.

Your place looks lovely, although I could not see the rates.

Other people on the forum with villas can probably give you better advice.

PS you have a rogue bit of HTML on your availability page.

Marion

[Hells Bells]

Hi Kathy, perhaps you need to add the rental rates to the site, as I can't see them either?

[Fraise]

OK, I went to look as well and altho it said availability and prices, there were no prices
I use Perfect Places, Holiday Lets and Holiday Havens, and Your Holiday Matters. I used Visit France last year but didn't renew this year as altho last year I got a couple of bookings from them the enquiries then started to dry up, they also changed their T and C's and wanted paying for updating piccies which didn't please me. I haven't been able to log into Holiday Havens site for weeks to update - I have sent them e-mails but got no reply which is puzzling as they have always been really good at responding in the past. I have signed up for Homelidays free trial but not a dickie bird. I have only spent a couple of hundred on advertising this year but am perfectly willing to pay more for results ! I'm not sure where I will advertise next.

[la vache!]

Hi Kathy,
I've found your rates on the H-R site, but they don't show on your site at the moment. I think the high season rates you will get, but your out of peak season rates are higher than my 6 bed farmhouse which has a heated pool (generally you can charge at least a third more if you have a pool). You may have to think about lowering these to get more out of peak bookings, as there is so much competition for this more limited off peak market.
I think you offer high quality accommodation BUT it is very difficult to rent out large properties outside of the school holidays. You may also want to think about the number of people your property sleeps as outside of the summer holidays it is very hard to let a property that sleeps 12 as I know only too well! This is a breakdown given to me by one very well know listing site on searches done for gites in France on the number of people a property sleeps:-
4-6 guests: 40%
1-3 guests: 34%
7-8 guests: 11%
9-10 guests: 6%
11-12 guests: 4%
13-18 guests: 3%
19-25 guests: 1%
25+ guests: 1%

I advertise on loads of sites as you have probably discovered, but as I don't have one listing site that delivers, I have to spread the advertising over a variety of sites in order to be found. My own site brings in most bookings direct from google, but I wouldn't give up the listing sites, well, not all of them! I spend around 6 - 7% of turnover on advertising, all of it internet based. I think most businesses spend at least this on advertising, if you don't do the marketing, you don't get the business!
Hope this is of some help

[Fraise]

Susan, that breakdown is really interesting. Does that mean that smaller parties don't look at bigger places? Mine sleeps 7 and I advertise it as such but looking at your breakdown should I only advertise it for 6 ? Am I missing out? How long is a piece of string? Doh

www.thepetitmanoir.com

[KathyG]

Wow! Thanks everyone, lots to chew over there!

I know about the disappearing rates on my own site, they were there till I pasted HR's availability calendar onto the same page, doing it in Dreamweaver and as a complete novice I haven't a clue what I've done wrong! Is that the bit of rogue HTML you mean Marion?

Interesting Susan, that most of your bookings come from your own site - I'm sure mine can't be found by anyone yet as I haven't done anything about meta tags or whatever it is I need to do to get it found! I was just relying for the moment on listing sites - not such a good idea obviously!
Very interesting stats too re searches on how many people a gite sleeps, bit worrying really, maybe I should just advertise it as only sleeping 6! Strangely enough, all the families that have booked for this summer are families of only 4 anyway saying that they're not cramped at home and don't see why they should be on holiday - isn't that strange? They're paying a huge amount of money for just 4 people.

Hopefully heated pool will be in by next summer, incidentally what sort of temperature is it expected that it should be at?

Fraise I'll have to go and have a look at the sites you've used, but already spending over £200 with HR, free trial with Homelidays thank goodness as that's been useless and I'm also putting an ad in a quarterly mag called Exclusive Holidays which also links to their website villarenters, it comes out in October but I already have a bad feeling about this one, got conned on the phone I think! As that's another £200 + VAT I'm loathe to spend that again on Holiday Lettings/Havens etc although it serves me right, I should have done my homework first shouldn't I!

You all now know 100% more than my husband does about 'our' advertising! Thanks for letting me babble on........

Kathy

[Mountain Goat]

kathyg

Are you really sure about Exclusive Holidays? I remember dealing with them - and the more I said no, the lower the price came down; eventually to around £100, but we ignored them. They had another couple of goes.

Their magazine with 'exclusive' listings was about the size of a telephone directory with hundreds of entries, in a horrible downmarket format, rather similar to Exchange and Mart, and their website had a negligible Google listing.

Goat

[KathyG]

Hello Goat,

Yup that's the one! Too late now, all paid for! I must say the magazine doesn't look that bad and apparently it'll be available in all large supermarkets.........I've never seen it before though so why I gave in I really don't know! Just thought it might be useful for people who don't use the Internet.........?

Learning all the time here..........
Kathy

[roxytoo]

From last Sept I have paid £440 on advertising. Have had a love/hate relationship with HR but decided to give them another go this year as they were offering money back if not happy, (was with them a few years ago but never got a booking) this time have had 5 bookings with them so will probably renew! I also have paid to go on Kyero.com as have other properties to rent and although have literally had loads of enquiries only one little booking, ratio to conversion not good from them! Never sure if thats my fault or the quality of the enquiries! Spain-holiday.com always does quite well for our own place, click-4 -holiday homes had done nothing this year so will not renew with them

I believe you have to pay to advertise to be sucessful, the trick is finding the ones that suit your property!

[Marg]

Kathyg
This is our first year renting in the Algarve and we are listed on Owners Direct only - 6 months + 3 months free to start with so we haven't spent a great deal. We do have our own website but I don't think we have had any rentals from that but it helps to have the extra info for people to access when looking at Owners Direct. We thought HR expensive for someone starting out.
We registered last December and have been fully booked from about mid May to end Sept which we are really pleased about as a starter. Most people seemed to book Jan/Feb/Mar for the summer. We are quite happy with the amount of bookings and are not desperate to be completely fully booked - after all, when would we then be able to go out!

[la vache!]

Here is an old thread on Exclusive magazine
viewtopic.php?t=995

[Mouse]

I think as others have said - it probably depends on where you are located.

For us I was going to go with HR and Owners Direct for the 1st year (although I found HR very expensive). I went with OD first and didn't need to go with HR at all as we had so many enquiries. It cost us £65 for 9 mths
I decided to renew with OD and register with HR for the post xmas rush.......but we had the summer season booked by the end of October.

I liked OD because there wasn't too much competition in our category and the price is very reasonable. With HR there are quite a lot more 4bed villas in the San Jose area

Mouse
x

[KathyG]

Here is an old thread on Exclusive magazine
viewtopic.php?t=995

Thanks Susan, really didn't need to see that though, feel bad enough already!! My challenge for the next 12 months is obviously going to be to get a booking from them somehow...........!

Thank you everyone else too, it's just a minefield out there and very obviously what works for one, won't necessarily work for someone else so I think I'll have to do some serious studying to make this house financially independent.

Kathy

[garlic]

I asked for advice on rental sites here recently when I suddenly needed to get bookings this year having not advertised at all until beginning of July. I took up every free trial I could and got a 10 day booking through Homelidays within a week of signing up with them and seem to be getting loads of views there. The tenants have turned out to be absolute dream tenants so I've been lucky. I also got another booking which has come direct from my website (which is not a very good website!) I didn't think I was in anyway visible but they found me and I've also got a trek booked through my website...so people do find even obscure non marketed websites which is quite interesting. Now if I can just get next week booked I'll break even!