Anyway, here I am doing the opposite of what I had hoped to do: I would prefer not to examine the minutiae of possible solutions because any potential solution has many problems to overcome and a discussion of this kind brings out the it-can't-be-done brigade in considerable force. What is needed is a small band of people, prepared to do a bit of work and constructive discussion to look into the possibilities in a methodical way.
You sound like the BBC News - if the poster's opinion is not the same as yours then they must belong to some sort of subsect who cannot possibly understand the questions being asked.
Just because I and many others who have considerable experience in both holiday rentals and IT join the discussion - we are therefore not being constructive because we can't see what you propose ever getting off the ground. Perhaps we could be right.
If you want a like minded set of posters to get together and determine how you can take this forward can I kindly suggest you set up a fb speciality group.
"Write something, even if it's just a suicide note"
"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise"
"As for my amnesia, I've had it as long as I can remember"
Real name: Steve
Gender: Male
Google isn’t interested in making leads cheaper. They’d much rather let the big sites strengthen their monopoly and use that power to push up their rates to so they have yet more budget for adwords, which they fight for amongst themselves. Mere mortals with just one or a few properties can’t make that game pay. As long as this state of affairs lasts (e.g. until their electric cars are roadworthy or whatever) they’re not your friend. And by then, web search will be dead and gone and we’ll be on to something different.
Microdata seems on the face of it a nice idea, but it would be spammed to hell with false markup directing folks to something other than what it says on the tin - either phishing or pharms. Google may not be nice, but they’re smart at outwitting spam, which is where the other search engines failed.
The big sites just want 10 to 20 percent of revenue without the hassle and expense of owning an equivalent stake in the properties, or involvement with the nitty gritty such as paying the bills, meeting guests (and still smiling when they’re late), cleaning up, etc. The kind of hand-holding (both of owners and guests) and micro management that agencies like Charles’ offer smoothes the path, but the big firms want to water-cannon this out of the way with their unbending systems. Look at the language Airbnb use - you will be ‘penalised’ for this, that and the other. There’s no gentle reminder to try and avoid slipping up next time; just an inference that they’ll respect you less (yes, even less than already, if that’s possible!) - rank you lower, reduce your rating, give you fewer leads, maybe even throw you out - if you commit some abstract ‘crime’, the nature of which isn’t all that apparent.
Reinventing the wheel is pretty pointless. There are various issues for smaller directories which render them weak now, and heading the way of the dodo anytime soon. Issues include:
- Duplicate content (people can’t be bothered to write an original description, but subscription rates are too low to cover copywriting)
- Poor quality photos (that’s why the big sites do their own for saleable properties, and this locks in owners even more)
- Limited calendar data (because some owners seem to think that no calendar means they’ll get more leads which they can then ‘flip’ - it doesn’t work)
- Static content (ads are abandoned once published - content doesn’t change from that point on. Google ignores them as it thinks they are ‘dead’)
- Negligible word-of-mouth recommendation (if an ad works, owners don’t recommend the site to others as that might undermine their success there)
As I typed this my phone chimed with the Airbnb ‘ting’. A Christmas booking, very welcome. They’re charging about as much for that one booking as I’d pay for a directory ad which would last a year and potentially (if I chose the right place, which is a tricky one) get me so much more. That’s how it goes.
"Write something, even if it's just a suicide note"
"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise"
"As for my amnesia, I've had it as long as I can remember"
Real name: Steve
Gender: Male
To be fair, most agencies slip up from time to time when it comes to respect for suppliers... that's you.
It is an odd business where a supplier is also a customer. I have always insisted that booking agents do not 'pay' owners but owners pay booking agents. What we do is a 'rental balance transfer'. Although seemingly semantic, this is a matter of respect.
We lost one owner when they did a bespoke Facebook campaign for the let in Hereford which would not have been cheap. We cannot do that sort of thing. Fortunately this was the only time we have lost out to them.
Their plan is to eliminate competition by advertising them into extinction and then to milk owners at leisure. This is deeply nasty and straight from the Sun Tzu school of 'business is a war' taught as if fundamental by most business colleges.
Once you have defeated the competition you can then exploit people at will.
Yes, it’s a strangely adversarial business, often with little trust from advertisers which stunts the possibilities for working more co-operatively. I think part of the problem is that advertisers think we have just the same approach as the big sites — that we have ambitions to own their customers, and if we get too big for our boots we’ll be wanting to charge them commission. That’s certainly not true in our case: we’d love to keep things just how they are. If we had a bigger number of advertisers, we could in fact do it for a lower subscription and still have a sustainable business; or charge the same but do a better job of it in various ways. Anyway, it ain’t going to happen.
If Airbnb’s investors carry on subsidising their stratospheric PPC bids and well-oiled PR machine until 2020, the competition hasn’t got much chance. Add in the other big players Holidaylettings and Booking dot com, and it’s just a replay of the corner shops versus the supermarkets. It’s the guests who'll foot the bill at the end of the day, and to cover this lot of investment, the bill’s going to be a hefty one.
There is a little comfort in the fact that the business model is easy to replicate and search engines coupled with increasing search competence could undermine such gatekeeper ambitions.
We have managed to stay afloat because people now search, say, Leominster Cottages (often below 40 p a click with half decent conversion) where, in the past, they would just search 'Cottage'. (closer to £4 a click and upwards with vanishingly small conversion leaving only the huge agencies on ad words cutting out the little boys).
AirBnB offers scant quality of service beyond getting bookings. An agent is employed by owners. In the long run, forgetting the duty of being employed and working 'on behalf' will destroy organizations.
