Our Inns

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

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.

Popularity: 64% [?]

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

Most places around the world change quite markedly as the seasons change, but many holiday accommodation owners concentrate exclusively on the benefits for their guests should they come in just one season which may well be losing a lot of customers.

The difference is, of course, much clearer for some destinations than it is for others. For example, most ski resorts will typically have two distinct seasons: in winter they obviously target the skiers but in summer they can target hikers just as effectively. However, whilst the distinct marketing groups are evident in the case of the likes of ski resorts many other holiday destinations are, or could be, virtually year-round destinations albeit with different attractions as the seasons change.

In that relatively few people put a lot of effort into seasonal marketing, you could find it quite profitable to establish separate sections on your site describing the changing attractions of your place as the seasons change. Don’t try to second guess when guests will book their holidays though and instead maintain the seasonal attractions on your site throughout the year. Finally, don’t forget that although most listings sites are summer-oriented, there are a sizeable number that are winter-oriented.

What about Autumn/Spring? In most cases they are basically just extensions of your main holiday season(s) but lots of regions have festivals in both and it’s worth looking into the possibility of targeting them.

Before you start down this route, check that your place is suitable for bookings well out of season. Not only are some summer properties extremely expensive to heat in the summer, but some winter properties are just too hot to use in the summer. Both these can obviously be corrected for, but it’s best to do that in advance rather than when the guests have booked in

Popularity: 100% [?]

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

OK, perhaps not yet but we do hope to be eventually

Seriously though, thanks to all the guests who booked via our sites over the last year and thanks too to all those accommodation owners who supported us throughout that year. We hope that we provided y’all with a service that you felt was useful.

Over 2008 we grew quite a bit in size, just about doubling the number of listings during the course of the year and adding a number of new countries to our fold. We’ve also added property sales to our little empire on the same basis to try and help people regain control of the sale of their properties from the estate agents. Finally, of course, this blog was born too and we hope that it’s provided people with information helpful to the marketing of their accommodation properties.

What’s in store for next year? Well, we’ll likely be adding a few more countries over the year I expect. Lots more new property listings too, of course. In amongst that we’ll be adding some more improvements to the sites and probably adding a few more domains to our stable to help us to reach more guests for our owners. We feel that we’ve pretty much completed the initial reference entries for this blog that we were aiming to do when we started so it’ll be starting to move into different areas over the coming year.

And for us personally there’s a relocation coming up as we move operations from entirely France based to a UK/France split. That doesn’t directly affect the listings sites which are currently hosted in the UK and America but it will likely have an impact on the content of the blog entries in due course.

Finally, we’d like to wish the global economy the best of luck in getting out of the current mess. I’m not so sure that the measures being put in place by the various governments around the world will be enough to pull us out of what sometimes seems like a tailspin into oblivion so we’re gonna need a little luck to get us through.

Popularity: 95% [?]

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