Our Inns

Blogs give a peculiar view on reality at times. This one in particular has been rather misleading over the past 18 months or so. Whilst nothing much has been written here, that’s because we’ve been really busy in real life.

First off has been a series of web design courses of which the first fruits are now visible in the form of the radical update and redesign as seen on Our Bed and Breakfasts and Our Holiday Rental Homes. Some of that redesign is also being back-engineered into the original ourinns series of sites although we want to retain something of the original character of those sites.

Also behind the scenes is a major exercise in direct and indirect promotion of the sites. Directly, we’re re-running an updated version of our SEO promotion exercises of a few years ago. Indirectly, we’re re-doing the SEO exercise across all of the sites which should help in raising their profile as it did first time around (we had to upgrade our hosting plan three times over the course of six months or so as a result of that).

We’re also embarking on a number of initiatives aimed at dramatically raising the number of properties listed. That’s something we plan on reviewing as the year progresses as it may require us to employ some staff to keep on top of the larger numbers.

That’s just a taster of what we’re hoping to do. For instance, our new site design makes it easier to incorporate new features and we’ve a number of ideas in mind which’ll keep us busy during the year.

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I think there are few people who would disagree that 2010 was a bad year all-round for the economy and in particular for tourism, but is there any sign of an upturn any-time soon?

Unfortunately, it looks like it will take quite a while to get everything back on an even keel. A number of our owners have sold up over the last year but there are probably just as many who are trying to sell and that overhang of unsold properties will take quite a while to clear. Right now, reducing the price seems to make little difference to sales prospects. Moreover, even when you do get a buyer they will almost certainly still want the price reduced further no matter how much you’ve already reduced it. Then, of course, there’s the bank to contend with and they may well want the buyer to negotiate a further reduction.

Thus, sitting tight and waiting out the recession seems the only option for many owners. Unfortunately, that mentality of reducing prices also applies to guests. Also, there’s the economic impact on potential guests who are fewer in number thanks to job losses and salary reductions although if you’re in the eurozone, you’ll at least have the advantage of improved exchange rates reducing the cost for guests.

So what can you do?

The key is not to reduce your prices beyond what you can afford. Not even that far in fact as potential guests may well ask for a further reduction which you won’t be able to offer if you’re already at your base cost. What you can do is to add low-cost enhancements to what you do offer but which significantly improve the perception of your place by the guests.

For example, if you already have wifi for yourself, you can add it for the guests at very low cost (just by buying a router in the simplest case) which lets you add “Free wifi” as one of your services on offer. Assembling a local guidebook costs little (other than your time) but can significantly improve the impression of a holiday at your place.

Perhaps most critically, update and maintain all your marketing efforts. Cutting back on marketing expenditure is a death-knell to any business and particularly so in hard times.

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Once they’ve got the advertising for their holiday property up and running most people don’t put a great deal of effort into looking for new places where they can advertise their property. After all, if you’re getting good returns from your existing advertising, why would you bother looking any further?

Whilst in days gone by that might have been a viable strategy, the changing nature of the market means that it’s not nearly so reliable as it once was. For example, last year the combined effects of the rise in the euro and massive price hikes by the discount airlines meant that the nationality mix for our own property in the south of France changed from being a largely British/French split to one that was mainly German/French and that in turn meant that the sources of bookings that we received changed too ie the previously very popular sites produced very few guests for us.

Similarly this year, the sources providing the most guests is changing again. We’ve seen a quite pleasant rise in the number of bookings both via our own property site and indeed via OurInns. Why that should be so is too early to say but it does show that it’s worthwhile maintaining the mix of advertising that we do rather than relying on those places that worked well in the past.

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