Because of the present economic climate, we have kept our prices the same for 2009. I have gone onto the main web sites we advertise on, and inserted that into the text on the first line, and highlighted it with *** these things!
Seems to be working as we have had 3 enquiries, and one booking for 2 weeks next September.
Perhaps those of you that are new to renting for next year could do a similar thing, and call it an 'opening offer' People do like to think they are getting a bargain!

Well Done!! That's great Will definately be doing that!!

Louis

Well, as they say 'every little helps' Hope I haven't breached copyright!!

Hi All

Well spurred on by the above suggestion I did the above; which in turn led to another idea... why not have a Special Offers Page, on our website and that's just what we did.

If anyone wants to look at this page the link is http://www.andaluciaself-cateringholidayspain.com/specialoffers.htm

I will let you all know how this goes down, by measuring the interest in the special offers page, (once people are on the site) and how long is spent looking at the page.

Karen & Gary
Santa Maria

Great idea Karen. We did put an end date on our paid for sites, as a 'call to action' to encourage more bookings. Are you only applying your special offers to your summer holidays? I usually find they take care of themselves, but we need to be more pro active to book the rest of the time out. I was surprised at autumn, winter bookings last year - we had a few people staying here that were viewing properties, some of our repeat bookers who just wanted a break.
While on Facebook a little while ago, I was posting some photos of the last 2 Christmas days when we ate dinner out on the terrace. Our son suggested that maybe use some of those photos on sites to show how clement the weather is then.
Are you on holidaylettings.co.uk? I like the fact that not only can you view your enquiries, but also what sort of search they did to find you, such as price, location, availability etc. Useful stuff.

Hi

To generate some winter business, two of the offers were

1) Complimentary Turkey if you book Christmas, showed picture of yummy pciture traditional Christmas dinner.

2)Complimentary winter logs, (many renters charge extra for logs, showed picture of roaring fire but did mention sunny and warm in the daytime)

We too use Holidaylettings, whom I have been impressed with. We have had a healthy level of enquires and 2 bookings form this site. I thought this was good for a first season. And yes very helpful that they show how many hits and what search criteria was used. Also they show if anyone clicks out to your website. They also generally come in the first ten when I put in various key words on different search engines.

We set a budget for paid for advertising as it can be a bottomless pit and then use free advertising and our website to complement the paid for advertising. We also have used is IHA.Com and have had bookings from France and Portugal, you are listed in 31 languages, you tick boxes rather than write dialogue for ease of translation.

Best Wishes

Karen

Hi

The IHA.com sounds good. I haven't done too much yet as still waiting to finish setting things up and need photos on our site of our tipis and small cave dwelling. I have got a listing on Places To Be. Lots of clicks on it, and a couple of enquiries. Free for just a listing.

Louis

Hi All

Thought I would update on a booking that I believe was generated by the special offers page of our website.

The booking was driven to our website from the Holiday lettings Website, (again confirming this is a good site to advertise on). We have a programme called clicky click on our website, so we can track where traffic goes once on the website and how it got to the website in the first place. The usual pages that are visited are accommodation and prices and then the 'booker' went to special offers and then to the booking form and booked there and then.

So a special offers page on your website I would say is worth considering.

Kind Regards

Karen & Gary

Hi Karen and Gary

That's great news. I check any traffic through Google Analytics, it's fasinatining!! Although we are only on one listing we have an enquiry for Xmas!!

By the car is fixed, running with Bio Fuel now, Andrew's new venture!! So will try and get over soon!!

Louis