january 2013 Newsletter
Online Bookings
We noticed a healthy increase in online bookings from owners' websites. That's good news for those MFHC subscribers with an online booking option, as we aim to drive potential bookers to your website and encourage them to book from there. As one of our subscribers told us, "I'm away in January, so I cannot answer the phone to enquirers, but with my online booking facility and plenty of visitors to my site, I'm not losing any bookings." If you don't have an online booking function on your website, you may wish to consider it. We'd happily offer some advice. We'd happily provide some guidance if you want further information on this subject. Ask here about online booking facilities.
Marketing Thoughts: Instagram – more than just a pretty picture?
This month, we've been looking into the world of Instagram. If you haven't heard of it, Instagram is a popular photo-sharing app you can use if you have a Smartphone. Anyone using the app can add filters to give their images a vintage retro look. The 'Instagrammed' photos have something special about them and could be worth using to promote your property. Please read our article to see how one Cornwall owner uses them. We'd also love to hear from other owners about how they use Instagram. So, do add comments to the blog post about what you enjoy about using Instagram.
Advice required: Ironing solutions. Are there any?
We recently had a message from an owner in Anglesey about that all-important element of holiday cottage maintenance – ironing (we can hear the groans from here). She wanted to know if anyone knew of any genuine non-iron bedding that could be bought. Although it does undoubtedly take a long time to do, especially on changeover days when there is so much else to organise, it does help to make a huge first impression on guests. If wrinkle-free sheets don't exist, are there any quick methods of ironing or useful gadgets you use to save time? Alternatively, does anyone not iron because visitors don't notice? Let us know, and we'll publish responses in our blog. E-mail your views and tips to us, and once we receive enough collective information to form a helpful article, we will put it into a blog post for everyone to read.
Discounting Your Holiday Cottage - Blog Article
While we're on the subject of blogging, Rick has published his third article on discounting your rentals. 6 Tips to Better Holiday Cottage Discounting considers how to ensure you don't give away more than you need to get bookings by discounting your prices.
MFHC Site Updates
During December and early January, we improved the MFHC site's optimisation to help maintain its steady climb up the search engine rankings. It's rather like a massive spring-cleaning exercise: mending or removing broken links, removing or rewriting duplicate text, adjusting meta titles and descriptions, and lots of other jargon-related tasks.
To date, the number of visitors to the MFHC site is more than double that enjoyed in January 2012, and we still have a week in January to go. We're improving the Members area, making it easier for you to update text and images or add a Late Availability listing, Featured, or County Favourite upgrade.
We have also improved search results pages. They now show 20 properties per page, so they load much faster. The order in which cottages are displayed is automatically changed every two hours to ensure that everyone regularly enjoys time in the limelight at the top of page one.
We spend time each month developing the site, so if you have any thoughts and feedback as to how My Favourite Holiday Cottages could work better for you (and potential bookers), then whizz them to us for our attention or call us on 01598 710631. We welcome all opportunities to listen to and learn from owners, so do get in touch. We'll reward any great suggestions we implement with a free Featured Favourite listing.
With best wishes for 2013.
Rick and the My Favourite Holiday Cottages Team