Lay My Hat

Hi all,

I'm Jason and I am new to LMH (so I hope I'm posting in the correct section). I was just wondering roughly how many emails and phone calls you all receive on average per week from holiday rental website companies, trying to entice you into listing your holiday rentals with them? Also, having been bombarded with advertising requests, what makes you decide whether or not to go ahead?

Regards

Jason

It can come in fits and starts but I would say at least one a week. They will tell you all kinds of sales talk (only need to get 1 booking to make cost worthwhile, but reverse this and it would mean you have to pay for a listing site for every booking - rubbish).
So many people think up the name of a site and think they can sit back and get rich.
What sites would you use if you were looking for your property or any other holiday accommodation? Is the website user friendly for you? What sites do local properties list on?
Good luck

Hello and welcome to LMH! We tend to get a flurry of advertising calls whenever we subscribe or renew a subscription to a rental listing site. We don't go with any of them, on the basis of, if they need to phone us up for custom, they can't be very popular/effective. We either say we're full already (even if we're not), so don't need any more advertising, or that we've used up our advertising budget for the year.

There are a lot of people out there trying to get a cut of our profits, and when you're desperate to fill weeks, going with a cold caller's ad site can seem tempting. Have you done a web search of similar holiday rentals in your area to see who they advertise with? It's not foolproof, but more likely to show you which listing sites could work for you than a cold caller.

Hello Jason and welcome.
Most (all?) of the cold caller/spammy email sites are best avoided; if they’re any good and offering what fits for your market, you’ll find them without them paying people to annoy you.
Some sound quite plausible - “We have direct links with NHS staff”, “We have people specifically searching for a property in your area”, “We can fill your unbooked weeks”, “We represent airline staff" and so ad nauseam.
Don’t fall for them, they’ll take your money and you get nothing in return.
It’s always worth putting up a query in the Listing Sites section, or doing a search on the site’s name.

Totally agree! Don't let cold callers sway you at all. By all means make a note of the name of their website and then research it but 99 times out of 100, it will be a waste of effort.

There is a sticky on finding the best listing sites:
http://www.laymyhat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=257

and the logic is totally sound but the links are outdated, so you can't follow the procedure to the letter. But do take note of the importance of relevant keywords that real guests would use when they are searching for accommodation like yours. Do some playing with those keywords and see which sites come up in Google.

Oh, and good luck! And welcome!

Welcome Jason

I find telephone calls that try to get me to pay for a listing really annoying! I can go weeks without anyone contacting me then get several together.

Frequently they sound very unprofessional and I wouldn't begin to consider handing over any money to them.

I have tried using keywords to see what sites they bring up and also have checked who other properties are listing with ..

Currently I pay a subscription to list on 4 sites, am on 3 sites on a commission basis and 2 sites with no charge.

Just over 50% of people contact me directly - but I am not always sure how they found me. Home Away / Owners Direct are easily my most productive listing site. No one else generates anywhere near the same results unfortunately but this could be changing.

Anyway good luck!

To the point then....ignore callers...been that way and its no good.
We are leaving HA next month, due to the excess charges. This year we've ads with only HA and SH, 5 bookings with HA and 9 with SH this year. We reckon not being on HA means we will get more on SH ( more availability ) and intend to close the gap with new sites, which we are currently researching. The Holiday Let looks like a well laid out site and we may give them a try, together with Rustic Blue, but not finished looking yet. Our place is in Spain.
Welcome and good luck Jason.

Welcome Jason.
To concur with the the thoughts above & my own experience. I have never nor would ever buy or sign up to anything via cold calling. For me, they seem to come in spurts (contracted out on miniscule commissions?) but invariably smack of desperation &/or scamming. They almost always promise the earth but in all likelihood deliver sweet FA.