Our Inns

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Getting the perfect set of photos for your holiday property comes second only to getting the text on the website perfect.

The first thoughts for most people are either that they will get a professional photographer or that they can take them on their digital compact camera. Neither of these are true. The professional photographer will be at your place for, at best, a few hours and even if that happens to be on a day with clear skies, they’ll not be around long enough to get the light just right for all aspects of your property. Even for outside shots you’ll find that there’s a world of difference in the quality of image produced by a “proper” camera compared to a compact and you need that better quality to sell your place.

Where you really notice the difference is in photos taken inside. These two photos were taken on similar days yet the one taken with the compact camera looks pretty dull whilst the one taken with the digital SLR is much brighter and homely. Bearing in mind that these are quite small images and that you’ll probably use larger ones on your site you can see that it’s going to make a significant difference in the overall presentation of your property.

So how much is this going to cost? Well, a decent compact digital runs to around £300 these days and a decent digital SLR is from £400 to £700 although you should add a “bounce flash” if the budget allows for another £100 or so.  If you buy at the cheaper end of the range the additional cost is around £200 which will be more than made up in additional bookings from the better quality images. This is, of course, a one-off cost and no matter how many photos you take you won’t be out any more money whereas with a professional photographer you’d be spending a similar amount and would only ever have the one set of photos for your money.

What about the resolution of the camera? Frankly, it doesn’t matter much these days as even the cheapest cameras are coming in at around 5mp and the images that you’re going to use online are going to use only a small fraction of that resolution. What’s more important is the size of the lens and that’s where the SLRs win as the lens is around 4cm (2 inches) across compared to something like 1cm (1/2 inch) on a compact. That equates to a quality improvement of around 15 times so, for example, that little spec of dust on the SLR will appear much smaller than the equivalent spec on the compact.

So what am I using? At the moment I’ve a Nikon D40x (now sold as a D60) and have the SB-600 flash; total cost around £800. Although I don’t use the flash that much it’s very noticeable when I use it to take photos of the rooms and I’m sure that it’s paid for itself already. Having said that, if you don’t want to buy the flash (and at £200 it does seem a touch over the top to take four or five photos) you can usually rent them or buy a cheaper model. The important thing is that it must be a “bounce flash” which means that you need to be able to point the flash at the ceiling rather than taking the photos with the flash pointed in the same direction as the camera: it’s that bouncing of the light off the ceiling that makes the photos more homely.

Why bother? Won’t a professional photographer take better photos anyway? Well, no, they won’t for the simple reason that you can wait around until the sunlight lights the pool perfectly whereas they’ll not be there long enough to do that. Similarly on inside shots you want the room lit by the sun which obviously happens at different times for each of your rooms. Essentially the difference is that you have the time to wait for perfection whereas they have to take the photos in the hour or two that they’re with you. Also, you just couldn’t afford to pay a professional to take photos of all the local attractions for you but if you’ve got the camera it’s not costing you anything to do that.

I’ll be covering just what you should be aiming for in that perfect set of photos next time.

Popularity: 5% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This requires a lot of thinking as it’s going to be one of the major suppliers of guests for you eventually.

I’m going to be talking here about what you need to include, not how it should be included so this is equally applicable to everything from DIY sites to those that you have written for you. Don’t forget that even if you’re getting someone to write the site for you, you’ll need to provide them with the bulk of the text and photos: what they do is produce a design to slot that into.

The first thing to note is that although every property is different, guests will want to know the same basic types of information about it. So, no matter what the property is you’ll need to include this information; for very specialised properties there may be even more things that you need to say: remember that the guest knows nothing about your place that you don’t tell them!

The basic information that you need is:

1. A title. This is one of the most important pieces of text that you’ll write so spend time on it to get it as close to perfection as possible. What you’re aiming for is to have all the appropriate keywords within the first 60 characters or so as that’s what people will see on their searches and when they arrive on your site. Unless the name of your place is very descriptive don’t waste characters by including it as few people will search for you by name.
2. An overall description of your place. Spend time on this as it’s one of the more important sections because it’ll be used as the introduction. You should try to include the specific attractions of your place in the first sentence or two as it’s very important to catch the attention quickly. That said, make this as long as you can.
3. A description of your rooms. What’s in the room? Is it ensuite? Has it any views? How many people can you accommodate per room and altogether?
4. Catering. Do you do it? If so, what do you do and for how much? If not, what cooking facilities are there?
5. Facilities. List everything that you offer from humble clock-radios through to heated swimming pools.
6. Seasons & Prices. Don’t use price ranges: be specific. Name the currency too as many guests will be international ones.
7. Booking. How do people make a booking with you? Go right through the process as this varies a lot from one property to another. Do you require a deposit? Is there a cleaning charge? Do you take credit cards (name them explicitly ie rather than saying “all major cards” say “American Express, Diners, Mastercard, Visa”). Do you take travel vouchers? How do people get money to you for deposits?
8. Directions. If you live onsite, include this otherwise it may be best to omit it and send the details out when you get a booking. List the airlines arriving in all the local airports and, if possible, where they fly from.
9. FAQ. Although this will duplicate to some extent what you’ve said in other areas many people look for this and you can get a lot of site visitors via it. Include things like the local voltage, type of plugs, credit card acceptance in shops, nearest ATM, etc.
10. Keywords. Keyphrases actually. You should have at least a dozen of these describing aspects of your property.
11. Local attractions. What is there to see and do locally? Name them ie say “close to Chateau Queribus” rather than “close to a castle”. Write a LOT on this as it’s a very easy way to pick up bookings.

If you run activity holidays then you’ll need a separate section for that and, usually, it’s best to produce a separate website for them as otherwise you’ll lose ordinary guests who are just looking for accommodation.

Within the website design itself the most important aspects of the above are:

1. the first 60 characters of the title as this is what people will see on searches and when they click on your site; 
2. the first 150 or so characters of the description as this is what they’ll see on searches;
3. the keywords, although not all search engines use these currently.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? You’ll need to allow several days to fully complete all the above.

I’ll be talking about the photos next time and how you should go about getting the perfect set.

Popularity: 22% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you’ve been following our little series, you’ve chosen the perfect name for your place, registered the domains and picked a hosting service so “all” you need to do now is write the website.

There are three basic approaches to this which are 1) write it yourself 2) write it using a template and 3) get someone else to write it.

Writing it yourself has the advantage that you can do anything and it’ll not be a copy of any other site. However, the downside is that you need to commit yourself to updating the look & feel of the site as years go by eg you should normally totally refresh the site around every 3 to 5 years. The big upside of this is that you can make small changes as you go along which is exactly what most people need to do when they’re starting out in the business.

The template option is probably the best option for you if this is your first website. These templates come in many forms:

1. Those produced by some listings sites. For example, we produce a mini-website for you when you sign up that includes more pages than many custom websites do.
2. Those produced by companies specialising in generated websites. I don’t recommend these because your website is completely tied in to the company.
3. Those available through your hosting service. Although many of these are excellent they do tie you to that hosting service.
4. Those provided within the website design software that you use. This is the best option as you aren’t tied in to any particular hosting service.

If you’re getting someone else to write the site for you don’t think that this means you have no work to do because in almost all cases they’ll expect you to supply the bulk of the text and photos for the site. What they do is provide you with a design into which they’ll place your text and photos. Consequently, it’s often better to go for the second option as a) it’s a lot cheaper and b) it lets you make changes later without paying again.

I’ll be covering what you need to include on your site next time.

Popularity: 45% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!