Hi,
As the golf course is nearing completion and more facilities are being added to the resort all the time I'm sure we're all hopeful that we'll see an improvement next year in our rental yields. We were thinking about putting small classified ads in some Golf magazines and websites at the beginning of next year for our apartment, but then I came up with an idea.
Why don't some of us pull our resources and form a club or society, and put bigger more professional adverts in these type of websites? You can get an idea on the sort of website I'm talking about here: -
http://www.golf-monthly.co.uk/
The idea would be that we'd share in the cost of advertising our properties in bigger 'Condado de Alhama' adverts. Every member in the club would pay a monthly subscription which would be used to pay for adverts and other costs (e.g. web domain). The monthly subscription would be dependant on the number of members and thr number and size of advertisements we place, but I'm thinking of maybe about 20 pounds per month as a ballpark figure.
We could have a website for the club that would give more information on the resort and the apartments to potential renters which would be given on the advert. I created our own website for our apartment (see link below) and could quite easily make something similar for the club to keep costs down. It's not got many bells and whistles but it does the job, I think. Naturally if anyone with more web design experience can make a more professional website and would be willing to do it then I wouldn't stand in their way. :)
We'd of course have to have rules in place to ensure all bookings generated from these ads are allocated fairly among all the members. For example, one possibility would be to have a rota of all members and whoever was at the top of the list would get first refusal on the next booking we get from an advert. Then of course we'd need to decide if we have a standard agreed rate for each type and size of apartment, or whether each member still set their own rates. If we standardised the rates that will make it easier to respond to enquiries as a quote could be given directly without having to discuss with the owners first. In this case however we'd probably have to set minimum standard requirements (e.g. air-conditioning and cable TV) so we can ensure all potential clients get the same value for their money.
So of course there would be lots of issues that would need to be resolved if this was to be viable but with the good-will of the members I think it could be done.
To ensure total transparency we could set up a specific e-mail address for the group which would be put in the advert and website and to which every enquiry would be sent, and every member would have password access to the e-mail address to monitor these enquiries (though for logistical reasons it would probably be better if we only had one nominated member who replied to enquiries).
The purpose of this thread is NOT to discuss and try to resolve these issues here and now, it's simply to try to gauge the potential interest in starting up this kind of club. If there is enough potential interest then we can start the discussion on how it could be ran and managed via e-mail. I don't know how many members would be required to make this viable, but I suspect it would be something in the region of ten or so if 20 pounds per month is the figure we're looking at.
So, if you think this idea may be of interest to you please PM me or send an e-mail to condado-de-alhama@hotmail.com and I'll get back to you.