Our Inns

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

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: 28% [?]

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: 29% [?]

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

Last time we spoke about one sweeping assumption that you need to make when selling a holiday property: that the new owners will run the place in the same as you do.

Unfortunately, that’s usually quite unlikely so the question is: how do you manage the differences?

First off, you must operate with that assumption as otherwise you’d need to close down the business since you’d not know which, if any, guest bookings you could accept. After all, the new owner may just want to live in the property themselves and not run it as holiday accommodation at all. When you’ve found a buyer that changes and life can get quite complicated.

There are basically three scenarios that you’ll be faced with:

1. They’re continuing on the same basis;
2. They’re continuing but on a slightly different basis; or
3. The owner is closing down the business;

In the first two cases, you need to negotiate a hand-over period which needs to be at a fixed time so allow for lots of slippage as it’s sure to happen. The hand-over should take place after the new owner has paid up as “situations” can arise during the hand-over eg if they find out that they really don’t like the work involved or that they’ve made some critical assumption which just isn’t valid.

For the second two cases, it’s a little more complicated. First, you will need to change your advertising to reflect the changes or closure of the property. In particular, make sure that your availability is closed/reduced as appropriate with any systems you’re on which allow for instant confirmations. You’ll need to examine any bookings with arrival dates after you’re no longer the owner to see if they can be cancelled or if you need to find alternative accommodation for the guests.

If they are making changes to how the business will be run then you need to allow for that in the bookings that you’ll be taking for guests that will be in the property after you’re no longer the owner. If they’re adding services it’s fine obviously but if, for example, you offer airport pickups and they won’t then you’ll need to adjust your advertising well in advance and may need to change how you run the place to reflect those changes.

If they’re closing down the business then it’s simpler in some ways. The date on which you’re moving out won’t be as critical and obviously you can close down the business in advance to simplify your own move.

If you’re living in the property yourself then it’s going to be simpler to close down the property about a week before the change of ownership to give yourself time to pack and move out. If you can’t do this you should try to close down as many rooms as you can for that week.

In addition to the normal house moving actitivies you’ll also have to do something about the business itself. For example, you’ll want to close down the company, close the business bank accounts, inform the various tax and social security people, cancel the property insurance, etc. In fact, this aspect will keep you extremely busy for quite a while so it’s best not to be too optimistic about the completion date that you set for the sale, especially if you will be continuing to run the business in the run-up to the sale.

What about that hand-over period? You’ll want to keep this as short as possible of course. You’ll need anything from a day to a week depending on your property eg a self-catering property should be doable in a day whilst a B&B will usually take a few days. You’ll need to cover the basic house operation (heating system, locks, security, etc.) which you can speed up if you write an operations manual in advance. Next up is the advertising which you can document in advance though bear in mind any contracts which you have as these places may need informed in advance about the change of ownership. Finally, there’s the logistics eg how the laundry service operates, the maid service, etc.

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the amount of work entailed in handing the property over to a new owner. Remember that you’ve both the normal moving out tasks to do but in addition both the aspects of closing down your holiday business and handing over the running to a new owner.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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