Our Inns

One of the perennial issues when you take over an existing business is whether or not you should put up an “Under New Management” sign or not.

If previous owners were putting off guests then you probably should put one up. After all, people may decide to book somewhere else based on all the bad reviews that your place had been getting (if this seems likely, you should also change the name).

However, in the majority of cases, the previous owners aren’t really that bad. Putting up a sign when the previous owners were anything from average to good means that you’re likely to lose customers because some people will book because they were the owners.

Where you can come unstuck is that if your marketing image is significantly different from that of the previous owners you have effectively put up the sign anyway which is something to be wary of. You might think that your new image for the place is absolutely wonderful but the last thing you want to do is to lose the existing regulars which, in some cases I’ve seen, can amount to over 25% of the guest list each year.

It’s more difficult of course when you’re in the situation where you will be running the place significantly differently from the previous owners. In these cases you need to make it clear in your marketing what you do. For example, if the previous owners offered airport pickups but you don’t, then it might be better to state that explicitly. On the other hand, be positive about the extra things that you do as well eg if you’re an award winning chef and the previous owners weren’t then say so.

So, unless the previous owners are truly dreadful, don’t erect a sign as such but do be clear in your advertising where you differ from them.

Popularity: 32% [?]

We’ve talked about registering your domain, getting somewhere to host it, what you need to include on the site and how to get the perfect photos. Next up is getting it written either by yourself or paying someone else to do it but before we get to that, I thought it better to start with what you shouldn’t have on the site.

The first thing you need to bear in mind is that your site is there to sell your property to prospective guests. In particular it’s not there to show off the skills of the website designer. If you’re getting someone to write it for you, remind them of that; if you’re writing it yourself, keep in mind that it’s not a showcase for your webdesign skills.

How will they find your site? To sell your property you first need the people to see your site which usually means that they will find it via a search engine. Search engines can’t read images so it’s vital that your site actually has text on it (as much as possible). There’s something of a trend for some site designers to put everything in an image (even the text) which has the effect of making the page appear completely blank to the search engines.

What’s your place look like? When they reach your site people want to see what your place is like which is where your photographs come in. These photos need to be “Internet size” which means no larger than about 300 pixels wide. If you just upload the image from your camera chances are that it’s more like 3000 pixels wide which means that the page will take around one hundred times as long to load as it should. That 100 fold increase means that instead of taking a second or two to load it will take a couple of minutes even on ADSL and possibly an hour or more on dial-up (which is still used by a lot of people). Many people just don’t have the patience for that and will look elsewhere. Large images should be accessed by clicking on the small ones but even then “large” means no wider than 800 pixels.

What’s going to be on your homepage? This is one of the most important pages of your website yet a number of people use it merely to hold a large photo of their property and “click to enter”. In practical terms, you may as well not have that page there if that’s all that’s going to be on it. Websites aren’t like brochures with a front cover: people want to arrive on real content when they go to your site.

Background image? Think plain if you’re using one. Much as the faded image of your property as background to all the text might sound great and look fantastic on your computer, you can’t depend on it looking good or the text remaining readable on other screens and, of course, a full-screen background image is massive and therefore takes ages to download.

Animations? By and large these just eat up your bandwidth and annoy readers of your site. Avoid them.

Javascript? Many people block this with the security settings so you’re eating bandwidth un-necessarily. It’s best to think “plain vanilla” for the HTML that you use as it will load much faster and work on a much wider range of setups.

Background music? Another eater of bandwidth. Personal spoken greetings fall in the same category.

Finally, remember that each page is important in its own right and people can arrive directly on any page on your site. Therefore make sure that you can reach the rest of your site no matter what page they start with. Make each page unique and you can increase the number of entries that you have on the search engines: many people use the same title and description on every page which just throws away the possibility of extra entries. You’re going to lock down your site so they can’t do that? That would be one of the worst things you can do as the search engines won’t be able to access it either and it’s seriously annoying for users of the site too.

I was going to put an image of one of the worst sites around as my photo for this post but as that would only encourage them, I’ve left it to your imagination how bad they can be: think glaring background, flashing text, menu constantly circling around the page with each menu choice animated and tune playing in the background. Hard as it may be to believe, that was all on a single website that I came across this morning for a holiday property although it was actually worse than that as they didn’t even have any text on the page “describing” their property. The images were so large that the site crashed the browser so I don’t really know what their property looks like. Oh, and the site was done by a “professional” website designer.

Popularity: 38% [?]

Once you know what photographs should go into the perfect set, you need to actually take those photos. But what is a “perfect” photo?

First, it needs to be in focus or rather the main subject of the photo needs to be in focus as cameras focus on just one thing as do your own eyes. For example, if you are taking a photograph of your house with the swimming pool, you will need to decide whether it’s the house or the swimming pool that should be in focus because the camera will focus on only one of them perfectly.

In practical terms, for compact digital cameras you’ll usually find that the camera will focus on whatever is central in the image so if you make the pool central, that’ll be in focus, if you make the house central then that will be. For SLR cameras and more upmarket compacts you can either focus manually as I did in this photo or lock the focus then reframe the photo (see your camera instructions as to how to do that; most lock the focus and exposure when you press the button half-way down).

Second, the lighting must be “just right”. This usually means sunlit and at an appropriate time of day which generally means mid-morning or mid-afternoon when you’ll usually find that shadows fall in nice ways. It’s best not to have any clouds in the photos at all as people just don’t like to think of there being clouds on their holidays; obviously that’s easier said than done and even in the south of France you need to wait surprisingly long to find that “perfect” day for the photos.

It needs to be sunlit even for inside photos. Inside photos taken on dull days look completely different from those taken with the sunlight streaming through the windows. If you can, it’s usually best to take the inside photos with the view visible through the window which may require a little playing around with the setting on your flash to get the inside and outside light balanced but it’s time well spent as it makes for a much more attractive photograph. Bounce flashguns make for much more homely photos.

Third, you need to have the photo properly staged. This means that any junk lying around needs moved elsewhere, the washing taken off the line, the car moved somewhere else and, of course, the rooms need to be made up. All that may sound obvious to you but you’d be surprised at how many photos of holiday properties contain what seems like a junkyard in the foreground or half-made beds.

Fourth, and also obvious, you need to hold the camera level. Skewed photos have their place but usually not on your advertising.

Fifth, you need to take the photo at the appropriate time of year which generally means during the summer. Outside shots of leafless trees taken in the depths of winter won’t be nearly as effective in selling your property as those taken when the flowers are blooming and the trees green. Obviously, you’ll probably not be able to manage that in your first season but keep in mind the photos you’re looking for throughout the year and take them when you can.

Finally, take time over every one of the photos. Check each one on the computer screen after you take it as it’s easy to miss things on the camera screen and if everything else is perfect you can retake it. Take “too many” photos: remember that a professional photographer often takes as many as 20 photos just to get one suitable for publication.

Don’t forget that the photos that you take must go together to give a complete view of your place. It’s no good having dozens of perfect outside shots and no inside ones. Similarly each one must be appropriate: the out of focus, skewed photo of the mirror above is appropriate for this post but it’s unlikely to be appropriate in terms of advertising a holiday property yet I’ve seen equally inappropriate photos used to advertise properties.

Popularity: 18% [?]