New Ski Apartment owners site

Get some feedback on your site or ad from other rental owners and techies. Also a library of online resources so you can make DIY improvements to your web presence.
skimottaret
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:02 pm

New Ski Apartment owners site

Post by skimottaret »

Hi All,

I have a 2 bedroom apartment in Meribel France and have revamped my site. I am doing okay on high/mid season bookings but am looking to attract more families from the southern hemisphere during the low season of Dec and Jan during their summer break.

Any comments would be gladly received

www.skimottaret.com
Last edited by skimottaret on Sat Feb 09, 2008 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
la vache!
Posts: 11065
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:22 pm

Post by la vache! »

A link to your site would be useful!
skimottaret
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:02 pm

Post by skimottaret »

That would be wouldnt it :lol: :oops: :oops:

www.skimottaret.com
skimottaret
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:02 pm

Post by skimottaret »

bump, made a few more changes, any comments? :D
domuscolosseo
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:28 am
Location: Rome, Italy
Contact:

Post by domuscolosseo »

Very nice!
Martha
Posts: 2289
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2006 7:01 pm
Location: Chamonix

Post by Martha »

Hello there :)

I think the site's coming on nicely. A few thoughts:

Why aren't there photos of the apartment in the gallery slideshow?

Lots of the photos on the front page are rather badly compressed and look a bit ropey (sorry!). I see you have good hi-res ones so I think you should resize them properly and use them, because they're very nice.

If you possibly can, I would drop a blue sky behind the front one to make it less dull, too. Or use the rear view. In fact, I would just do that anyway, it looks great from the back.

"View from apartment" would be great if it wasn't so big I can barely see it on my screen, which is huge. Resize this one pronto! :)

Video tours can be good but can be a little creepy which I'm afraid I thought this one was. Maybe get some music on it??

The header image has the same bad compression on it....

What are you using to edit your pics? Some are fine, but some have clearly been processed wrongly (on a computer, not on film), and could really do with adjustment and recompressing. There's plenty of good advice around here on this subject.

Hope this helps!
The info looks good and the site's easy to get around. But it's the pics that sell a place - I think with the photos sorted, it would be excellent.
Chalet la Foret, Chamonix
Margaret
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Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:46 am
Location: Bavaria and Mid Wales
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Post by Margaret »

Goodness me, is that what you can charge at Christmas in a major skiing region? We have just raised our prices a lot and are still half that. I'm impressed. Of course, property prices must be a lot higher there.

You seem to have good occupancy at Christmas and New Year. I honestly think you are wasting your time trying to get people from the Southern Hemisphere to come before Christmas and after New Year. Our experience is that they come to Europe mainly for Christmas and New Year and want a white Christmas not a skiing holiday mainly, although they might also do some skiing. I think you'd be much better trying to get European skiers, but others who are in major skiing areas may agree with you. Good for you if you can manage it.
Martha
Posts: 2289
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2006 7:01 pm
Location: Chamonix

Post by Martha »

I agree about the southern hemisphere, though more power to you if you can do it! I'm not sure how though - since they're english language, they generally use UK sites to book. We've had a few, and already have a booking from a very nice Australian lady for the summer.

Wow - I just checked chamonix chalet on
http://www.google.com.au/
and we are number three! That's brillant, I wonder why? We hover between 5 and 11 on uk and .com
Might explain our much welcomed Aussie bookers :)

The other people to consider are the Russians, whose New Year is later than ours, and come in mid to late Jan. Chamonix puts quite a lot of effort into attracting them because of this, with Russian New Year celebrations and so on, and one agent I know of gets a lot of bookings from them.

We actually had a Russian stag do at the chalet last year who were model guests!
Chalet la Foret, Chamonix
skimottaret
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:02 pm

Post by skimottaret »

Martha

wow great comments and all on the mark. Thanks ever so much for your detailed review.

The photos are a mishmash, i dont have many that i took and had to use images i grabbed off the web from my agent and other sources. The compression is bad and i will reshoot a lot this spring when i go out. didnt have good light over christmas...

the video was an experiment with a new camera and your right it is a bit creepy. Hadnt thought of it like that but will try to reshoot and edit to make it less stalkerish :lol:

On the photo gallery page i wasnt sure about having duplicates of the apartment photos that are on the main page and have tried to put any summery photos in the summer section. The best high res shots i have though are summer which i was advised to take off as seeing green put off skiers!

Margaret - In terms of southern hemishpere marketing in the end i am going to extend my google ad campaign to select SH countries.. I have aussie friends in courchevel and they recon a fair amount of their instructor mates come out to the 3V's for extended trips in Jan with their families during their summer hols

Good idea on marketing to Russians, I may do a russian google adwords campaign targetted to them to see how that goes. My wife has a russion mate and may be able to do some limited translation of an ad...
Martha
Posts: 2289
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2006 7:01 pm
Location: Chamonix

Post by Martha »

:lol: Don't edit any "Psycho" Shower scene music on it! Nooooo.....I saw him in the mirror!!

I am only joking :)

As you're close to Courchevel, the Russians would definitely be a good one. I know what you mean about the good summer/bad winter photo dilemma, we had the same ourselves until this year and it is a nightmare if you aren't out there to catch the perfect day. No easy answer to that one....

It might be well worth paying a local photographer to take a good picture of the outside in the snow on a lovely day. If you're not there till the spring, you could miss out for yet another year. There's nothing quite like a lovely snowy pic, especially these days when people are so worried about snow cover. We were very lucky that early season was so good this year, otherwise we could have been still in the same position now.

Maybe have two slideshows - one of the apartment, one of the other photos?

I'd look at brightening and retouching the bigger ones too.

Image

30 seconds later:
Image

This is super - rough, you could work them up a lot better than this with a bit more time - and when you go back, try making some panoramas for the smaller rooms, again, you'll find plenty of advice here on this.

One more thing I couldn't work out easily is which lift it's close to? I did find that it's a few minutes from the piste, but which one? It's always one of the first things people want to know so could do with being a bit more obvious to those who don't know the area so well.
Chalet la Foret, Chamonix
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