Which is your best site for B&B?

[scaliwells]

This year we are doing well for whole house rental, but the B&B side of things, although enquiries are picking up, not getting many bookings.

My best site is visitfrance (VF), then OD, then chambresd'hotesfrance (only 10€).
Then a lot of french booking come direct thru 'googling' or word of mouth.

Other sites I am with produce very little or nothing -
Gite de France
Chez nous
theholidaylet.co.uk
Homelidays
HolidayRentals (not renewed)
stugsidan.se
fritiden.se
local tourist offices

I have tried a few other free ones but I never can do the link (mega probs).
I don't mind paying for sites, if they produce revenue, but I think some are marketing mostly to house rental rather than B&B. Any you can recommend? Is sawdays helping anyone?

[Nessie]

Bookings currently are not as good as last year for us.

The best site by far for us this year has been Abritel

Last year Homelidays was the main site but this year it is very poor , only have one booking from the site so far, not even getting enquiries from them , which is not a good sign.

all guests this year are from the euro zone. Finding guests are also not flexiable this year with dates. revious years the main of the summer enquiries have been for a min of one week but this year its 4 or 5 days

This time last year we were fully booked for July and August apart from 3 or 4 days , but currently July i still have at least one room free for the whole of the month and in places still have the 3

[pete]

half our referals to our site are from google, the rest come from homelidays, gdf, chambredhotes.org and charmetraditions, and the odd other free one, 95% of enquiries are direct from our site, and the rest via phone,

does this help ?

we have had at least one room booked every weekend since easter, and some of the weekends we have been full, but we are failing over the summer hols, ie 2nd 2 weeks of july and august, we have very large gaps - any suggestions about filling these greatly appreciated,

pete

[brenda]

We are having to fight for every booking this year.

Homelidays have been our main site for the past 2 years - but very disappointing this year with only 3 enquiries and 2 bookings from them.

OD also very poor this year - will not renew when the ad expires next month.

Most of our bookings have come from free ads recently.

[Giddy Goat]

One year on, and what are your findings folks?

My reason for asking is that a friend with a super B&B in Bavaria has been relying on word of mouth and passing traffic up until recently.

She has decided to be a bit more serious about the business, now has a website, and has signed up on a US site for B&Bs - however she would love to attract more visitors from the UK so I was wondering if you would recommend any others to her. She is German, her husband is English.

Thanks!

[pete]

GG all our UK guests have come from

1 our own site,
2 stopover connections (because we are in the centre of france)
3 and one whos name at this moment escapes me but belongs to cassis
4 Your holiday matters

[Giddy Goat]

4 Your holiday matters

Thanks Pete, helpful, and I'm delighted that YHM is bringing in visitors. That's terrific news!

[Bruce]

We've had loads of French bookings from Pour les Vacances (we only joined two weeks ago, and 24 hours later we had two bookings)

[bentisdall]

We haven't even finished the work on our B&B and we're already getting telephone enquiries free-of-charge via google local search (within 5 days of listing it see http://www.weekmeadow.co.uk ). Currently we just have a small blob for searches like 'b&b Dartington' but are hoping to get one of those big place markers soon.
To do it yourself search for google places then add yourself, then create a google custom map of your location, register free listings with Thomson Local, Yell or whatever the local directory sites in you're not in the UK. Depending on local competition you will pretty quickly appear on the map for say 'b&b yourtownname'. Of course you will need your own website and any link building/reciprocal links/blogs you can do will also help. It's also unlikely to work very well in huge cities like London.

[Giddy Goat]

a friend with a super B&B in Bavaria has been relying on word of mouth and passing traffic up until recently.

She has decided to be a bit more serious about the business, now has a website, and has signed up on a US site for B&Bs)

Update on this: she has not looked back since signing up with the site, which is:

http://www.bedandbreakfast.com Has anyone else here tried this site?

Her property can be found here: http://www.bedandbreakfast.com/bavaria-fussen.html

The site allows a link to your website and hers is (for those interested): http://www.bavarianmagic.com

No prizes for guessing who suggested the domain name!