Holiday rentals.co.uk and similar websites

 Hi,

We are on our agents web site (Calida International) who also advertises our property on a european webe site, both as part of teh management package.

We are also on Owners Direct which I think is associated with HomeAway. They charge a fixed fee for the year.

I am also look at   Villarenters who charge a low fee but take a cut of any rentals which are managed through them. This goves more security. They also have a Credit Card payment facility and free website ofeere which could be handy. They are owned by the Daily Mail group so are not a small outfit.

Having done some work with the on-line advertising industry it's often difficult to know who owns who and which sites are associated. 

There is also alot of fraud associated with hiloday and home rentals - make sure you are dealing with established sites.

Hopefully you will get some more replies to this post!

Mike.

To be honest, they are all much of a muchness.

I advertise both my apartments at Roda on Holiday Lettings. Get nearly all my bookings for the 3-bed apartment via them but very few for the 2-bed apartment (which mostly come from my own website). Holiday Lettings have now become very expensive since they joined the Trip Advisor group and the reviews section of their website is a total nightmare.

The Home & Away group (incl Holiday Rentals and Owners Direct) are said to be good, and I have a friend who reckons she gets 80% of her bookings from them. Not as expensive as HL but still not cheap.

Steer clear of the freebies - they do not seem to achieve very much at all.

MikeandHelen - do you actually get ant bookings via Calida International? I used to advertise on them when they were open to the public and they got me zilch in 2 years!

Pommers,

Yes, Calida International does provide us with bookings, his advertising is included within his service charge and perhaps you should not ask as you are a competitor!

Forgot to mention we are also on the Eden Retreats web site who provide health breaks at Roda.

Also, Hans, from Eden Retreats is a first class physiotherapist and more, and is to be recommended should you need treatment whilst you at Roda.

For more information about fraud, google 'fraudalert' and check out the Met Police web site.

Mike.

MikeandHelen

I have 2 apartments and have my own PERSONAL website that I get my bookings from - I am certainly not a competitor to any of the advertising sites. Like you I pay for all my advertising and as I said, used to advertise on Calida International when they had private rentals on there as well as their managed ones.

Can you explain why I should want to look up Fraud please? This seems like a very odd thing to say when talking about which.rentals websites to advertise on.

Over the last year we have been doing a lot of work on rentals, looking at the various sites where our focus has been all about a single resort Corvera

With all of the customer advising we do we only charge when we get a booking, nothing to list the property

First of all do not ignore the free sites, they do work especially in getting your property onto the search engines, sites like Numbra for example

We have tried most of the paid site this year and certainly the most effective has been Owners Direct, more in terms of quality and this year more than 30 weeks were generated by this site

The most successful method for customers has been my own site. www.corveraholidays.com but this has cost a lot to get this up the search engines more then €6k this year which has been about the investment for the future

I have been very happy with this site EOS which has been very successful generating long term rentals plus bookings for people coming over to furnish and complete on their own properties on Corvera and an agents only site www.kyero.com

The response from Holiday Lettings, Trip Advisor which we started in October has been poor, 38 properties listed, 3 enquires and no bookings so far and I think that the way that they list the area is poor

The other think to do is register your own domain and using one the cheap site design tools like 123reg create your own site and then produce some simple fliers with friends and family, perhaps put this up locally in golf clubs etc with the domain name for your property on.

If anybody visits one of the known websites they will be presented with a range of properties on the same resort, if you direct people to your own site that is all they see, and make sure that the photographs are good

I hope that this helps a little bit but really on RODA if you cannot rent for July and August then you are doing something wrong

Hi Roy - I agree about the freebies getting you listed on the search engines but it does mean you need your own website to link to which unfortunately many don't have.

its isn't difficult or expensive to register a domain name and the self build sites from people like 123reg and 1&1 make this very easy and probably less that 50 pounds  to setup the site

You need photographs and a description and there are and of course a good domain name but on a simple check domains like rodarental.com & .co.uk,  rodaapartment.co.uk, or even use a hyphen for example roda-golfapartment.com all good for the searches and .com cost 23 pounds for 2 years and .co.uk 6.98 per year

A single page website if free with 123 reg with a domain, a 10 page site with templates 36 pounds a year and if you are not sure you can try it first

To start you only really need some good photos, descriptions,

I am not a web designer but built my own initial sites www.gpispain.com but then used developers for The Snagging Forum and www.corveraholidays.com

 Pommers,

The reference to fraud is relevant, there are a number of vulnerabilities that owners and renters have to fraud. Do you know who you are dealing with? How can you prove that the person advertsing a place is entitled to? There are many stories about people who have rented property or gone on holiday to find that they have been ripped off.

Bigger sites where adverts are paid for are generally safer to deal with - there are many sites that have been set up for fraudulent purposes. These often advertise the genuine article having copied the details from a legit site. Owners are being 'phished' for their logon details and their adverts being taken over.

Having your own web site is a good idea - it is more flexible and can carry more content than a paid for advertising site but the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can be costly and a constant chore.

I always check out enquiries via google. I check names, email adresses and other details. This often gives a hit on social networking sites, and Linked in. Recently I had an enquiry from an agent who had not disclosed her interest - so I didn't know who I would be letting to.

Payments can be a nightmare. I allow 7 working days for a cheque to clear but most of my bookings now pay by bank transfer. Never use money transfer services such as Moneygram or Western Union.

More info on fraudalert.

Mike.