Most effective listings sites?

[la vache!]

I've just done some number crunching on bookings and found that although there is a small number from a variety of sites, FC, VF, HR, Chez Nous, (yes, I've spent a fortune on advertising this year!) most of my bookings have come from a site I haven't seen mentioned on this forum, http://www.frenchholidayhomes.com
It is relatively inexpensive compared to other sites, you can do all updates of text free yourself, photos updates are free (you send them to Lisa, the site manager and they are immediately updated). You can also add special offers free of charge. I think it was 130€ per property per year and they spend a lot on advertising to get good search engine ratings. Downsides: there is no link to your website though, as Lisa says that would hide where the bookings originally come from, also there is no availavility at the moment and no discounts for multigite properties.
Anyway, I am in no way related to the company, but I thought it was worth mentioning to other property owners in France, who may be as uncertain as me about who to advertise with from now on. Its one I will stick with for next year!

[mindadowling]

It's a grey Sunday in London so I thought I would do some accounting on our bookings for this season. We are listed on three paid rental listing sites, H-R, VRBO & Holidaylets plus we have our own website.

These are the scores for each of the rental listings sites and our website:

Holiday-rentals.com
16 enquires to date
First listed property middle March 2005
5 one week bookings to date

VRBO.com
17 enquires to date
First listed property middle of March 2005
5 one week bookings to date

Holidaylets.net
10 enquires to date
First listed property middle of March 2005 on free three month trail
Subsequently paid for listing
3 one week bookings to date
1 two week booking to date

www.tuscanyholidaycottage.com
First launched website early March 2005
5 one week bookings to date
1 two week booking to date
two of the above bookings from friends of friends

Summary: I am one very happy holiday home owner! I can say that the three paid sites provide excellent enquires which seem to translate to bookings. The many free rental sites I listed on
provided few if any enquires. Having a personal website offers that extra something to a prospective guest. I am glad I invested in having my site professionally designed and produced as I am a total techno dinosaur. Didn't cost and arm and a leg either, went to a good web designer that was recommended by a friend and who was located in the States were the dollar is low and the pound is very strong. Read this forum religiously and have learn't an amazing amount of knowledge from many generous and intelligent fellow holiday home owners!

I don't know if this is the recipe for success or just beginners luck, but I want to thank you all for giving me the confidence to begin this holiday rental adventure and for the access to the collective wisdom available here.

[Yvain]

Tansy, bearing in mind your comment re longer stays meaning expensive crossings, this appears to have changed according to today's sunday times. They did a survey of prices for a 7 day trip on 1st August and there were several prices in the £90 - £100 range. Even Eurotunnel has joined in with a rate of £98. Things are looking up! (I'll try to find the article on the web and put it up)

Yvain

[Yvain]

Couldn't find the one I was looking for but here's more on the same subject quoted from the Sunday Times website:

The Dover-Boulogne operator (SpeedFerries) has sparked a low-cost revolution on the Channel, with P&O Ferries and Hoverspeed being forced to follow with average fares of £50 each way on the Dover to Calais route.
This week Eurotunnel belatedly joined the fray, adopting the low-cost airline pricing model and offering a Tunnel crossing from £49 each way.



But SpeedFerries today went a step further and put 10,000 "SuperTickets" on sale at £25 each way for travel between June 10-30 next year. The tickets - valid for a car and up to five passengers - must be booked by June 16, 2005.

[tansy]

Yvain - that all makes really great reading...but - invasion 1944 6th June - our big time here..dates I suppose reflect prime time...then ports quoted are 4+ hour drive from here - since P&O pulled out from Cherbourg we are held out to dry!

BUT at least the tunnel is starting to see sense Could they PLEASE work it out that there is business and to stop charging stupid prices

[paolo]

Minda,

Thanks for those interesting stats. Your marketing is well chosen! I think that as vrbo lets you link to your own website and the other two don't, they may be initially responsible for some enquiries that came from your own site. But the only way of knowing for sure is to ask them.

I'm glad your first season is going so well, with the care you have put into the house you deserve it.

[Ross Hugo]

Paolo,

Just to correct one small misconception from your last post. Holidaylets.Net (HLN) does allow links to an Owner’s own site. We do not encourage this because it makes it difficult for both the Owner and us to track the effectiveness of the HLN site. However, we do recognise that some Owners want to have this kind of hyperlink. Therefore, we allow a pre-positioned link from a particular section of the listing. This at least allows us to track the number of click throughs generated by HLN. We also charge an extra 30 UK pounds per annum for this service.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards, Ross Hugo

http://www.holidaylets.net

[Ciapolin]

Thanks for sharing your stats and the websites. It will save me a bit of legwork!

C-A

[hi5holidays]

Hi,

This forum seems to be France based. I think the website effectivity vary by Country if not by region. I'm in the Costa del Sol.

holidaylettings 15 enquiries/ 3 bookings
holidaylets 20 enquiries/ 2 bookings
portside 5 enquiries/ 0 bookings
secondcasa 9 enquiries
latelets 9 enquiries/ 1 booking
southspain 7 enquiries/ 1 booking
theway2stay 7 enquiries/ 1 booking

The different website seem to go up and down in popularity over the months.

Any other Spanish data?

[vrooje]

Welcome to the forums, hi5holidays!

You're right, there are a lot of people here who rent French property, but that may just be because there are more weekly holiday rentals in France than anywhere else (I believe -- please correct me if I'm wrong!).

We do have several people who own in Spain as well. I'm not sure if Sarah (sazzleevans) has checked the forum recently, but she's just one of several.

Either way, I quite agree that the best rental listing sites varies by country and even by region within a given country.

Cheers!

[jimadept]

Hi,

This forum seems to be France based. I think the website effectivity vary by Country if not by region. I'm in the Costa del Sol.

holidaylettings 15 enquiries/ 3 bookings
holidaylets 20 enquiries/ 2 bookings
portside 5 enquiries/ 0 bookings
secondcasa 9 enquiries
latelets 9 enquiries/ 1 booking
southspain 7 enquiries/ 1 booking
theway2stay 7 enquiries/ 1 booking

The different website seem to go up and down in popularity over the months.

Any other Spanish data?

Hi hi5holidays,

Can I ask you how long you've been advertising? You should be getting a better return from all the paid sites, but then you may have only put the ads up a few weeks ago.

cheers, Jim in Cantabria

[ourinns]

One site that I have found, belatedly, to be quite effective is ebay.

I thought that I'd have a go at selling out of season rooms last October through it. First go, I set an initial price of just under the full rate: no takers, few lookers and high listing fee. Second go, I thought I'd drop the price 50%: same effect but slightly lower listing fee. Third, somewhat more determined attempt, was to list the "right to buy" for 99p a long weekend at no accommodation cost and only a 35€ (times two) meal each night: hundreds and hundreds of lookers and one buyer.

So, I figured, a dead loss. However, nine months on I find that in addition to my one direct buyer, I've had a couple for seven days at full price from those hundreds of lookers and this Saturday we'll be hosting 10 (possibly 14) from the crowd of lookers, again at full rate.

So, 30p cost, around 700€ income (possibly 1000€ if they buy meals).

The only downside is the hassle of relisting an advert every 10 days or so but I will be getting going on that again once we get our heads above water after the summer.



Arnold

[evabal]

Hi: Maybe it is a bit to late to put my two cents worth in here, but please, allow me anyway.

I only started to advertise in August on Homelidays (that turned into a very same day booking on the day I registered), and on VRBO.
From VRBO I received 3 inquiries that did not turned into bookings (but 2 of them were looking for the potential for next year!)
Homelidays I received least 20 enquiries and 6 bookings, so far.

I must disagree with some points that are made few times in other threads also:

I disagree with "you should choose the listing sites that come up for your searches for similar properties in regions your property ist". It is NOT neccesarely true. It is very much depend wher you are (not your property BUT you) located. Search engines (especially Google) have a lovely way to keep tab on your location and the ways you are doing searches. (They do this in many ways but I do not want to be technical). I am based in Canada and my apartment I want to advertise is in Hungary. If I enter "Budapest vacation rental" Homelidays does not even came up in the first 5 pages. (yourstuscany.com and vacation-maui do came up although........ do not ask!) Similar results for "budapest apartment rental".

In fact I became aware of Homelidays through this site. I never ever heard or read about it before! So, thanks for this site I was able to have solid booking since I opened my apartment.

The other I slightly disagree wih is that "free websites are waiste of time". First Homelidays is on a trial bases for me right now. Second listing your site and description on many free sites is good for yor search engine ranking (if you ever consider your website to be ranked by search engines high). Search engines check (next to many things) how many sites mention your site address and how many times the same the same terms come up on different sites that can be find in your site (this is an other good reason to keep consistent with your descriptions through all listings and partially on your own website.)

In fact my apartment is listed on many sites that I did not get 1 single enquieries from but I am sure it helped my ranking. (# 1 on MSN and #2 on Yahoo. No, I am still not listed on Google but I hope when it finally "lets me on I would receive a good position")

Maybe this is not the best forum to expend on this but I just read these comments again I thought I should reply.

(I am specializing in the Internet Marketing and was able to "pump up" the ranking for many sites)

Sincerely,
Eva

[ourinns]

I don't think that you should necessarily choose the sites which come up on your searches either but for a different reason (though I agree with your one too). I used to think that this was the way to go (and it does make sense to do it) but got to talking privately with a similar place to ours in a different region of France and found that when we shared our listings lists there was virtually no duplication between them. He'd been at this game for years and yet still I had a lot of places he'd not come across (and a lot of them very effective ones too) simply because we'd both used a bunch of different keywords in our searches and had both come at it from a different direction.

At the time, I'd spent over a year searching for places to list and was amazed that I'd not come across even half of his places! Again, he had a lot that were effective for him and have proved effective for me: it wasn't that they were obscure sites or anything.

I'm not sure that I agree totally that the descriptions exactly the same but they should be consistent. Over time I suspect that consistency will drop though as you add facilities (eg when you add a pool, will you add that to the description in every listing? I think not).

I always thought that arriving in yahoo would pop you into google too (on the assumption that google presumably searches yahoo's pages too). Interesting that it doesn't.


Arnold

[alexia s.]

I asked one of our visitors, recently, which words he had searched for (he had found us from a search engine) & the main one was "charming" (he is Dutch). Does this surprise those of you who understand more about rankings etc than I do? He hadn't searched more narrowly for the area than "Côte d'Azur" - that's a wide area! It certainly surprised me.
Reading all of the comments from members who seem to be totally expert, I don't have any motivation to start investing time in a private web-site & then working on ranking. Time-wise, is it really worth anyone's effort?
We will only use 4 sites in 2006 (plus any new ones that look promising: see below): the cost is not outrageous and they do all the work to get the rankings. We get all the rentals we want from the commercial sites (for a number of reasons, including - most importantly - tax reasons, we are not looking for 52 weeks a year rentals).
Am I right in thinking that you do it (trying for high rankings on your own web site) because you enjoy doing it, not because it is effective in increasing your rentals?
I do invest time in finding different sites, and I ring around other advertisers on new sites before I commit. I invest time at the end of each season analysing results and deciding next year's sites on this basis. I invested a once-off morning in putting a lot of photos on a free wanadoo site which I think is fantastic value, and which I direct people to when they reply to one of my listings.
Maybe I'm wrong and when you know what you're doing, it doesn't take any time at all to acquire & maintain high rankings........