The new era of advertising for holiday homeowners

The traditional method of advertising holiday homes is about to change radically and owners may have to rethink their strategy. The internet giants have arrived and are looking at ways of increasing their revenue from holiday home advertisers. Tripadvisor and Google have moved into take over the big rental websites and the changes are rapidly becoming evident. The private owner now has to compete with estate agents and hoteliers who are being offered very attractive rates to add large numbers of properties for inclusion on these sites.

 

The agents are hoteliers deal with these enquires on a professional level and their conversion rates are much higher, this is resulting in some holiday home owners wondering where their customers have gone.

 

The market is now diluted to such an extent the single property owner is ranking so far down on these pages he simply doesn’t get any enquiries. When the owner wants to move higher on the ranking he will be offered a pay by enquiry option.

 

The pay by enquiry sounds very attractive when pitched by the sales team but the Ryanair pay by enquiry did not prove a resounding success for the owners. It is important to work out a marketing budget and calculate the value of paying by enquiry. These are various factors to consider before committing to a system which potentially could costs more in 1 month then a years subscription. Owners need to think do they answer all their enquiries on the same day and follow up when no reply is received. The conversion rates needs to be at least 35-40% to make this type of system pay for those who charge less than €600 a week on average for their property. It does not seem fair that a owner of a small apartment in Cyprus pays the same as a luxury villa in Spain which can cost over €10,000 a week. Then there is the questions of paying for enquiries which are a waste of time, the bargain hunters and those who ignore the fact your calendar is already booking out and make the same enquiry to numerous owners. When you contact these enquiries they don’t even remember which property they enquired about, otherwise known as “tire kickers”

 

The costs need to be considered if a property generates 1 enquiry a day which isn’t unreasonable if you are paying per enquiry £6 this means a yearly bill on one website of £2190 multiply this by average of 2 websites must owners have and the costs become prohibitive.

 

Progress cannot be stopped but considering the demise of smaller airlines and travel companies when the large multinationals invaded  the individual owner is right to be concerned.