Dedicated website for holiday let?

[jammy_basturd]

For those of you with holiday lets, have you bothered to create a dedicated website to help with marketing? Do you provide a booking service through the website? Do you get much traffic or many bookings through the website compared to the big holiday let websites?

Just trying to work out whether it is worth spending a few days doing a website for my parents holiday let (I'm a web designer anyway), or whether it would be better time spend to put an advert on some other holiday let websites.

Thanks in advance.

[Puggit]

We only use Owners Direct, and get all the bookings we need from that one page.

I'd like to have our own page, Mrs Puggit is well versed in creating websites - but it seems that being a stay-at-home-mum (with both kids at school) doesn't give her the time

[frosted]

For those of you with holiday lets, have you bothered to create a dedicated website to help with marketing? Do you provide a booking service through the website?[b] Unless you have 4+ properties I wouldn't bother [b/]

Do you get much traffic or many bookings through the website compared to the big holiday let websites? [b] Depends how much money you want spend, it's not worth it just for one property, however having a website is not a bad idea, just don't spend on seo and live booking. These things can be done over email or phone [b/]

Just trying to work out whether it is worth spending a few days doing a website for my parents holiday let (I'm a web designer anyway), or whether it would be better time spend to put an advert on some other holiday let websites. [b] Spend the time on taking nice pictures, good description and find out who your customers will be. Owners direct is rubbish, holiday rentals is expensive so that leaves holiday lettings, trip advisor and airbnb [b/]

Edited by frosted on Tuesday 11th September 20:30

[JJ 170]

you will never get it found via seo as there is so much competition.

i would set up a pin interest / pictures page taht you can link to. the only real benefit is seeing more pictures of the vila in my opinion. you can link to it then from the big villa sites such as owners direct etc

[jammy_basturd]

Yea, pretty much what I thought. It's a nice to have that we could link to from our various adverts on the big sites, rather than something that's actually going to draw in more renters.

[JCW]

It depends on what end of the market you're trying to attract so I'd suggest for the mid-market a combination of a dedicated and villa rental site to drive sales. Owners Direct et al have their place, but you tend to get lumped in with the James Villas/Bucket & Spades properties with little or no differentiator; fine if that's your bag but next to useless if that's not your market.

Personally, I've found a dedicated site alongside a decent local agent as the best way of delivering business so given your costs will be low you've nothing to lose and can always drive site traffic using traditional media as a starting point.

[frosted]

Out of curiosity where is your parents cottage? I forgot to give a mention to house trip, very good and they offer potential clients piece of mind by holding out payment until they check in.

[jammy_basturd]

It's an apartment in Spain.

[frosted]

Check out housetrip.com

[PauloV12V]

The wife did our websites dead easy apparently took her a couple of evenings.

There is a company that you can use for the templates and build up. Cost us next to nothing and she had no experience at doing websites before.

Its worked really well as we have taken quite a number of bookings direct.

www.villayar.com

and www.skivillars.com

are the domains and you can see how the pages are made up. You add as much as you want and can link to other sites for cross bookings.

If you want me to get more info of the company we use give us a shout and I will pull it out of the file.
Regs

We also advvertise on two websites for around £180 per year