1st year with H-R

[ashtondav]

Hi

Following from the other thread i though i would share my enquiry stats for my little apartment in a costa del sol hill village. It happens to coincide with the expiration of my 1 year money back guarantee from H-R.

I received 90 enquiries during the 12 months. The monthly profile was as follows:

Dec 2%
Jan 22%
Feb 10%
Mar 19%
Apr 16%
May 8%
Jun 5%
Jul 6%
Aug 5%
Sep 4%
Oct 2%
Nov 1%

In terms of website performance (% of enquiries received):
My own website: 24%
Ownersdirect: 22%
Holiday-rentals: 20%
Holidaylettings: 12%
Touristparadise (free): 8%
Holswap: 3%
Villarenters: 1%
Others: 10% (fiesta siesta, ownersrentals, travel library - all free)

So, my conclusions:

The 67% of enquiries received Jan through April were for peak months. Therefore well worth considering any sites that offer quarterly or 6 month deals (ownersdirect, i think, among others.)

I will continue with all the sites, although as H-R is by far the most expensive per enquiry it will have to perform harder next year. I also detest the lack of a link (for god's sake why?) and the poor visit stats (for which holidaylettings is superb).

The tourist paradise site delivers German enquiries. Although my wife is fluent in the language no other sites generate enquiries or bookings from non-english guests. An area I wish to improve upon by launching a .de version of my website next year. I also see quite a few scandinavians wander around the village so will look out as to how i can bag a few of them. Never seen any French in the village and so not so concerned about them.

I do like the experience with Villarenters - seamless, problem free and no hassles. I know others have different views. I just wish they would generate more bookings - perhaps their site is too complex, mechanical and not very "warm and friendly".

I use holswap because it has a very good, free last minute/late bookings page and it only costs a few quid a year.

Am i happy? well sort of. I'm booked 75% to 80% of the year, but on the other hand i pay about 6% of my revenue to these advertising sites.

The best value by far, is my own website.

I hope this has been useful to you.

Cheers

Tudor
www.frigiliana-apartment.com

[Hells Bells]

Excellent post. I am coming up to the end of our first year of bookings, and have about 15 months worth of stats to analyse. I have them all on a Google spreadsheet now (I move around a lot, so often use different PC's at work), so I can update the stats as soon as I receive an enquiry. I update the 'hits' from the various sites at the end of each month.

[Big Sis..]

Hi Tudor,

Thanks for sharing that with us its very interesting but unless I missed it it seemed to be about enq and not actual bookings
I have some websites that send me loads of enq but not that many bookings[others that I dont think are doing much but all the enq seem to turn into bookings
I wonder which ones[apart from your own of course] have given you the most bookings....

[ashtondav]

Hi Ros

I've never managed to square that circle!

Yes, bookings are the critical performance measure. However, say you sell 80% of your prime weeks early in the year through one website, friends, repeat bookings and family.

Then again say that many H-R enquiries for those same prime weeks arrive in the next few months. Which is the better advertising medium? hard to tell because next year it coould be H-R that catches the early birds.

Shamefully, while i update my calendars regularly, they are deliberately inaccurate. Otherwise when all my weeks were sold i would, by definition, never get any more enquiries and i would not be able to measure my metric of performance. As i have a neighbour next door who has an almost identical apartment i send referrals to her (via villarenters.com and make a little commission )

Incidentally, the only good thing about H-R not linking to your website is that you can try out differential pricing without annoying your customers.

Good luck

Tudor
www.frigiliana-apartment.com


With one exception the figures remain about the same for bookings. For some reason, if the weeks are free, my enquiries nearly always convert


The exception is tourist paradise - lots of enquiries but not a sausage!

[Big Sis..]

Hi Tudor,

I dont have an availability clendar either.
For two reasons when I first started I wanted to see the best performing websites...and as we have 2 houses together that we rent together or separately it could be complicated.

I must admit I feel a bit like you All my peak weeks have gone by now but its the offpeak bookings that really matter as I think the peak would go anyway.

Must admit that Last year all my peak went before Id put the 2007 prices in[they usually go by June July the previous year] so I put them up...without a problem.

Some of the websites Im on send a load of Enq but they dont convert others do.Some of the websites Im on seem to be doing really well but when I check the bookings they havent.

Pretty pleased so far though this Forum helps of course keeping us up to date with the websites.

Hope you have a succesful year.

[Hells Bells]

So undecided. £215 for 1 year with 4 photos and a ski listing, is a lot to pay out even if I eventually get it back.