Lay My Hat

I have an interesting dilemma that I would like to discuss with you all. I have a one bed in Nice and advertise on HA, Airbnb, TA and Booking.com. I also have a promotemyplace website: www.niceapartmentfrance.com

I have the website for about eight years, (initially I had an Iowners one) and initially was getting numerous inquires and bookings through it, maybe 5-10 bookings per year. Gradually my hits, inquires and bookings faded and I have not had a booking for a number of years. In the old days, I used to send a link to my website with replies to booking inquires from HA but no longer can do this. I don't use social media as much as most people and am not inclined to spend long periods of time promoting my website on Facebook etc. It only appears on Page 10 in Google searches so that explains the lack of inquires. However very few owner's websites appear high in any searches for Nice as it is such a popular location for holiday rentals, the big guys dominate the first search pages.

I have been a good boy and played by the rules set by the big rental sites and so most of my bookings are now of the "instant" type. I continue to have a high level of bookings.


So, my renewal for my website and domain name are due. Should I just let them lapse?
Declan

Hmm, tricky. Personally I wouldn't as it's nice to have your own platform to showcase your holiday let, and leaves you less vulnerable to changes with the listing sites. But I can see your dilemma - if you don't have the time or energy to promote it and it gets very little traffic there may be no point. Adding online booking may help increase bookings but it needs to be found in the first place. In your situation I may well consider dropping it.

Declan, if the costs are not too high I think I would be for keeping the website, even if only for those few 'casual' opportunities that come up - conversations/ meet-ups where the chance comes to promote your place in France and you can direct people to 'have a look', and for the people (albeit not a large number) that do find the site on-line. Used like this you do not have to spend a lot of time and/ or money on promoting the site (although always good to keep pictures up to date) for the search engines but it is there 'just in case'.

I see that you have a unique name: "Place Mozart Holiday Apartment". I would ditch your current domain and register something like placemozart.com and transfer your site to that domain. Then I would look your descriptions on the listing sites and keep mentioning "Place Mozart" within the text as a hint.

Then the brighter enquirers will find your site by googling the name. Actually, I'm sure that a few do already, as even now, your branding is pretty good.

Thank you for your feedback. Dropping my website seems instinctively wrong so that is why I threw the question to my LMH forum owners. I agree that it is better to keep it as the industry is continuing to evolve. I think in big tourist centres like Nice it is impossible to stand out from the crowd unless you have a USP which I really don't have. The cost of keeping the website live is not that high in the overall scheme of things. I did change my apartments name last year to see if savy searchers would locate me on non commission sites but haven't had success. Maybe changing the .com name to match as suggested will be worth doing.

I agree with Ben ...
i also have a PMP website which i created this year and i am also listed on the OTA's that you have mentioned & yes it is getting more and more difficult to link your own website on these platforms however if your domain is maybe your house/apartment name and you also feature this as the name of your business on the OTA's potential guests can always search for you on the WWW
the secret is also to update your Meta tags and maybe a Facebook page for any news or offers
but i certainly would not be without a website even if you use it just for giving more information /pictures etc

We'll never know what's coming next with any OTA's so I'd definitely keep it. Better than having to start from scratch should the need arise.

I agree with Ben. The name of your website can make all the difference for people searching. We have a holiday apartment in one of the naturist villages near Port Leucate in France. There must be well over 500 apartments spread over the five villages. We were looking for both English speaking and European guests so created two websites, one with PMP and one with Iowners. One in French is www.vacances-naturistes.eu and the other in English is www.naturistholidays.fr. If you Google vacances naturistes Port Leucate or naturist holidays Port Leucate our respective websites come up on page one despite the many other owners with websites.