Maybe add a blog / diary or news / reviews of local attractions etc page to the site and update regularly, it will help a lot
Holiday Cottage Marketing
- Thread starter SilliamWhale
- Start date
Maybe add a blog / diary or news / reviews of local attractions etc page to the site and update regularly, it will help a lot
jade35
Member
- Location
- S E Cornwall
Does Twitter count? if so @SilliamWhale talk nicely to llamedos and have some good pictures of the farm maybe sunrise/sunset, ripening corn etc. to post.
J B
Member
- Location
- Shrops/Staffs/Cheshire borders
I *never* click on the top sponsored, basically because they may not be tailored towards what I want!
Any because I'm an awkward cuss!!
Princess Pooper
Member
- Location
- East Mids
I was going to say your web chappie should sort out the links etc so you can get as much free as possible, the SEO should be a standard part of his job.
bill and bens dad
Member
- Location
- west midlands
Interesting thread as I used to be in this business. 6 cottages averaging 48 weeks a year (Devon so easier!)
Firstly you should consider who you are aiming at.Most families cannot get 10 people away for a whole week so I would push weekend breaks for families. Then I would consider corporate clients for midweek, and f you can make it a fully serviced experience, possibility of a chef/maid servce then you may start to get somewhere. You have a beautiful product from the photos so just tweek the website and target the market (Bill and Bens dad,s wife!)
Firstly you should consider who you are aiming at.Most families cannot get 10 people away for a whole week so I would push weekend breaks for families. Then I would consider corporate clients for midweek, and f you can make it a fully serviced experience, possibility of a chef/maid servce then you may start to get somewhere. You have a beautiful product from the photos so just tweek the website and target the market (Bill and Bens dad,s wife!)
SilliamWhale
Member
I'm not dressing up as a maid!
Personally I find I'm quite far away for corporate and even weekends aren't an easy sell. Most people who come are English so the idea of a weekend in the far west of wales seems remote to them - I think. At the moment the key market seems to be "grannys 80th birthday" type people. School hols is easy sell.
Another thing I notice is that say you get a group of 6 people they all look for a place that sleeps 6 automatically whereas potentially they could have a bigger place with more space for not much more - I had a smaller cottage that slept 6 and it was full of pensioner groups/ older people/ retired from may-oct.
But possibly I'm being ignorant about the corporate and aiming too low, so I'll look into a bit more.
- What type of customer is a corporate client? I don't really know what i'd be looking at.lottiebunn
New Member
http://www.glansevin.com/corporate-breaks-venue.php
a good example
a good example
foxbox
Member
- Location
- West Northants
Amazed at the talk of 25% commission on here, no wonder they are so keen to talk others in to signing up! Building your own site and achieving a decent Google ranking isn't as hard as the agencies would have you believe, especially with the use of the business listing facility (can't remember it's new name) and other tools provided by Google themselves.
We've ranked on the first page of Google for several years with our own site and achieve very good occupancy rates. All we've done is build our own site, sort the SEO within the site builder, advertise with 3 or 4 paid for advertisers (usually well below £100 per year per site and more for insurance than anything else) and then treat each and every potential visitor as if they are the most important person we've ever dealt with - which they are.
Don't get carried away with on-line booking engines, they are useful for some but people don't mention the lost bookings they will lead to. We've converted lots of enquiries in to bookings by talking to a person on the phone; often there is flexibility in their dates which a simple "unavailable" in a booking engine would have missed. We also allow flexibility with arrival and departure dates where possible, this is vital for overseas bookings as flights can really dictate when a guest would like to arrive or depart. It's also surprising how often you find for example a Monday departure being matched up with someone who for some reason wants to arrive on a Tuesday but isn't allowed to at other local properties.
We've ranked on the first page of Google for several years with our own site and achieve very good occupancy rates. All we've done is build our own site, sort the SEO within the site builder, advertise with 3 or 4 paid for advertisers (usually well below £100 per year per site and more for insurance than anything else) and then treat each and every potential visitor as if they are the most important person we've ever dealt with - which they are.
Don't get carried away with on-line booking engines, they are useful for some but people don't mention the lost bookings they will lead to. We've converted lots of enquiries in to bookings by talking to a person on the phone; often there is flexibility in their dates which a simple "unavailable" in a booking engine would have missed. We also allow flexibility with arrival and departure dates where possible, this is vital for overseas bookings as flights can really dictate when a guest would like to arrive or depart. It's also surprising how often you find for example a Monday departure being matched up with someone who for some reason wants to arrive on a Tuesday but isn't allowed to at other local properties.
- Location
- South Wales UK
Also watch out for their brouchure prices often these agents have a customer price as advertised different rate price list for you and minus their commissions and minus vat if your registered so in the end your left with very little.
Your better off doing it all yourselves.
And dont get me started on Grading Boards etc ????
Also your up against the people who come into the countryside often retired and convert shed etc. on QT for holiday cottages and get away with all the regs. Fire inspections ,pat testing ,Non Domestic RATES etc. all above board operators got to do etc.etc. ???
Gets your blood boiling.
Your better off doing it all yourselves.
And dont get me started on Grading Boards etc ????
Also your up against the people who come into the countryside often retired and convert shed etc. on QT for holiday cottages and get away with all the regs. Fire inspections ,pat testing ,Non Domestic RATES etc. all above board operators got to do etc.etc. ???
Gets your blood boiling.
This time last year we ran a Facebook competition for a 3 night stay in one of our properties. This resulted in raising our page likes from 200ish to 600ish and resulted in several enquiries. We have just run the same competition again and gone from 650ish page likes to over 6500 likes. The competition post was seen by over 500,000 people & has resulted in several bookings & a massive amount of enquiries.
- Location
- South Wales UK
foxbox
Member
- Location
- West Northants
That's really impressive, massive exposure and even better if it's generated business too. We've been thinking about trying something similar, any tips on how to run it?
Was running holiday cottage with agent taking large cut -upside was almost 100% full all year -but have to consider outgoings such as changeover and cleaning together with council tax and utilities so now have let it on long term basis less income but also less out goings
If I was home all day to answer phone and emails much scope for return guests and corporate lettings
If I was home all day to answer phone and emails much scope for return guests and corporate lettings
hinchy
Member
- Location
- Derbyshire
Social media definitely good for keeping people interested. We're using it to advertise cottages, logs and butchered meat. People also seem to enjoy the general updates of what we're up to. Every so often we just slide a more sales focused post in there!
Have recently been contacted by these guys, anyone used them? http://www.groupaccommodation.com/
Have recently been contacted by these guys, anyone used them? http://www.groupaccommodation.com/
foxbox
Member
- Location
- West Northants
We get unsolicited emails from them on a regular basis, I'm pretty sure I've un-subscribed on a previous occasion too. Never been tempted to be honest, when I've run google searches recently rankings for most agencies seem to have slipped and more emphasis seems to have been placed on local listings. Obviously there's sponsored links running at the top but using our popular search terms they rank on page 5. I have to move away from our popular searches to put them on page 1 but it's worth trying it for yourself before you commit.
- Location
- Ceredigion
Have been thinking of doing the same thing for our holiday let. Any tips very much appriciated!!
High on a hill
New Member
- Location
- Loch Lomond
Had decided not to use a certain company for bookings let them know in plenty time no bookings pending or anything but have been informed I need to pay them £1000 to not proceed in 2016
Assuming its Wyndam they have it in the contract you have to opt out the May before you want to. They caught us out, with that. We threatened to pay to leave and they gave us a load more owner bookings during peak season.