Karen Viney

I have read the postings that have been received in the last couple of days about French Connections and have been startled to see such apparent disappointment with our new site. This is rather contradictory to the direct feedback we are receiving in our offices here both by email and by telephone. Corroborating that feedback, we have also experienced a record month in receipt of new applications and in hits to the site during this period too. The new site has incorporated all the functions that we have been criticised for previously, for not having deployed earlier. i.e. refined search facilities including search on dates and prices, personal update calendar, more owner interaction etc. We are of course very disappointed to hear about any personal dissatisfaction and will take all comments received extremely seriously but it is gratifying to us that we are getting very positive feedback here, contradictory to what I am reading on the postings in the forum. Members of this forum have identified some important key issues about the new features and functionality and most importantly about enquiry rates. The important key issues with our new features that member owners seem dissatisfied with is the new AVAILABILITY CALENDAR and I would therefore like to comment below on these criticisms. AVAILABILITY CALENDAR There have been a small number of people who have not understood how to complete their availability calendar. Where people have raised a query, we have responded with detailed instructions and received confirmation back that the client was then able to go on and complete without problem. If you have any issues here, please do click on the following link, which answers most problems. www.frenchconnections.co.uk/for_property_owners/availabilityfaq.cfm If this information does not help you, please contact us and we will help you out personally. You can email [email protected] or telephone us on +44 (0)1580 755888 (both appear on our website) and you will receive a personal human response to any problems that you are encountering. The other extremely important issue raised by members is about ENQUIRY RATES. ENQUIRY RATES We have noted that some people have remarked that their enquiries to their advertisement on French Connections have been reduced in the past few weeks. We are trying to balance quantity against quality of enquiries received so that our property owners receive a higher proportion of bookings:enquiry ratio.   Because our new French Connections site offers more sophisticated search criteria than before, holiday-makers will be more likely to only contact those owners that fully satisfy all their requirements (including dates when the property shows as available) which naturally will provide owners with better quality tailored enquiries that result in bookings - but inevitably this more refined searching may result in a reduced quantity of scatter gun enquiries   Every year we receive emails from people who say their enquiries are either less good than the same time the previous year, or we receive emails from those who report a greater level of interest than in previous years. This year, with the re-launch underway, it may be easier for those who fall into the former category to draw conclusions that it is the re-launch itself that has caused this effect. Our web-design team carefully look at logs of enquiries going through the system and it is clear that some property owners are receiving far more interest than others. We are naturally investigating those who are reporting a downturn to see if there is any meaningful correlation and looking carefully at the way people are arriving at properties of choice. We do recognise it is of small consolation to you if you are one of those people receiving less interest than others and it will not necessarily reassure you to know that we also receive emails from people who are reporting a good (better) response, in particular since the re-launch. Unfortunately, the positive comments that we have received over the past few weeks, tend not to receive the same publicity as those comments which contain less pleasing experiences. Naturally it is in all our interests to generate more and more traffic through the site, resulting in firm bookings, and to this end we are carefully monitoring all feedback. Other Companies who have taken the same path in upgrading their site have also received their share of criticism. We know this from emails received in the past year from the public who have subsequently come to French Connections as a result of disappointment with other advertising sources. It is however, in both the interests of property owners and French Connections that all our clients are satisfied. Having spent the past 8 years achieving the position we now have on the internet, our objective in the coming months is to continue optimising the website to the advantage of us all and we would wish to reassure clients that it is their interests we hold uppermost when taking decisions. Naturally if anyone has an