FelicityA wrote:and no agencies, whether big or small.
[I see some other comments posted while I was writing this, so there seems to be interest in the topic]
The way I see it, lots of owners use specialist agencies. There are hundreds if not thousands of these agencies worldwide. Maybe some aren't agencies at all, but just some kind of cooperation. Some of them may be free. They may be exclusive or non-exclusive. Let's say 'dog friendly cottages in the Cotswolds'. Or 'city apartments in Edinburgh'. Or 'luxury exotic holidays tailor made for the healthy and wealthy in far away places'. Or 'ski chalets in the Rockies'.
Now, rather than to get those owners to advertise one by one, it is much better to have an agreement with that site so that, with permission, the adverts can then appear on ownerholidays, and the owners don't have to put in much effort.
Likewise all the individual owners using a management system.
I myself use an agency, Natural Retreats, as well as advertising on TA and HA. My agreement with NR is non-exclusive, they just get a commission. They have around 1000 properties worldwide. i also have my own web site, of course, and I use SuperControl.
Do I refuse these? What is the downside to accepting them? Am I not just another channel? How could I, in practice, refuse them, they could load properties one by one anyway.
Put it another way - anybody advertising on ownerholidays is almost certainly also advertising elsewhere. Non-exclusivity works both ways.
But, the critical thing is I make a level playing field, each property via an agency has to pay similar amounts as individual owners. So if an individual owner pays £50 p.a. per property, then an agency with 1000 properties pays £50,000 p.a. to load them all. OK, maybe a small discount of 10%, but we are not talking big discounts.
We are not talking about Sykes. We are not talking about HomeToGo.
Then this revenue can be used for the advertising budget to the benefit of all.
Same with any shareholding. Maybe upper limits (1% ?) for any individual owner or agency?
I am very open to rethinking this, indeed welcome criticism and feedback, all properties loaded so far are individual owners, I have not entered into any agreements with any agencies, but neither have I shut the door on anybody. However, if we wait for individual owners to load one by one, it may be a very long time before 100,000 properties is reached, which is some kind of realistic lower limit for viability, so a way of accelerating or bootstrapping the process is needed.
Ideas? [we seem to be going way off the original topic.....]
Maybe the company board needs to meet and discuss - OK, we have just met and discussed, we are in complete disagreement and disarray
LMH seems to be a quasi board for the moment.
ps. 'bootstrapping' is a word from my day job, it means using a seed to make something grow, in a recursive manner. Viral is another word - a viral process is a bootstrapping process, it self-creates.