Lay My Hat

So far (first year of advertising and without internal pictures as yet):

HR - 3 enquiries, 1 booking (the others moved on when I couldn't give them pics)
HLettings - 2 enquiries, both booked
2 website, but one through card in PO window, and one through OD. The card in window says he's going to book for October but hasn't yet, and the other wanted a week that we're on hold.

I haven't completely updated my calendar yet, because I'm still waiting for a deposit.

Also, it's better than it looks, as one family booked 3 weeks and everybody else wanted 2. I'm now almost fully booked for July and August, except for a 5 day gap in August, which if I don't fill I shall put out on special offer, or I might use it myself.

Do you generally find that people want two weeks? Martyn and I normally only go for a week and so I suppose I'd sort of assumed most working people did that, but apparently not.

Pauline

Our site 3 bookings / 3 weeks
homelidays 2 bookings / 4 weeks
OD 2 bookings / 2 weeks
word of mouth and rebookings 2 weeks
holidaylettings 1 booking / 1 week
VR Connection 1 booking / 1 week.......................yep I know WHO? a free one we forgot we were on.

Enquiries ( in no particular order )
Rent holiday homes 1
Independent owners 2
Cap Vacances 1
Vacation villas 1
A Gites 1
Go Corse 1
.HR 1 And that was last November

Bit of a lottery really, isn't it.

So far in 2007 for my Paris apartment:

VRBO - 5 inquiries, 1 turned into a booking
Perfectly paris (managed, paid) - 3 inqs, 1 turned into booking
Franglo (newsletter) - 3 inqs, no bookings
Sabbatical homes - 3 inqs, no bookings
holiday rentals - 1 inq, no bookings (this site was good last year but this is all I've had since mid-Dec - lowest traffic from them since I joined last May)
Travel library - 1 inq. no bookings (although I got a few last year - only free site worth anything for me)

Elaine

We only deal with Owners Direct ..but we do only have 16 weeks to book
So - they've given us; 32 enquiries - resulting in 9 weeks of bookings (one is a repeat booking from last summer)

A fair few of the enquiries were for weeks already booked. I've had to put a note on our contact details to make sure the calendar is checked by people before they email

Mouse
x

I am following this discussion with much interest, as the owner of a rentals listing site (no, I'm not saying which one, as I know that this isn't policy here, understandably). I just makes me a teeny bit cross when owners attribute their enquiries/bookings to their home websites without doing the research to find out where the enquiries are coming from. We do an enormous amount of advertising on our owners' behalf, and we allow links to home websites. Generally speaking, more information is provided on home websites than on listings sites, so if a link is available I imagine most people will click on it to find out more. If they like the property, why should they then go back to the listings site if they want to make a booking?
I only know of a couple of listings sites which do not allow links to home websites and quite honestly, sometimes I can see their point. At least their owners know where their enquiries are coming from. This is just a plea to owners, when evaluating listings sites, not to give potentially exaggerated credit to their own websites when the original may have originated from a listings site. I don't think I would be the only listings site owner to feel like this. We do work hard, spend a lot of money, and so it can be galling when credit is given elsewhere!

I'm a bit dismayed to find out you're a listing site owner when you've previously posted here asking for tax advice on your business. But at least you haven't tried to use us for links and free advertising.

There has been quite a bit of discussion in other threads as to how many "personal website" inquiries are really coming from listing sites. Everyone here is aware that not every inquirer remembers where they found a property site, even if they came to that site directly from a listing site. We discuss the subject not because we're worried about our listing sites losing our business, but because it is in our best interests to be honest with ourselves about where our business is really coming from. I very much doubt any of us want to take undue credit for bookings, but we all do the best we can with the information we're given.

If you'd like to help prevent it, you could give us more information about how our listing site pages are doing. One way I can think of for listing site owners to protect their businesses while still allowing links is to allow property owners to see statistics on their listing site pages, including not only the number of unique visitors to our listing site pages and by what search method they found the page (i.e. search for 2 bedrooms with a pool, or search by availability, what page of search results we were on, etc.), but also how many of them clicked from the listing site page to the property's private website.

I'm not a true techie, but I don't think these things would be terribly hard to track, and it would be highly useful information -- to us as well as to you. Some listing sites do give us property owners access to page statistics, but some don't. I don't know whether your site does or doesn't. In my opinion, any site that doesn't offer useful information to help us figure out what percentage of people who viewed our listing page clicked to our own website, and then complains about not getting credit for click-through inquiries, has no ground to stand on.

Antonia wrote: I just makes me a teeny bit cross when owners attribute their enquiries/bookings to their home websites without doing the research to find out where the enquiries are coming from.

Brooke is 100% right in what she says - a lot of rental sites give us no help or indication in trying to find the source of the bookings, I wish more rental sites would take into account the advice she has given. The only way we can find out at present is to ask the guest who booked where they found us - and the info they give is often not 100% reliable, unless it is a tried and tested site they use regularly they often don't remember it. The fact that a lot of rental listing sites either look the same or have very similar names doesn't help either!

For my part, I always ask what words or phrase they tapped into the search engines and if it was words that I know put my site on page 1 of google, I will credit my personal site with the booking. If not, it goes down as an unknown source.

Most of our enquiries and bookings come from Holidaylettings.
We have a link on there to our own website, but it's very rare to get a booking from our website. Even though clients click through to our website, they then go on to make the enquiry through H-L.

vrooje wrote:...but also how many of them clicked from the listing site page to the property's private website..

Brooke, I agree with your other comments, but I can see this (quoted bit) quite easily from my own website log referrals using StatCounter.

And on a lighter note, here's a conundrum:

Wife sent me an enquiry from Listing Site A and I responded in detail by email. The following day, husband clicked through my contact link on Listing Site B to confirm the booking.
To whom do I attribute the booking ? Or do I attribute Site A with an enquiry and Site B with a booking ?

Thank you for your replies which I find useful. I take your point about giving owners as much information as we can, and we try to do this. We do use the most advanced statistics for our website, but like any other website, we are only able to track how visitors find us - We are not able to track how many people click on an exterior link ie a home website link. So, although we can give our owners information about how many page views they get, we can't tell them how many people click through to home websites. This is information which is available on home website statistics pages.
I was just making the point that some people may attribute enquiries to their own websites which have actually originated from a listings site. If people first find your property on a listings site, click on your home link and then bookmark the page, any subsequent visits will then show us as direct visits to your home website even though the original came from a listings site.
I'm not sure why anyone finds it dismaying that I have posted before on a different forum about a different subject. I am also the owner of holiday property and therefore have a foot in both camps. I too need to let my property out.
Best wishes
Antonia

Antonia wrote: We are not able to track how many people click on an exterior link ie a home website link. So, although we can give our owners information about how many page views they get, we can't tell them how many people click through to home websites.

Some rental listing sites are able to do this - holidaylets.net, for example, provide this info in their statistics for advertisers. It still doesn't tell me WHO though, just how many!

That is something for us to think about then, and I will investigate further as to how we can provide this for our owners.
Antonia

La Vache, you beat me to it!!I always look at the stats from the listing sites that tell me how many have clicked onto my own website.I then cross check this from my own stats9 One site I am no longer with seemed to show far more click throughs than my own stats confirmed. (Haven't a clue how though the why is obvious!). What Antonia says has relevance but then those of us who get loads of direct hits from Google et al must be doing something right with their own websites too ! Both are fine , we need each other

So, although we can give our owners information about how many page views they get, we can't tell them how many people click through to home websites. This is information which is available on home website statistics pages.

So you posted about this topic as a problem without knowing how much of a problem it is... unless you find a way to track it, it could be 10% or 90% of visitors and you'll never know. I know it's probably not as trivial to track click-throughs from your listing site to a personal site as it is to track total number of visitors to a listing site page, but it seems like it's well worth the extra lines of code to track it.

If people first find your property on a listings site, click on your home link and then bookmark the page, any subsequent visits will then show us as direct visits to your home website even though the original came from a listings site.

That actually isn't generally true for my site anymore -- but even if I hadn't come up with my cookie scheme to track inquiries, that visitor would still show up in the stats as a click-through, so the listing site would still get some general type of "credit."

I always look at the stats from the listing sites that tell me how many have clicked onto my own website.I then cross check this from my own stats

That's exactly what I'd love to do -- the more sources, the better!