Exactly TP. There is a difference between self catering and hotels - especially good self catering with my list of essentials and I will go back to self catering holidays when I don't have 2 teenage boys to feed
The benefits are providing a home form home in a different and lovely location and not having to share with other guests. There is also others like being able to eat from local resturants, getting to know the real country that you are staying in more space than hotels and so on
What self catering is not is a cheap holiday and when you add on meals in restuarants it can be triple the price of a hotel.
There are all sort of things that you can sell a self catering holiday with, cheapness is not and should never be one of them!
I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
for me personally a private pool would be the clincher, and I would have loved to have been able to afford a farmhouse with one, but it was just waaaaaaaay outside our price range
having SAID that, as it's only 6 apartments, I suspect that at a lot of the time it will effectively BE a private pool (all 4 sold at the moment are British/Irish owned, and not intended to be rented out, with the exception of ours )
I agree Fibi -I don't think you should label self-catering as cheap....but people do like the freedom that apartments/villas can give plus extras like a private pool & high quality furnishings & facilities. For example my sister-in-law recently stopped in a hotel here....food great, exellent location, good price (half board), hotel service lovely but...the pool was crowded & full of kids so she went & used the one in a small apartment complex next door where they often had lunch. And she missed the fact that there was no fridge in the room...plus she had the enevitable 'noise' from the next door occupants.
Interestingly...a lot of my guests comment on the fact that they're staying somewhere 'so spanish'. They enjoy being away from other tourists & love that the village has lots of local character...they therefore feel they're getting an added experience.
As you say - we need to sell the differences, not the price.
In our guestbook, we encourage visitors to also comment on local restaurants, and I found this entry (paraphrased):
"RestaurantX for best service, RestaurantY for great food and service, but the highlight of the week was BBQ at Casa das Palmeiras - we returned for more the following evening." Thats all it said.
By the way, Casa das Palmeiras is the name of our Villa !
So how do you translate that into marketing-speak ?
I suppose I'm trying to figure out which (if any!!) of the listing sites apeals most to our potential guest profile, or if just a high enough ranking in Google is the way forward.
I was planning on Owners Direct, Holiday Lettings and possible Holiday-Rentals as they come out highest in Google. Having said that, our website fares pretty well.
So when I've made a decision (!) I then need to work out how to target the ad
IF YOU WANT THAT PAY FOR A BLOODY HOTEL!!!!! NOT A SELF CATERING APARTMENT AT HALF THE PRICE.
All right feebs, I exaggerated ... a bit....
But it still grates a bit when you think you have provided everything anyone could reasonably desire and there's a gripe about something that has been (just that once...) overlooked. I reckon that most of us provide really lovely, clean accommodation that's well worth what we charge - and even booking into a hotel is no guarantee that it won't be dirty with a manky shower that doesn't work.
Nightowl
Forever going one step forwards and two
backwards......
"RestaurantX for best service, RestaurantY for great food and service, but the highlight of the week was BBQ at Casa das Palmeiras - we returned for more the following evening." Thats all it said.
By the way, Casa das Palmeiras is the name of our Villa !
Absolutely right e-Richard and that is where we all can invariably come up trumps!
We had a similar one, which we are proud of as well
For food, we highly recommend the local creperie Chez Bido in Radenac – but the best dinners were served in the spacious kitchen of Les Blancs. We appreciated the good facilities of the house and specially the four showers! The tomatoes and cucumbers from the Potter family were a breakfast hit for everybody.
TUSEN TAKK FOR OSS! Greetings from your first Norwegian guests,
Email this morning complaining about the 19 euro deduction from her deposit for the electricity they used over two weeks.
I've sent her a very shirty response!
I need a drink!
Sorry, but why did you deduct 19€? Isn't electricity included in your prices? It seems a bit tight to me to deduct 19€ - I don't think I'd be happy, either.
Well, I've heard of people charging extra for heating, but not for normal electricity consumption. If you stated that in your T's and C's, fair enough, but as most places don't do this, but factor it into the rental, I'm not surprised at her reaction.
and I will go back to self catering holidays when I don't have 2 teenage boys to feed 
)
