Elite Cottages

[Annew]

Elite Cottages have been pursuing me this week - does anyone have anything good or bad to say about them?

Their initial offer is cheap, but so many are these days!

[cysgod y coed]

Not heard of them.
If they are pursuing you for your commission I would not take that as a good sign.

[greenbarn]

I get reasonable traffic to my website and a few enquiries from them. I think they concentrate on coming up on searches that include terms such as "Luxury". Straightforward subscription site.

How cheap is their initial offer Annew?

[Cymraes]

I've just listed with them - they don't have much in my area and are claiming 60K unique monthly visitors to the site so watch this space.

[greenbarn]

Just checked my stats for the 12 month period from May last year. Three bookings over our three units, including September 2015, New Year 2015/2016 and one arriving next week. A further three dead enquiries. I haven't looked at webclicks.

By my wet finger yardstick that currently makes them worthwhile. (My rough and ready yardstick is a listing needs to generate booking revenue that's 10 times the listing cost. Other factors may influence my decisions!)

PS - I'm basing my results on paying full whack as I've not recently joined at a special rate.

[Orsonthecat]

My rough and ready yardstick is a listing needs to generate booking revenue that's 10 times the listing cost. Other factors may influence my decision!.

That's interesting to know. My multiplication factor is currently much lower than 10 (unfortunately!) but we've not been running quite two years so maybe need to factor that in as an extra factor!

[Cymraes]

At the moment if it makes a profit then I'm happy! One booking will give me that ( I paid £95+VAT for those who are curious but too polite to ask!)

I'm trying a bit of a scatter gun approach at the moment to see what works and will drop the ones that don't next year. At the moment though it's had to tell as I don't have any holidays to sell until October

[greenbarn]

At the moment if it makes a profit then I'm happy! One booking will give me that ( I paid £95+VAT for those who are curious but too polite to ask!)

I'm trying a bit of a scatter gun approach at the moment to see what works and will drop the ones that don't next year.

That makes a lot of sense - you can't assess the ROI at the outset when you have very little idea what the return will be, and you don't find out if a site works for you without trying it out. Catch-22 then - or basically a gamble where the worst outcome is losing your stake money. Be interesting to know if it works for you.

Their owner interface is pretty dire from a user-friendly standpoint (you log in to the Wordpress site) but they seem to turn up well in searches for their target; I could see them as the type of site that might pick up some of the guests looking for what they used to get from OD before they became a sheep market.
Fingers crossed for them.

[bessie]

Well I listed with them,unsure if I met the standard as some of the cottages on there are wonderful.and I certainly am not 4 star or above as not modern enough but hey I decided to be different.
But last night my first booking no messing ,Canada again.
I do like it email can we book,payment made .
Maybe my vintage look is in.

[Nemo]

I'm just looking into this as they are bombarding me with emails which until now I've ignored.

They have little tabs across the pictures, such as pet friendly, rural retreat - do you choose those or do they?

Red banners also appear - saying availability this month or late availability. How does this work as there is no calendar on the site only the ability to link to one? Do the late availability offers cost extra to list?

[greenbarn]

Do the late availability offers cost extra to list?

I can answer that one - no, they're free.
I'd have to dig for the other answers!

[Annew]

I'm just bumping this as I'm being pursued again by Elite Cottages and now seriously considering taking up their offer.

I know a couple of you have ads with them - now it's a couple of months on have you found them useful?

(My reason for asking is that I'm searching for possible alternatives to HA/OD - Group Accommodation are doing well for me but IC not so well these days.)

[Cymraes]

I've had a couple of click throughs but no bookings. Independent Cottages is definitely performing better for me.

The acid test will be if I get any summer bookings via them for next year. If I don't then I won't renew.

[Joanna]

I get regular emails from them too. I've avoided them because I doubt that we fall into the 'elite' category. We make a point of avoiding words like 'luxury' because we probably won't live up to guest expectations (or at least what my expectations of luxury are). Elite is a similar sort of word. However, they keep chasing us so maybe they think that we are 'elite' enough for them?

[Joanna]

Just bumping this up - we're still trying to break free from the big OTA's and I've had another email from Elite. Anyone had any success with them?