Lay My Hat

We currently accept bookings through our own website, trip advisor, AIRBNB and HomeAway. Are there any other platforms that you can recommend to increase our level of bookings?


www.romancottagecolerne.co.uk

Rich&Lisa Roman wrote:We currently accept bookings through our own website, trip advisor, AIRBNB and HomeAway. Are there any other platforms that you can recommend to increase our level of bookings?

All the websites you mention (including your own it appears) are known to charge booking fees. Booking fees are not popular. When a holiday maker has discovered that he is able to find a site which doesn't charge him/her for making the booking through them, but can put him directly in touch with the home owner, that might be the preferred alternative.

There may be localised sites, which are specific to your area, which might be productive for you and also your local tourist office.

Isn't this the question we are all asking? There are many variants of the question of course, like how can we get more full-week bookings? How can we get more appreciative guests? etc. But more is what a lot of owners are after!

If all owners did exactly the same things in an effort to get more, we would fail because we are all shouting louder at the same finite quantity of prospective guests.

So, I think that the answer is to do something that your competitors aren't doing. Think of competitors in a narrow sense (holiday lets in your village) and wider sense (accommodation providers in the Cotswolds). Then do something that most of them don't do in order to get extra attention.

Examples of the things other people have done that get results:

• get your home featured in a TV programme (that's pure gold)
  find a niche like painting/drawing/brewing/fishing classes to offer
  Put a card in the Post Office window (if your village still has a Post Office or shop) to attract overspill guests of local residents.
  If there is a big employer in the area, let their HR department know about your accommodation.
  If your village has a website, make sure you are on there

There are probably loads of oddball things that you can try. They won't all work, but some will help a little. We find the local village website very useful and it brings us occasional bookings from wedding guests.

Thank you - you have provided some excellent ideas for me to take forward.

I appreciate that we are all striving for business in a very competitive market.

Re Igor's suggestion I have had postcards printed, having seen them on display in the local Post Office / Tourist Information centre for another property (which has since stopped offering holiday letting) 500 from Vista print cost about £20

Do you offer a loyalty discount? Provided guests look after my property I offer 10% off. This year .. by chance.. my repeats have doubled..

The trend, where my cottage is, has been for more and more properties to list on AirBnb .. Sometimes charging the same low rate throughout the year.

rosebud wrote:.. Sometimes charging the same low rate throughout the year.

That is a further sign to me that owners are suffering a buyers' market right now - too many properties with not enough guests looking to rent them. This is not just applicable to England, but is world wide in varying degrees I think.

AndrewH wrote:

rosebud wrote:.. Sometimes charging the same low rate throughout the year.

That is a further sign to me that owners are suffering a buyers' market right now - too many properties with not enough guests looking to rent them. This is not just applicable to England, but is world wide in varying degrees I think.

+1
There has been a definite surge in speculative rental providers, no doubt encouraged by OTA suggestions on 'what you could earn from your property' & Hey Presto! we have supply outstripping demand, a natural progression of which is aggressive price reductions etc. Sticky times ahead for some I fear.

WARNING: Very contentious arguments to follow:

AndrewH wrote:... owners are suffering a buyers' market right now - too many properties with not enough guests looking to rent them. This is not just applicable to England, but is world wide in varying degrees I think.

I do not believe that the market is saturated. I believe its growing and growing very fast. That is why the likes of Expedia, Priceline and Trip Advisor are all spending gigabucks to get into the game.

I think that a large proportion of the growth is coming from people who hitherto would have booked package holidays at hotels. That is why Hotels are fighting back in so many regions insisting on private renters being licensed etc and paying tax!
Admittedly, this probably applies more to foreign holidays than to short break domestic stays.

Put this all together and we have a new breed of guest. Guests who want instant gratification, they want to pick and choose their holiday then simply book it. They do not want to faff around sending emails to 20 owners, many of whom will not bother to reply and many of whom have no availability despite open calendars. They are internet savvy and busy people. They buy their weekly groceries online and they buy everything else on Amazon.

No, its owners who perhaps choose to do business the traditional way who indeed finding fewer guests and being gazumped in the market place by those who are selling packaged products. i.e. Here it is, click to book and pay.

Oh well, having got that off my chest, I do wish there was a better way to cover the full spectrum and I do wish there was more room for private 1 to 1 dealings, but the world changes and we either change with it, or get off. Igor makes some very useful suggestions above, but they remain a drop in the ocean.

Yeah I'd agree with that for the most part e-richard, & it's part & parcel of why we're slowly pulling out.
We went into it when private rentals were still something of a niche & personal service was paramount, now it's largely irrelevant with little or no need for our input other than to provide beds for heads or as seems increasingly likely to simply supply the accommodation for megacorps to exploit, then take a back seat.
Is it the future of FHL? Unfortunately it seems more than likely, & as you suggest, plenty may have to adapt to survive, willingly or otherwise. You have no idea how much I hate having to write that but were it not the case we may well have had a few more years in us.
Yes, it seems that some package holidaymakers have crossed over to private rentals but there always have & always will be those for whom it is still a relatively expensive option or who just prefer hotel culture. Certainly in & around our region they cannot build new hotels quick enough or big enough to cope with an apparent preference for all inclusive packages. A different demographic entirely & one that is unlikely to embrace or even try self catering rentals so I'm not entirely convinced that they are having a wholesale effect on diluting the private rental sector.
Local conversation is awash with mixed fortunes on the booking front & I have been staggered by the steady increase in property available to rent year on year but with almost every owner blindly or reluctantly following each other to the same mega platforms for fear of missing the boat, they will all still be competing for the same finite number of potential customers. It can go either way from there.
Per the OP, & as Igor suggests I'd spread my net further than the obvious.

At first i disliked the way ha had gone, basically commoditising our lovely rental houses and charging a nice fee for renting it.

However, it seems the renters just pay up and the above commoditisation, has actually benefitted us owners....heres why

Renters now just book with no faffing about
I increased my prices to .coverthe owners 3% fee
And added a cleaning fee

So now i know ha will earn c 2k pa from me v the old 300 gbp sub, but that was history.

Welcome to the modern world

gardenboy wrote: Welcome to the modern world

No thanks. You're welcome to it.

e-richard wrote:
No, its owners who perhaps choose to do business the traditional way who indeed finding fewer guests and being gazumped in the market place by those who are selling packaged products. i.e. Here it is, click to book and pay.

With the traditional model, if you have a number of cottages and are VAT registered you can save advertising/website costs etc - to offset the 20% VAT you have to charge on the rent. With the new commission model, you have no means of saving any costs so end up 20% more expensive or have to reduce prices by 20% and make no profit at all. What choice is that?

I didn't say it was right or even fair