Lay My Hat

Hello everyone.

I advertise on OD and Homelidays.com for my villa in Greece. The Owners Direct listing ends on Tuesday. I upgraded it to Gold level for all of January which produced just 2 enquiries and no bookings. I have a Classic listing on Homelidays and in the last month have had 3 enquiries and 1 booking.

The question is..... what to do now? Funds are EXTREMELY limited at the moment so I need to choose what to do wisely. Do I re-list with OD at the Classic level? ( No funds available for a Gold listing). Do I pay for a Featured Listing? Not sure if this option works for anyone?

I really am stuck for the best way to try to generate some bookings.

I do not offer the opportunity to pay on-line on either listing - maybe this would help to get some more enquiries?

Any opinions about the benefit for Gold listings, Featured Listings, etc would be really appreciated.

What I would do:

1. Improve your photos. Some are fine but the leading one, for example, is blurry and the 3rd one of the bedroom looks like someone just got out of bed.

2. Don't waste money on Gold listings. Others may disagree but I don't think paying extra will get you more attention.

3. List on lots of commission sites and get extra advertising for free. You can always bump up your prices a little to cover costs but it's surprising how many people don't seem to care.

4. Make yourself a website, a Facebook page, a Youtube account, Twitter account (can't figure that one out myself though) and a Google maps entry. Spread yourself around the internet.

5. Get some reviews

6. Check you are competitive in what you offer and your prices

7. Continuously keep thinking of ways to improve

8. Read LMH for hours on end to gain ideas

and welcome

Welcome to the forum.

Where do most of your customers come from?

Why not look at using HA with an OD upgrade if you are going to re-new. Basic level is probably good enough. You should never need to go above Bronze to achieve what you want. You do get coverage on all 17 of the other HA sites plus HA.com & VRBO.

I am not familiar with Homelidays.

Why not include a couple of Pay-As-You-Go commission model listings; such as HL & AB.. Won't cost you anything to set-up and start advertising. HL has a good UK & European following, AB is pretty much worldwide.

I think the blurry photo is more as a result of the recent changes to ODs photo uploads rather than it being poor quality to start with.

Agree with all above comments...

I believe you need a web site.I recommend using Promote My Place who provide a template which is easy to use & good technical support.

I followed BookingsPlus4g's excellent Social Media courses Posting on Google+ helps the position of my web site. Copies of my posts go automatically to Facebook and Twitter.

I am also on many listing sites including commission based ones which don't involve an annual payment.

I recommend preparing a carefully worded response to any enquiry selling the advantages of your property including quotes from guests - once you have them

1. Thank you kevsboredagain!!! I really appreciate your frank reply. Agree TOTALLY about photo quality. Unfortunately all these photos were taken a couple of years ago and.....due to our computer ( with all original photos) being robbed in a burglary, inability to get to the villa, and many other excuses we cannot upgrade the photos. The pool is empty and being worked on as we speak so I cannot send someone there to re-shoot. All very frustrating!!

2. Good to hear that it is not essential to have a Gold level or above.

3. Commission sites are things like AB?

4. If I take out a HomeAway.co.uk listing do I automatically get a listing on OD? Am very confused about the HomeAway "family"!!!!

I agree with every one of Kev's suggestions.

In particular, in the next five minutes I would do the following:

1) Change the lead photo to the one of the balcony with red wine & view. (This creates a whole new ambience and makes you stand out from all the other million villa-with-pool lead photos. You're going to mention the pool anyway in your title - see below)

2) Change your title to something different (everyone says "luxury"). The aim is to get people to at least click on your listing.

What are your USP's? the views? the self-contained studio which makes it perfect for grandparents/in-laws/teens? How about something like:"Perfect family villa, private pool, aircon, wifi, 3 bedrooms & private studio room".


Don't pay OD for anything above Classic. Total waste of money.
Get rid of the photo that looks like someone just got out of bed. You must have some better photos somewhere on your computer!!! The bedrooms don't look particularly luxury.

The courtyard one is lovely except for the dead-looking pot plants. Can you crop that one? The living room looks very inviting.

If you're in a village does this mean you don't need a car? Or, once there, some members of the family can go out to shop, eat, drink, explore, without everyone having to go? If so, sell that aspect, as it makes it even better for a multi generational family.

Just my knee-jerk thoughts - feel free to ignore if not helpful.


p.s. welcome to LMH

Bluebell have a look at the listing sites document I did for new members; it may help you with ideas on which listing sites to use.

Follow this link.

tavi and essar.........can't thank you enough!!

I know that the photos are very bad. Will definitely take your advice Tavi on changing the lead photo. Will send someone there this week to "re-stage" the bedrooms at least.

Any thoughts anyone on offering the on-line booking feature?

Welcome to LMH, bluebell!

I agree absolutely with what tavi says. The things that are letting you down on OD are:

1. Your photos. You absolutely need to find a way of improving them otherwise you just aren't going to get bookings. You also need to use your full allowance of 24 images.

2. Your villa looks lovely ... but being honest, I'm not sure I'd categorise it as luxury, so you may be in danger of over-selling. Personally it's a word I never use as I think it's meaningless - or rather it means different things to different people.

3. What is it that sets your villa apart from others? What makes you different and not 'just another interchangeable villa'? What can you do/offer that others around you can't? Think all that through then tell people the answer.I notice that most of the OD competitors in your area have got sea views, so if you don't have those you need to come up with something pretty good as an antidote! But first you have to get them to click on your listing, so it's back to those photos ... !

Home away/vrbo has a pay-per-booking option now as well and may include homelidays (?) I know my paid HA includes all of them.

Essar's listing site document is really useful. All the changes with HL, HA, OD etc do make it confusing but hopefully that document will help. Consider commission only as well. There may be some country specific sites you could try. Google for a holiday in your area using different keywords and see which sites appear in the search results. Good luck!

and...

9. Sort out a data backup strategy. There is no way running a business you can rely on having things only on one PC. Hard drives do fail, very often actually. Make sure you are never in a position to lose data again, should you lose a computer or have a hardware failure.

What a good point, kev. I've had a hard drive failure and it was soooo traumatic, even though I had backup. Now I back up the back up AND back up my photos in the cloud as well!

In our case the robbers to the backup hard drive well!!!