Right now is a very good time to review the way you describe your holiday cottage online. With most weeks booked until well into the autumn, you should be turning your attention to filling bookings for next year. As well as reviewing prices, what can you say that will have more guests reaching for that 'Contact Us' button?

While we all hope the popularity of self-catering holidays continues to grow, tread cautiously. In 2022, with travel restrictions likely to have been eased, the temptation to holiday abroad may well prove irresistible to many and with so many more holiday cottages available, bookings may be harder to come by. So, when people do find your advert, make sure it is as convincing as it can possibly be. Make the best use of the summer months, following the recommendations in these two articles on the best way to describe your holiday home. Above all - move from merely listing their contents to describing their benefits to guests. Turn good content into truly eye-catching content.

These two articles from SuperControl and Rental Tonic offer suggestions on what to include (and how to say it) in a description of your holiday cottage so that it is written from a guest's perspective.  Once you've read them, you'll be itching to start tweaking your adverts to make them more appealing to anyone considering booking your cottage.

If you really want to improve the way you advertise your holiday cottage without having to resort to smoke and mirrors - then learning what you have to say about it - and how you say it - should pay dividends: more bookings from happier guests!

The secret to creating the perfect holiday rental advert

Holiday cottage descriptions: does what you write really make a difference?

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Getting bookings for peak weeks is easy! Or, if not, some serious revising of your marketing and advertising plan is required.

The main challenge all owners face when marketing their holiday property is getting bookings outside the school holidays. That’s about 38 weeks in the year -  a huge potential revenue source.

Getting bookings for shoulder seasons, i.e. the weeks on either side of the school holidays between March and the end of October requires careful planning. 

Read this list of 5 marketing goals from Guesthook to help you decide who and how you'll market your cottage to attract more bookings between Easter and the summer and autumn holidays.

If you would like to recommend another proven tip - add it to the comments below.

Here’s a summary:

Buddy up with your local tourism bureau.

Buddy up with your local tourism bureau.

Build your social media following.

Make the most of your mailing list.

Get featured.

Now…. where to start? Download a free Vacation Rental Marketing Blueprint to help you create an effective marketing plan for your holiday cottage.

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The best house rules for a holiday cottage are ones that ensure guests can relax and enjoy their holiday while knowing being confined by draconian terms or doing something unwittingly naughty. Having a clear set of do's, don'ts, and responsibilities also make it much easier to deal with problems that may arise. Use this template of 'acceptable' rules from Lodgify to identify those that you feel will be relevant to your own holiday cottage.

A good policy to adopt is working to create a set of house rules that, if anything goes wrong, don't leave a good relationship between an owner and their guest still intact (and likely to return) without either party feeling hard done by. Not easy - but this list may help! Above all, they not only apply to an owner's expectation of guest behaviour but also set out what the guest can rightfully expect from a property's owner.

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When deciding where to invest your advertising budget for your holiday cottage, the aim for independent holiday cottage owners is to get the maximum amount of bookings for the least amount of money.

Put aside Google Adwords and Facebook for the moment and concentrate on the main sources of revenue for most independent holiday cottage owners: Adverts on directory sites.

These fall into two camps: the mega-international sites, owned mainly by USA-based Expedia, such as VRBO, Holiday Rentals, and AirBnB, and then the smaller, mainly UK-based sites, such as My Favourite Holiday Cottages.

You’ll get – or you should get – a goodly number of bookings from advertising on the mega-sites, but so you should, given the amount of money you pay in charges, fees and commissions for each booking.

Then there are those in the middle of the pack – such as My Favourite Holiday Cottages, Independent Cottages, and Country Cottages Online. You’ll probably get fewer bookings from these. However, they are much cheaper and more user-friendly, and the revenue from a single booking still delivers a profitable return on your investment.

Keep the above in mind while I relate a wise and cautionary tale from Rolls Royce.

Be Like Rolls Royce: Diversify

Like all big businesses, Rolls Royce has a sizable procurement department, seeking to negotiate the best deals possible from the billions they spend on purchasing supplies. However, they don’t go out to a single business and negotiate a massive deal at a knockdown price. Instead, they spread their purchasing across a range of suppliers, large and small, at varying prices, often for the same widgets. Why do this if this will cost a little more in the short term?

If RR invests all their financial eggs in a single supplier’s basket, other suppliers will soon go out of business. Then, with very little choice other than to buy from a single supplier, the field is open for that company to pump up their prices, knowing they have no competitors. So, Rolls Royce buys far and wide to ensure that all their suppliers have plenty of competitors. That’s healthy long-term thinking, especially as they tend to get better preferential treatment from small firms.

It’s a similar tale in the Holiday Cottage business. Wise owners now save a part of their budget to invest in a couple of the smaller sites. They may bring fewer bookings than the big sites, but bookings are all the same. And while such sites are still in existence, they act as a brake on the prices Expedia would probably charge if they knew there were no other competitors to go up against.

Also, remember that smaller sites provide you with your guest’s contact details, allowing you to invite them back. More significant sites are already working to prevent this or to find ways to apply their booking fee should this occur.

Diversity is the name of the game. The more choice there is, the cheaper it will be.

So, invest a little in an advert on one or two of the UK sites to keep them flourishing and act as a brake to major hikes in prices from the multinationals so you can afford to keep using them too! Be a wise owner: spread your bets.

Are you missing out on enquiries and bookings because you haven't listed your cottage on one of our Location Search pages?

We've noticed that many people search for their favourite holiday cottage by geographic location instead of by county or town. For example, people looking for a holiday cottage in the Lake District search using that phrase in more significant numbers than those using Cumbria, Windermere or Hawkshead.

Here is a list of the most recent LocationSearch Pages we have added. If you have a cottage o My Favourites in one of these locations, it will only appear on these pages if you have selected it in your property edit page. So, do log in and your property to a location where relevant.

Location pages are very popular, and many of these pages now have pages on rankings.

South West Coast Path

Jurassic Coast

Lincolnshire Wolds

North Cornwall

Llyn Peninsula

The Fens

Wye Valley

White Cliffs Country (Kent)

Yorkshire Wolds

The Chiltern Hills

7 IDEAS TO BRING INSTANT LUXURY TO YOUR VACATION RENTAL

Luxury holiday cottages don't have to be about a house brimming with the latest branded appliances or having facilities such as a swimming pool, home cinema or hot tub. Far from it! Focus on creating a luxurious feel. Wonders can be achieved through simplicity of design in creating a luxurious ambience from the most basic of materials and fittings.

Rattan furniture, pot plants to add spot colour and an Ornamental lamp.

Essentially, it’s all about: Simplicity over bling, and experiences over things

Here are seven clever tips from Lodgify on creating a luxury feel for your holiday cottage without spending a fortune.

1. Keep it minimalist

2. Play with textures – they are your friend

3. Create illusions with mirrors and frames

4. Remember that lighting is the linchpin

5. Emphasize the entryway

6. Upcycle inexpensive, plain furniture to transform it into something special

7. Ensure a guest’s experience is at the forefront

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