Lay My Hat

Hi,
We moved away from Sykes in 2018 due to the lack of care and damage our cottage suffered from their customers. However, local booking agents haven't brought in the same level of bookings so we're thinking of going back to one of the big boys (we don't have enough time free to run this ourselves).

Before we crawl cap-in-hand to Sykes, does any one have any experience with Hoseasons?

A decade ago yes. I owned a property that was managed by the park it was on and in turn they had a contract with Hoseasons. Slightly different to a direct contract with Hoseasons. Anyway I had no say in pricing and they could sell dates at whatever price they fancied including £99 weekend breaks that made no profit. They took no responsibility for the guests who booked if there were problems. I left them within a year.

Hoseasons is part of the cottages.com lot now, so I imagine would be much the same as them. They've been good to us so far and we haven't had any problem guests.

Hoseasons, cottages.com and about 20 smaller or regional sub-brands are all owned by what was Wyndhams (UK), now Vacation Rentals UK.
Apart from vague recollections of some owners having issues with Wyndhams (probably not surprising considering what a mammoth organisation they are) I don’t know if that tells you anything about Hoseasons.

Mike&Chrissy wrote:Hi,
We moved away from Sykes in 2018 due to the lack of care and damage our cottage suffered from their customers. However, local booking agents haven't brought in the same level of bookings so we're thinking of going back to one of the big boys (we don't have enough time free to run this ourselves).

Before we crawl cap-in-hand to Sykes, does any one have any experience with Hoseasons?

Avoid !

We have two properties we decided to holiday let last year, advertising one with Hoseasons, Wyndham or whatever they are calling themselves this month and the other with Airbnb.

Airbnb has been spot on, sufficient bookings, high income, covered by their insurance and good customer service when I had to chuck a group out as they arrived with five in our four bed house. Review system is excellent, as is their online owner community and I can find nothing but good things to say about the experience.

Hoseasons - awful. Gobshite salesperson with verbal diarrhoea failing to disclose the reality, rules and regulations of renting through them
- discounting down to 18 % with their dynamic pricing ( although this can be reduced to just 10% if you are aware of the process and tell them to. We had a family of four and a dog stay for an extended period for which we received £9 pppn in our brand new cottage. They had the oil heating set to 26 degrees which can use up to £20 a day so with the other costs thanks to Hoseasons we became a charity and made a loss homing these people. I did feel sorry for them when their brand new range rover had a starting problem and they had to wait a couple of hours for the manufacturer to send a mechanic to sort out the issue
- the cost of wanting to cancel a booking - you pay an admin charge, cost of upgrade and compensation for the customer
- the implications of wanting to remove your property from their website - £500 minimum plus cost of relocating any bookings and it can take up to two years to be free of them depending on when you signed as the property must stay with them for a whole year minimum
- dreadful owners website
- when a problem arose with a guest they didn't want to know and gobshite sales person ignored our pleas
- certain members of the owners support team can't hide their arrogance and at times it felt very much like being bullied
- they allocate a certain number of days you are allowed to block the property for your own use, beyond that you pay them not an insubstantial nightly rate
- the review system is such that you may only respond to a guest review rather than review them unilaterally, plus it has to be done through them so they can monitor, alter what you write.
- no owners online community - wonder why

There is nothing good about this company.

Avoid !

Awaze (cottages.com et al) used to be good but about 2 years ago they started messing around with pricing (beyond the COVID spikes). As a result, I now find it extremely difficult to get the pricing right.
For example, I have two units next to each other which are identical.
I got an email deom cottages.com this morning recommmending that I drop the prices of ONE of these units by a significant amount. But NOT the identical unit next to it. Not the first time this has happened.
Go with Sykes (based on our neighbours' experience).

Our neighbours use holidaycottages.co.uk and are very happy with them.