Lay My Hat

Bookings for LMH´s in mainland europe?

I wanted to ask, in general, how are your 2017 booking looking at this stage compared with previous years.

Especially those in Europe that would normally look to the UK for their guests?

So, "Up, down, could be better? "??

cleanforum wrote:Especially those in Europe that would normally look to the UK for their guests?

Our letting business here in Greece is almost entirely reliant on guests coming from the UK. That's not by design; it's just how it is. The calendar for 2017 is no worse than last year, but it has been hard work finding ways to fill it. The main and most significant reason for this is the poor (well actually zero) performance of our listing on OD. This once-great site, which supplied nearly all of our bookings, is now useless.

Poor, verging on catastrophic here .... not sure what to do, but research shows me that it is the same for everyone in my area.

Will they come? Here I have probably 98% UK or Ireland.
Perhaps they will come later ... Perhaps I'll get French instead as they normally enquire last minute when I'm normally full.

I am going to echo CarolineH's comments as I am based in Normandy. Last year the total number of UK based people who stayed here was 5: 1 couple, another couple and her father. I have had no bookings from the UK for 2017.

Much like AndrewH, we have predominantly UK visitors. 'Just about enough' would best describe our bookings for this year. We've room for a few more in early season but nobody's been knocking on the door for the (historically popular) dates we have
Odd, but not altogether unsurprising considering the control freaks manipulation of the market. Throw in how much & how quickly we've had to alter our ad strategy & I'd tentatively mark it as OK. With the EU status quo at present, I'll take that.

Our inquires and bookings are way down. We are in Nice so I suppose it is to be expected. As Trump himself might say , we have zero interest from the USA this year.

Our smaller (cheaper) property is full for the high season much as last year but the larger ( more expensive) has many high season weeks still vacant and our OD enquiries and page views are well down on the previous years. We are not on commission so presumably are driven down the page rankings.
Unfortunately the newer start up sites have not driven any traffic to our websites for either of the properties.
Lets hope it improves.

I am in the "Just about enough" category myself. However I have seen a major drop-off from our usual rush of UK Visitors but have seen more European visitors, which I am delighted about. It seems that a lot of our UK colleagues are booming, so I suppose it could be the brexit effect and the so called "staycations".

After 25 years of renting, I have seen a few ups and downs but this year feels a little different

We're normally full for summer by now (just north of Paris) but currently we have August and September 2/3 full and nothing in June/July! Holiday Lettings now send no enquiries so we switched to HA and get most of our enquiries through them, albeit French ones via Abritel. UK enquiries have fallen off a cliff....

We are about right compared to last year; 10 wks...though have just had a week cancelled so back down to 9.
All the bookings I have came in during July, August and September.
2 are repeat guests.
All bar two came direct via our website, which I find odd as it never comes up well on Google for me.
One came from a new 'child' oriented site. This site has had 10 enquiries for our place but only converted one...my conversion rate is 80%+ so that's a concern.
OD used to book out our place on its own....now only 1 booking came via them and the page views have dropped off a cliff.

I dreaded this year...so I'm very pleased on bookings so far. Though last year I was at a similar bookings stage but found it very hard work to sell the remaining weeks. People booked a lot later too. There was no 'rush'.
We ended up having our best year financially (god knows how I managed that) but I am concerned again for this year.

Mouse
x
p.s. Ibiza is supposed to have had its best ever year in 2016....and on track for better this year. Can't say I've seen that reflected in the enquiries.

I'm in the 'good enough' category - but only because of an exceptionally high percentage of repeats, some of whom have booked our new cottage. New bookings are definitely down. Getting very few enquiries - all those I've had have converted, fortunately.

I'm taking a reduced number of bookings this year because I'm so busy with other stuff, so have just a couple of weeks left I want to fill. But if that weren't the case the calendar would have gaps it hasn't had at this time of year before. Many places near me don't have a single booking so I suppose I should be pleased, but it's worrying for the future - repeats are great, but you need new blood as well to create the repeats of the future!

We have now filled our summer season (total 18 weeks from 4 June to 8 October) for our naturist beach apartment which has never been filled this early in the season plus we have an increase in bookings from the UK. The rest are German, Danish, Swiss and French. We rarely get bookings in April and May as the sea is too cold but it is still possible. Can't complain.

Its been a really good year to date & hopefully it will continue! We dropped OD last year and were really worried about bookings for 2017 so i spent a lot of time find niche sites to advertise on and it seems to have paid off.

We are almost full for summer, which is unheard of at this time of year. Normally I have maybe 3 summer weeks booked by now. Summer generally does fill, but not until late May.

I have absolutely no idea why. Not much has changed. I did switch (reluctantly) back to commission from subscription on HA, which had caused it to much improve! :/ But a lot of these bookings have been direct. This winter has been excellent too. I'm happy of course but I suspect a lot is just luck.

Fully booked pretty much. 2015; 22 bookings 201 nights, 2016: 27 bookings 229 nights, 2017 to date 21 bookings, 200 nights.