holidayswanted.com

[Maisy]

In my continuing search for new rental sites, I came across this site last year, and was quite taken by their approach to letting property - (It is aimed specifically for the French market). In all of the forums that I read, I have never seen them mentioned – I would be interest to hear what the readers of this forum think of it.

[helene]

Hello Maisy - I have not heard of them and even though we are in France have not really targeted the French market - a friend who lets their property to French families always has problems over deposits at time of booking (to secure the booking) and also the payment in advance of the holiday in her case 8 weeks - so she has tended to target the UK market. I would be interested to hear about other people's experience of any national custom and practice differences and how they overcome them.
regards
helene

[Maisy]

I have now re-read my posting - what I MEANT to say was it is a letting site specifically for properties in France.....

Instead properties being advertised by the owners, this site is for people who know the area they want to spend their holiday, they specify what they are looking for, size, pool etc, it is then for the property owners to contact them. I think this is quite an interesting take from the usual sites. But need some encouragement from 'out there' before I do anything!

[helene]

Hi Maisy - sounds very interesting and certainly worth a visit
regards
helene

[paolo]

This site has been previously discussed here:

viewtopic.php?p=1422#1422

As you can see from my post there I am not convinced and as I can't find an address, phone number or contact name for the site, I'm even less convinced - or have I missed this information?

[george christie]

I have been using the site for nearly a year now and get a steady stream of enquires from the site directly via email and cost £20 to join and £1 for each enquiry you want the contact details for.
Its run by Ken Jackson who lives in the Charente and anyone can join if they are renting property in France
Have a look at the web site

[Garri]

I know this post has been dormant for a while but that holidayswanted site has to be one of the worst web sites, from a presentational point of view, that I have seen for a long time.

[tansy]

I get a regular email from this chap - have done for I think over 3 years now...but I've never been tempted - I think it is the £1 an enquiry thing...what am I paying a £1 for?...a complete dreamer or what?....I did have a free trial thing as well...looked at the enquiries there was nothing that matched with what I've got to rent....so I'm afraid it is a thumbs down from me.

[la vache!]

Tansy,
I tried it last year for a few months and didn't get one reply, it is quite expensive I think, at a £1 a time. I got an e-mail from Ken recently, I think he has been doing a trial reducing the price to 50p, so maybe some members are complaining?? My objection was that you never knew how serious the enquirers were, so you could have been throwing away your money for nothing replying to enquiries. At least if the enquirers do the leg work through other conventional sites, you know they are vaguely interested in your property!

[Alan Knighting]

My view on this one is very simple.

I pay a listing site to include my properties in the hope of generating enquiries.

• I am not interested in paying more per enquiry, I've already paid for that.
  
  I am not interested in paying a commission on converting an enquiry into a booking, I did that.
  
  I am not interested in my clients paying a commission just because they originally came through a particular website. There is one price for all.

Alan

[Garri]

The problem with charging money to receive on a per enquiry basis is it can be abused! What's to stop the site owner getting his mates to make bogus enquiries?

Or does it work like that? I couldn't be bothered to wade through the awful site, which incidentally, made my browser hang when I tried to enter a seacrh request.

[Garri]

Alan, I have to agree (although I'm not an owner).

It's a completely bonkers model with a truly awful web site driving it.

[vrooje]

Teehee, but how do you really feel?

I agree, I would never pay per inquiry. The first thing I thought of was a greedy site owner reviewing the numbers and saying, "oh well, revenues are down this quarter -- time to go through the phone book and send some bogus inquiries!" Since most sites don't tell the property owner the IP of the person inquiring, he wouldn't even have to ask his friends to do it!

It's not that I know anything about this site, so I don't know if this site owner has been doing that. I agree, though, that it's beaucoup potential for abuse.