Rental Websites

[Dan Cornwall-Jones]

I am currently using VRBO in the USA & French Connections & in addition have my own website. I would like to hear how well these did for you if you use any of them.

[paolo]

Welcome to the forum, Dan!

I too use vrbo and frenchconnections. There was definitely a slowdown this year for enquiries. I put that down to more listing sites to choose from, and more properties on the market than previously.

I think vrbo is excellent, they consistently give me the most enquiries and their customer service is very good. I get a lot of American renters in my corner of Provence so they may not be appropriate for everyone. vrbo is particularly good at bringing in non-English English-speakers. I suppose that is because of the difference in the terms used, i.e. 'holiday rental' and 'vacation rental'.

French Connections I am not so keen on because of their antiquated operation. If you want to change text on your ad they have to do it for you and charge you. Their customer service has been consistently poor, emails can take several days to be answered, if at all. But they bring in enquiries. The trouble is that as they don't offer an availability calendar those enquiries may all be for the same 8 weeks in the summer.

I heard that French Connections is planning to upgrade to the 21st century soon, and you will be able to change your ad yourself.

Anybody else have experience of these sites? Or if not, which are you using?

[Paul Mc]

Hi

i use a small firm called, casamia.com, italian specilaists, but do a few few in Frnace as well. Yes enquiries dropped by 50% this year and booking were slow in the first half. Then in May, as soon as the weather changed for the worse in the uk, all the bookings came in. Fully booked again this year! Thank god!!

[Maggiem]

We use VisitFrance for our apartment on the Cote d'Azur, and have found them to be excellent, the site is easy to manage and their customer service is fast and efficient. We used French Connections last year as well - it was our first season so we were trying several - but haven't renewed owing to their very poor customer service.
The worst, by far, was Preferred Places, e-mails just disappeared into a black hole until it was time to renew my subscription, when they suddenly remembered my existence!
Maggie

[Stephen]

There are loads of web advertising sites available !!! what we need is home owners views on the best and worst sites !!!

Although what is a good site for one person is not neccessarily a good site for another..

I have just cancelled a subsciption for one site that sends out every enquiry to every owner and it was terrible trying to answer them all !! it was too much hard work,then the enquirer gets about 50 emails back with people offering ridiculously low prices for them to to pick and choose from, but there again some people love that site judgeing by comments on another forum.

Stephen

[paolo]

Stephen,

I agree, we could do with a consensus view on listing sites.

What I would like to happen is for people to post their views here on the good and bad sites. As the forum membership continues to grow, we will be in a position to have a meaningful ranking table of the best (and worst) sites.

Then we can take this measure of customer satisfaction, add it to a site's 'findability' on the search engines, and get a more rounded picture of which are the best sites to advertise on.

[tansy]

Is Chez Nous still in existence.....what a waste of money that was - cost a huge amount of money then when the catalogue was eventually published it was out of date - 5 enquiries for a copy and not one arrived & that was someone trying to book something!!

Shut up Shop tried to copy holiday rentals - nothing from that venture!

Gites in France got me a few bookings but the quality of renter was not good....lots of damage.

Have to say holiday-rentals do bring the right quality of person and up to now the volume of business - but I am noticing a drop in enquiries.

who is vrbo please?

[paolo]

vrbo.com = Vacation Rental By Owner

It's the biggest rental listing site, US-based so particularly good at bringing in enquiries from non-UK English-speakers. On their homepage you can see the number of advertisers they have. Last year it was 16,000. The last time I looked it was over 28,000, so they must be doing something right.

They get more traffic than any other site at the moment and that is especially good if you are in an area that is not over-represented on vrbo.

[tb]

Contrary to above comment I have been using Chez Nous for seven years and they still generate by far the largest number of enquiries for my properties. Their internet site is poor and their availability service a joke but the brochure is extremely well put together and handsomely published. I find that internet sites are becoming an increasing force but still are way behind the printed word. This will change quite quickly (I believe) and it is important to get listed.

I use holidaylets.net which has a well produced site, easy owner maintenance - including availability, and a good search engine. I shall take the advice here and look at vrbo

[paolo]

tb,

I find that internet sites are becoming an increasing force but still are way behind the printed word.

That is an interesting observation, I wonder if anyone else is getting more bookings from printed matter than the internet?

I suppose it depends on the number and quality of sites you are advertising on too. If you're just using the one, I would look at using at least a couple more.

[tb]

tb,

I suppose it depends on the number and quality of sites you are advertising on too. If you're just using the one, I would look at using at least a couple more.

I apologise in advance for the tedium of this posting.

Actually I have been using four web sites. I monitor one property which is advertised only on the internet, one which is advertised only by printed matter and three which are advertised in both printed and electronic media. I have measured over the last five years. Although the number of properties which I monitor is not sufficient for a statistically valid survey I have sufficient faith to manage by my results.

There is a distortion in my measurements caused by a high level of returning visitors. One of our current guests is enjoying their seventh visit and we have only been running gîtes for seven years. Their original contact was from a brochure. If I count all of their repeat visits as ‘from brochure’ then that overstates the case. If I take out their bookings entirely (and all other repeats) then I am still not getting a true picture.

If I measure enquiries as opposed to bookings then over 80% of them (for the properties advertised in dual media) come from printed brochures. However the conversion ratio is significantly higher for internet enquiries. Discounting internet enquiries for which the property is not available (Oh yes you get them even when there is a good availability chart) about 90% of internet enquiries convert as against 60% for brochure enquiries.

Just in case anybody is wondering what kind of sad so and so spends his time measuring these things in such detail – I am a Business Intelligence consultant and I practice what I preach!

[tansy]

tb...not tedious - at all...but I look at by pure monetary value - 1,340 STG to 155 STG....one booking generated from the higher figure 44 bookings from 155STG x 2 (2 properties)...holiday-rentals.com have it for me!! Also the quality of renters was and is so much better from the Internet sites...I can't answer that one either as I know it isn't just ABC's with home computers.

I too analyse my advertising spend - used to own a small recruitment agency - so our spend to applicants was quite important.

I have also had quite good results from free sheets in affluent areas....but have decided that in actual fact it is much easier working with internet sites in view of copy deadlines etc.

Repeat bookings - we're due to have the FD of a big internet holiday site back for the 4th time!

[tb]

Interesting. In monetary terms my internet bookings are about 1.5 times the cost of brochure bookings. I wonder what brings about the differences.

I assume (as your brochure costs were massively more than mine) that your had multiple brochure advertisements or perhaps a very big one. It may be that large ads are counter productive as clients assume that they are placed by large companies. I know that my client base is looking for something more family than commercial. I also know that when I look at the yellow pages I skip the big ads and look at the single line entries.

Of course the internet will become increasingly important - especially as it is independent of geography whereas brochures have a limited circulation. I'd be happiest with a company who had a good printed brochure combined with a good web-site. I haven't seen one yet - has anyone?

[alanrhone]

The comments on this subject make interesting reading. I am now finding that I can rely upon the internet exclusively for my enquiries and have ceased all brochure and printed advertising. I no longer have the need for my own brochure and refer all telephone enquiries to my website. Bookings throughout 2004 have been and, are, very satisfactory. My own website now shows up quite well on searches but the most productive site for me has been CottageGuide. I also use Local websites based in Cumbria which promote the Lake District. Internet Cottages is quite good and I have recently had success with UK Holiday Cottages Online. I am currently trying CottageNet but have not found this to be productive. I always register with any website which offer free inclusion for an initial period and its quite surprising how the enquiries from these can gather momentum. When I feel the need to boost my advertising I use Pay-per-Click with Google and restrict expenditure to £1 per day. I find this a very reasonable expenditure for the enquiries it produces and will return to pay-per-click in Winter.

[paolo]

tb,

I agree with Tansy, that's not tedious, it's how we should all monitor our marketing results.

Perhaps another distortion in your results could be that you are using the best performing brochures/magazines, but not the best potential sites for your property. Of course one cannot know which these might be unless you tried them all.

My strategy is very similar to alanrhone's - a few listing sites, coupled with a little pay-per-click to direct traffic to my own site. No printed matter - no way!