Even (Holiday) Cottage Industries Need Plans to Be Successful

To have a successful holiday cottage business, you need more than just a holiday cottage and adverts on My Favourite Holiday Cottages and other leading self-catering directory sites. Your success will heavily influence how you market and manage your holiday rental business. For that, you need a plan.

Like many people, holiday cottage owners can prove amazingly resilient to the idea of setting aside a reasonable amount of time to prepare a business plan. And yet, it's equally impressive to hear people who have committed to designing a plan commenting on the increase in bookings and revenues they have achieved as a result. They also say that having a plan to stick to makes managing the business much easier and simpler.

When working on a task managing or marketing your holiday cottage, ask yourself why I am doing this. What will it achieve that is important to the success of my business? If

 

You're Welcome! Mouth-Watering Cottage 'Welcome Packs'

That's the title of a forthcoming blog article featuring images of inspiring welcome packs for guests. There's nothing better than arriving at a holiday cottage after a long journey and finding a little basket of snacks and perhaps something grander to get the holiday off to a cracking start. 

  Your Photos Wanted

If you provide a welcome pack that goes beyond tea, biscuits, milk and possibly a loaf of bread, send us an image. We'll display the best of them together with a photo of your cottage and a link to your listing on My Favourite Holiday Cottages. 

Include a list of contents as well as examples of anything else you do to make your guests feel truly welcome on arrival. 

 

Email them to The Holiday Homefront, and we'll do you proud.

 

Image Credit

Thanks to Claire Franklin at The Cottage Gillamoor for supplying an

When summer comes, the UK seems to go festival crazy. Across the country, tents, wellies and sleeping bags are thrust into cars, ruc-sacs and the occasional supermarket trolly for a 2-3 night shindig somewhere in the country with thousands of others.

But don’t think festivals are all about high-decibel music. There’s a growing breed of absolutely wonderful family festivals with events and activities for parents and children of all ages, from the tweenies to teenagers, to run alongside the music.

Most festivals have campsites, but if you don’t fancy sleeping in a sea of mud if it rains, let alone investing in a carload of camping equipment likely only to get one use, then why not combine your days at a festival with nights in a comfortable holiday cottage with clean loos, hot showers, fridges and Wi-Fi.

Here are our Top Ten Favourite Family Festivals with a suggested nearby holiday cottage in which to stay for the weekend.

 

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Want Help With Finding and Planning To Book Holiday Cottages?

Imagine you had a shop where the sole product on the shelves is your holiday cottage (or cottages). How would you market it?

Vacation Rental Supremo Alan Egan follows this line of thought in creating a very readable article on marketing your holiday cottage to get more bookings. Simples!

Read More...

 

Links to More Good stuff from the Holiday Homefront Newsletter

 

6 Surprising Stats to Help Advertise Your Vacation Rental

What Holiday Cottage Upgrades Will Your Guests Soon Consider Essential?

Boost Your Holiday Cottage's Website Rankings & Traffic with Google My Business Reviews

Is Google Chrome About to Block Your Holiday Cottage Website?

HomeAway To Stop Charging Guest Fees And Start Charging Owners 

You're Welcome! Mouth-Watering Cottage 'Welcome Packs'

HomeAway News: Hotels and Booking Fees

Why should you take time to keep a record of your stats? Obviously, the answer is that they deliver information that will help you manage your holiday cottage more efficiently and effectively. You'll see where it is worth investing time in marketing your property and where you can leave things alone. For example, do you keep tabs on how well your adverts are performing, such as:

The number of times your property has been viewed over the past year (compared to the previous year) The number of potential bookers clicking on a link from one of your adverts to your website The number of enquiries (and conversion rates How many positive (and negative reviews) you have received

Having these figures will help you to determine the value an advert delivers and whether you are ahead or behind where you were this time last year.

 

Well, if you think your stats are moving in the wrong direction or at least in need of improvement, this

Remember when going on self-catering holidays meant taking a fat cash bag of silver to feed the electricity and gas meters? Then things changed. Once upon a time, a prominent feature was 'electricity inclusive', then washing machines, followed by dishwashers, DVDs, Wi-Fi and lately, Smart TVs (forget boasting about 'flat-screen DTVs with Freeview'; they are a given). These facilities and items have shifted quickly from rare luxuries to standard items on a holiday cottage inventory list. Nobody will thank you for providing them, but they will drop a star or two from their review of your cottage if they are missing.

So what's next? What facilities and equipment are considered premium luxuries in a holiday cottage today but will be taken for granted within the next few years? To keep your holiday cottage ahead of the game (or work out how much money you will need to set aside), view this article from Vacation Cluster that considers what future guests will

Here is an effective way to use your holiday cottage guest reviews to improve your website rankings.

1: Register your holiday cottage’s location with Google My Business so that it appears on Google maps. I’m guessing that most of you have already done that.

2: Add images and descriptions to your listing. Some of you have probably done that too!

3: Invite guests to submit reviews to your Google listing. Just send them the link to your review upload page. That’s the clincher, and Google will reward you. If you want to know where to find your review address to pass on to guests, email: Rick at My Favourite Holiday Cottages for details.

As with almost everything good on Google, the result won’t be instant, but it will be worth the wait as Google increases its trust in your site by finding an increasing number of independent reviews. By the way - don’t try uploading reviews from your own website - Google will spot that your review was

For some of you, this will be important. In July, Google Chrome browsers will begin to block straight-forward access to every website that does not use HTTPS encryption.

Https:// is how your holiday cottage website address begins if you have an SSL Certificate. If your website address starts with 'http://' it does not have SSL compliance, and, as far as users of Google Chrome are concerned, as of July 2018, your site will no longer be accessible through that platform. This means that if people try to open it on Chrome, they will not be able to do so. Instead, they will get a Chrome message saying it is an insecure site. It's not something you want happening if your business depends upon bookings from your website.

The solution is straight-forward, instruct your web developer to set up your site with an SSL Certificate. IIt’s a relatively simple and inexpensive task. If you are told otherwise, consider getting another web developer (but it is best not

All Change Please!

Uh Oh! Apparently, finding that bookers really don’t like being charged a 10% ‘booking fee’ on top of the rental price - even if it does include insurance, it looks as if HomeAway is planning to transfer the charge from the guest to the owner. Will they get the insurance instead? 

Well, naturally, this will be more popular with guests. You do wonder, though, what owners’ responses will be when they find around 10% lopped off their booking income for no apparent gain (unless there is more news to come).

Read more

 

Links to More Good stuff from the Holiday Homefront - June 2018

How To Market Your Holiday Cottage By Thinking of it as a Shop

6 Surprising Stats to Help Advertise Your Vacation Rental

What Holiday Cottage Upgrades Will Your Guests Soon Consider Essential?

Boost Your Holiday Cottage's Website Rankings & Traffic with Google My Business Reviews

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