Farm Cottages are lovely places for those wishing to relax with family and friends in the countryside.

With wide open spaces, countryside views and plenty of peace and quiet, many farms across the UK have chosen to make the most of what they have to create a range of stunning farm holiday cottages for guests to enjoy.

Combining modern facilities with the rural charm of a bygone era, Farm Stays in traditional farm cottages on working farms are increasingly popular with families. By escaping to the country, children can meet the farm animals and have the freedom to explore, whilst parents can soak up the relaxed atmosphere in a rustic farm cottage.

My Favourite Holiday Cottages has an excellent selection of Farm Holiday Cottages from up and down the UK, so we have chosen six cottages from the North, South, East and West to ensure that you’re never too far away from your own stay in the countryside.

 

Threshers Barn at Bakers Mill

Holiday Cottage Visitors Directory

Our latest blog post was all about the information packs owners leave for their guests. Poor and out-of-date information in these packs can frustrate guests, so these must be kept up to date.

Information packs are also a handy way of working with local businesses. If there is a particular restaurant or tourist attraction that you’d like to recommend, see if they have any vouchers you could put into the pack. Better still, if you can obtain or create a PDF of the voucher, you can email it to your guests as an advance welcome gift. If you include the name of your property on the voucher, you’ll be at the forefront of local business owners’ minds if tourists ask about local accommodation.

 

Summer Photography

As ever, we’re incredibly keen on owners using the best possible photographs to advertise their properties. Great images create the best emotional response from potential guests, making them much more

My Favourites is Number 1, Page 1 on Google!

The My Favourite Holiday Cottages team is very proud to announce that our website is now the Number 1 Position on Page one of Google for its key search term 'Holiday Cottages UK' and on page 1 for two others. Our increase in the rankings has massively increased the amount of traffic the website has been seeing. The number of unique visits we are getting now exceeds 12,000 a month, generating far more click-throughs and enquiries than ever before.

We're not resting on our laurels, though, as we continue to improve the amount of traffic the website receives through our investment in SEO, Social Media and our Festival Cottages section (see below), as well as many other features which we have planned coming up in 2012.

Festival Cottages

As well as updating the general design of each Festival cottage page, our Festival Cottages section continues to expand with more festivals from up and down the country

My Favourites are now more social…

Over the last year, we’ve been steadily building a stronger presence on Twitter to provide information to holiday cottage owners as part of our services for My Holiday Marketing. Over the last month, we have successfully expanded this to include a new Facebook page for owners. We’re also pleased to announce that we have established new Twitter and Facebook pages to attract potential bookers to your listings on My Favourite Holiday Cottages, all of which are and will continue to contribute to the steady increase in visitors to the site.

To get the ball rolling, we’d love it if you could ‘like’ and follow the pages by clicking on the links below. We’d appreciate the extra support – and as this will help drive more traffic to the site, it’ll also benefit your listing.

(My Favourite Holiday Cottages) Twitter Facebook

  Design Modifications

We always like to place as much emphasis as possible on visitors

Why May is The Best Time to Visit The Lake District.

The Lake District has long been popular with writers, artists, poets and holidaymakers. But when is the best time to visit? Summer days can be beautiful but busy. The Winter months can be equally stunning and much quieter, while the Autumn colours should not be missed, particularly if you’re an avid photographer. However, one of the best times to visit is coming up right now. So, without further ado, why not consider a trip this May?

Why in May, you might wonder? Well, it’s a beautiful time of year. The days are getting longer, typically with more sunshine and less rain. The Easter rush has passed, and the Summer influx has yet to come. 

Historically, May is one of the driest months of the year in Cumbria, meaning wet-weather gear can stay in the rucksack. And whilst hosts of golden daffodils might be past their best, the countryside is a riot of colour. There are carpets of bluebells and swathes

Driving more visitors to your website...

We’ve now animated’ the right-hand sidebar to get more people to visit your website (or make an enquiry). If you look at a listing, the sidebar with links to your site will follow you down the page. This provides visitors with a clear call to action alongside your essential details, regardless of where they are on the listing, so even more people should be able to click through to your website.

  Festival Cottages

We have had a flurry of new festivals signed up recently. Added to the Festival Cottages page, we now have Ireby Festival near Keswick, Ryedale Folk Festival and Beverley Folk Festival in Yorkshire, alongside Ludlow Open and Ludlow Festival in Shropshire. We also have finalised the details of festivals in Penzance and Northumberland so that we will reveal these details in the following newsletter. If you know of any cottages in any of these areas that would like more bookings during the festival and

Our Availability Calendar...

has already been adopted by many owners on the site, but did you know that you can embed the calendar on your own website if you don’t already have an availability calendar? You can find the Availability Calendar Code needed to make it work under the ‘Availability Calendar’ section of the Owners Login Section. Simply pass this on to your website developer and the calendar can appear on your own website.

Youtube Videos of your property…

can now be added to your listing. Simply add your Youtube Video reference on the ‘edit’ section of each property you have listed for it to display. It’s a brilliant way for people to have a thoroughly good look around your cottage.

 

Want to increase click-throughs to your website?

We've noticed that quite a few people haven’t added a link to their availability page. As the ‘check availability’ button is one of the three key buttons on each listing, it’s really important that

UK Map Search

Using some technical wizardry, we’ve used your cottage’s postcode to pin it to a map of the UK. As a result, bookers can now see the exact location of your property, making it even easier for them to work out how close your property is to the beach, countryside or the nearest town. We’ve also colour-coded the ‘pins’ so you can immediately see the size of each cottage, making it quicker and easier for relevant people to arrive at your website.

Quick Tip: If your postcode shows your property in the wrong location, login, and you can change it by using the Map Icon under ‘Your Properties.’

 

My Favourite Holiday Cottages are outperforming Owners Direct.

Over the previous months, we’ve continued to see significant improvements in the amount of traffic to My Favourites. Our website often outperforms Owners Direct; see the statistics below for Devon Beach Court in Woolacombe. With over 2,920 visits since January 2011, My Favourite

We are launching our new Availability Calendar!

We’re happy to announce that our new Availability Calendar is available for you to use for your listing. We’ll shortly be sending out an email detailing how the calendar works. We’re also making the calendar available for you to use directly on your website if you don’t have an availability calendar already, making it an excellent piece of software for managing your bookings.

Half Price Premium Websites

As it’s Christmas, we’re offering half-price premium websites for the first four owners who apply before the end of December. Starting 2012 with a modern, fresh website is an ideal way to attract even more bookers to your property, and our package includes a professional photography session. We’ve already produced many high-quality cottage websites, proving incredibly popular with owners and bookers alike. They not only look good but, like a Formula One car, it’s the combination of superb design principles