Holiday Cottage Start-up

ViksB

We are currently renovating a property with the intention of letting it as a holiday cottage.
Does anyone have any experience of whether it is better to go via an established letting agency or to set up your own website. Our preference is to set up our own website, but we are concerned with the associated costs and needing to have online availability and booking service. Is it easy to have the necessary security for online bookings and how much does it cost to provide this?
We feel on our own website we could provide some much more information about the cottage and the area, than on a standard site. However we also appreciate we may get more custom from a better publicised large agency.
Any views?

Thank you:)

Savvy_Sue

I can't answer the question, but can you not put a link to your own website from any of the letting agencies?

Joannag_2

My in laws let their cottage through English Country Cottages. Their demands were so high for decor, place settings, linen etc they always joked they put the best stuff in the holiday let and lived with the odd bits at home. I would suggest getting several companies round - I know they had their cottage inspected in person- then you can make an informed choice.

PasturesNew

The advantage of a good agent is the money they've invested over the years in marketing, in the list of existing customers they have. They will be contacting all those customers to try to get them to book again this year 2-3x, they will have dedicated teams of people working on marketing, answering phones and sorting out the bookings, the bookings system and payments.

If you go it alone you'll have to invest time/money in getting a website and advertising it.

I've known people to go down both routes and still have no bookings though.

It's an over-crowded market in many areas, speak to your local tourist office, see if they have a "membership" where you can join and they'll advertise it on their site and through their offices. Also, find out from them what the levels are for gaining stars. There's no point renovating it now, only to find out that it's only a 2 star and it would have been a 3 star if you'd made the kitchen worktop 2' longer and bought nicer towels.

Horace

I was mooching on another forum (a respected business one) and something caught my eye - a firm was looking for hotel inspectors (I am considering applying because it is something that I can fit around my own work). They give pillow ratings to hotels and self catered accommodation and I immediately thought of you. I am not sure how they award the pillow ratings though because I haven't read through their pdfs on their site. It might be worth a nose https://www.chocolatepillow.com

I would say place your cottage with the local tourist boards too.

Pennywise

Get yourself a professionally designed website with an online booking/payment system embedded and you won't need to use the agencies.

I'm looking at it from both sides. I have clients with holiday lettings who tell me what works and what doesn't and I use UK holiday cottages at least twice a year. Those using the agencies say they're a pain in the neck in terms of what they require - some don't let you use them yourself for more than a certain number of weeks per year and some don't let you use them yourself at peak periods. When I search for a cottage to rent myself, I stay away from the agencies/directories and just concentrate on google searches and usually find something suitable without the hassle of the flawed & painful search filtering of Eng Count Cottages etc.

As a bare minimum, you need a very good website with loads of pictures of all rooms, in and out, full inventory, etc., and make sure you market it either as dog friendly or no dogs (and smoking or non smoking). An online availability view and online booking/credit card etc is also essential. Also put in loads of info and links about local attractions and facilities, i.e. family friendly pubs, theme parks, etc - all good for local info and invaluable for search engine optimisation to help get your website noticed on google!

The thing to do is pretend you're wanting to book a cottage and spend a few hours googling, to see what others are doing and what bookings/payments systems they're using. You could also note which web designers made the websites you like and contact them directly even if not local - they can still do you a website remotely if you email them pictures and narrative - best to copy something that works rather than re-invent the wheel!

You wouldn't believe the amount of cottages I've put in the "rejected" pile because they don't give enough info and pictures on the website, i.e. not saying whether there's a dishwasher, not saying the bed configuration (i.e. doubles, twins, bunks, etc), not saying whether dogs are allowed, etc - it's just as easy to move onto the next cottage on google as it is to email the owner to ask!

PasturesNew

Horace wrote: »

a firm was looking for hotel inspectors

I'd apply, but they always want experience. "If you have experience in hospitality, or are a seasoned traveller with a well rounded experience of hotels and self catering accommodation, then Chocolate Pillow needs you!"

I've no experience in hospitality and am not a seasoned traveller and don't have a well rounded experience of hotels or self catering accommodation.

paulwf

Perhaps give the agencies a go for the first year to get their service and experience then go it alone after that?

This is going back 20 years so pre-internet but when my parents let out a holiday home a high proportion of business was repeat customers coming back year after year. Therefore make sure you have a contact database and do everything you can to entice customers back...newsletters, discounts or whatever. Once you find a nice place to stay its tempting to go back rather than going through the hassle of finding somewhere new.

jebervic

Bought a house in Cornwall this February, we set up our own website and have advertised it with holidaylettings.co.uk and ebay and we are delighted, managed to rent it out throughout July and August, parts of June,May and April. We only want to let it out between April to October so we're more than happy.

jexygirl

Not sure how you feel about pets, but allowing one well behaved dog (or more!) and charging accordingly, will help secure bookings as well as opening up to what currently seems to be a limited set of options.
We get so many enquiries from pet owners, and when we wanted a cottage we could take our dog to in NOVEMBER!, the options were VERY limited. Scotland had around 8 on one site, all but one was booked. When we recently looked up "nottinghamshire" in January there were 3... and a B&B, only one could take us, the rest were booked.

Our takings increased hugely when we bought the place, due to us allowing dogs in the bar and recently decided to have one dedicated room we allow dogs in as the demand was overwelming.
We curently don't advertise that we take pets in the one room, because we don't need to as its full the majority of the time as a result of us saying we allow dogs with well behaved owners in the bar, we get tons of email enquiries. (Mental note to self, we really should say we take one well behaved dog in one of our rooms!)

There are LOTS of sites, that you can list on as "pet friendly" most for free so google pet friendly accomodation, or pet friendly cottages and have a mooch if allowing pets is something you would be interested in.

Jex

Pennywise

jexygirl wrote: »

Not sure how you feel about pets, but allowing one well behaved dog (or more!) and charging accordingly, will help secure bookings as well as opening up to what currently seems to be a limited set of options.

And the opposite applies too. There are a lot of people who want a pet-free cottage and won't book somewhere that allows dogs, however well behaved they are claimed to be. That's why a lot of farms etc with two or more cottages on site do one that's pet friendly and one that's pet free - to try to keep everyone happy and not lose any bookings at all. For me, I wouldn't stay in a cottage that allows pets, but that's just me - I appreciate that others want to take their pets with them. I think it probably comes down to your personal choice.