Lay My Hat

COYS wrote:Yes, it supports iCal

Thanks COYS, that may actually spur me on to list with them

Well I took the plunge and signed up in Oct 2017...

I asked them to add a new location (my village) for my listing. They did.

I asked them to enable one click to my website (instead of going through a form first). They did.

Now I have just received my first booking through them.

Rather encouraging, methinks!

They phoned me a week or two back, to ask us to list our properties.

I checked whether their Adwords campaign is still running (I checked several times) but I see no sign of it. Has their money run out? If so, it's sad but inevitable.

It could be Ben, but I hope not.
Coincidentally, I got a call just yesterday asking about renewal. All very civilized & to be honest, were we not pulling out I would happily have done so. We've had a reasonable number of clickthroughs or enquiries & a couple of attributable bookings, but I can only guess that an open calendar would have yielded a better return. They seem to have made steady progress so hopefully will get enough (re)subscribers to continue doing so.

it's been a little while since this thread had an update - is anyone on the forum advertising on simplyowners and if so, what's your success been with the site? They are currently trying to increase their listings by offering 18 months for the price of 12, but at very close to £300 I am somewhat weary...

Would love to hear how things are going for the advertisers.

Thanks so much!

terrerouge wrote:it's been a little while since this thread had an update - is anyone on the forum advertising on simplyowners and if so, what's your success been with the site? They are currently trying to increase their listings by offering 18 months for the price of 12, but at very close to £300 I am somewhat weary...

Would love to hear how things are going for the advertisers.

Thanks so much!

This is our third year with Simply Owners and though last year we had a reasonable amount of bookings through them (6), this year we have only had 2 bookings so far through their site, which is disappointing.
We do not get many viewings either on their site as opposed to another site I advertise on (Independent Cottages, where we get the bulk of our bookings too).
Another factor is that in our previous 2 years all our foreign bookings were through Simply Owners. This year we have had no foreign bookings at all. I do not know whether other UK holiday home owners have experienced a drop in foreign visitors like we have had (Blame it on Brexit, which is the usual cry).
I have subscribed for another year with Simply Owners because they are a company I find helpful and up to this season have been reasonably successful in generating income for our FHL. However if bookings through them do not improve over the next 12 months we will have to cancel our subscription.

I have listed with Simply Owners for the past two years. They are a non-commission site and the annual fee is £300. I don't think that's bad, having just paid approximately £200 commission to TUI Villas for a mere 5 nights booking. Each year, S.O. has provided two bookings for me and I shall continue to list with them. Recently S.O. wrote to me stressing the need to have some guest reviews on our listing with them. Their system is that the owner must ask S.O. to send the guest a 'review request'. This way the owner can be selective.

AndrewH wrote: . Recently S.O. wrote to me stressing the need to have some guest reviews on our listing with them. Their system is that the owner must ask S.O. to send the guest a 'review request'. This way the owner can be selective.

Really? That's one site I won't ever use as a guest then. If they are manipulating the reviews like that I wouldn't want to risk booking via them.

Cymraes wrote:

AndrewH wrote: . Recently S.O. wrote to me stressing the need to have some guest reviews on our listing with them. Their system is that the owner must ask S.O. to send the guest a 'review request'. This way the owner can be selective.

Really? That's one site I won't ever use as a guest then. If they are manipulating the reviews like that I wouldn't want to risk booking via them.

...... and how does that work with data protection if you send them guests email info etc.? Fair enough if a guest volunteers to go on a site and enter their email but this sounds like its a way for them to harvest extra emails they wouldn't otherwise have.

Dotty wrote:...... and how does that work with data protection if you send them guests email info etc.? Fair enough if a guest volunteers to go on a site and enter their email but this sounds like its a way for them to harvest extra emails they wouldn't otherwise have.

No Dotty, it's the other way round. Simply Owners have all the guest's information including the guest's email address and I expect the necessary consents etc., before they introduce the guest to their owner/customer. After that, it is up to the owner to make contract with the potential guest directly using the email address given to him/her. If I remember, this is the way Owners Direct used to work some 10 years ago when it was a small independent website. Frankly, I think SO have better things to do than simply harvest emails to be used without the guest's consent. I don't think there is any data breach.

Cymraes wrote:

AndrewH wrote: . Recently S.O. wrote to me stressing the need to have some guest reviews on our listing with them. Their system is that the owner must ask S.O. to send the guest a 'review request'. This way the owner can be selective.

Really? That's one site I won't ever use as a guest then. If they are manipulating the reviews like that I wouldn't want to risk booking via them.

Each to his/her own. I don't believe that any of the holiday makers, who have rented our property via Simply Owner's website, have had the ability to write a review on their site as a top priority.

AndrewH wrote:

Dotty wrote:...... and how does that work with data protection if you send them guests email info etc.? Fair enough if a guest volunteers to go on a site and enter their email but this sounds like its a way for them to harvest extra emails they wouldn't otherwise have.

No Dotty, it's the other way round. Simply Owners have all the guest's information including the guest's email address and I expect the necessary consents etc., before they introduce the guest to their owner/customer. After that, it is up to the owner to make contract with the potential guest directly using the email address given to him/her. If I remember, this is the way Owners Direct used to work some 10 years ago when it was a small independent website. Frankly, I think SO have better things to do than simply harvest emails to be used without the guest's consent. I don't think there is any data breach.

OK, thanks Andrew. I misunderstood the initial post to mean that they wanted you to get non SO guests to leave reviews there so were asking you to give them their details.

(But harvesting emails to create mailing lists is something which is valuable to unscrupulous businesses)