Our Inns

How many would openly admit that they fell in love with a property first, bought it, then started thinking about how to a) run it and b) market it as vacation accommodation?

Of course, it happens, it’s just that few people would admit to doing it.

So, what do you do once the property is yours? A lot depends on the condition of the property naturally as some people buy property in need of renovation, others buy something that’s ready to run and many buy something in between those extremes.

Clearly if you’ve a lot of renovation to be done before the property is useable as holiday accommodation then you’ll need to concentrate on that first. However, you should always be thinking of how you will market the property as that will affect how the renovations need to be carried out. Not only that, but you should be researching local attractions because you’ll need to know about those for use both in your marketing and when guests ask you where they can go.

You’ll need to know how potential guests are likely to use your property too. For instance, it’s fine to have a vacation rental miles from civilisation as the guests will be staying there for at least a week at a time but a B&B needs to be much closer to the attractions as guests will generally only be there for a few days at most. If you’re close to a motorway exit or an airport you may find that people will start to use you as a one night stop-over.

It’s useful to separate out the different aspects of your “product” in your marketing. By that I mean that there will be aspects of your marketing that relate directly to the property itself (cute cottage, city apartment, etc.), others relating to the type of location (countryside, beach, etc.), the attractions that are in the area, and, of course, whether you are marketing a B&B/hotel or a self-catering property.

Finally, don’t forget that you aren’t simply advertising your property: you are marketing it which is quite a different thing to do. Advertising implies that you cannot change anything whereas with most holiday properties you can change almost everything apart from the physical location of the property.

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Related posts:

1. Seasonal advertising
2. Keeping a varied mix of advertising outlets for your holiday property
3. What should you include in your “perfect” set of photos for your vacation accommodation?
4. What do you need to include on your holiday property website?
5. Where should the website for your holiday property be hosted?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Marketing, Owners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.