Chris Jewell

Hi Dave I'm amazed your still here, an interesting read of a long lived thread. With only two years in the business I can't yet match your enthusiasm, 95% of our guests have been great and there'll always be the exception.

We,er trying an alternative method of sticking to gites only during the busy summer weeks (we are just about fully booked) and advertising B&B with continental breakfast in the gites in off season times. Watch this space to see if it works. Anybody got experience of offering B&B in out of season times, and any tips. Our website keeps us busy in summer and we have only just added the B&B pages.

Agree with all the comments that good photos are most important, they are what attracts the customer to the page and encourages them to look through the information. If they are photoshoped then they shouldn't tell lies, just enhance the truth. Make sure that all that is in the photo is available to the client.

Hi Clair I'm quite new to this, 2009 is our second season. When we set out our offer last year we decided to charge for towels to cover the drying cost and because many others did the same. We offer a hand towel and a bath towel per person at a charge of 3.50 € per week per person. Our clients are 70 % Brits some Irish, Dutch and other nationalities, no French because our web site, which generates the bookings, is aimed at English speakers. We make it clear in terms and confirmation letters that towels are only for use in the gite and that they should bring beach towels ( we have no pool ). About 70% of clients take up the towel offer and we are full for the main 6 week  summer season in four gites so this is not a deterant.

[quote user="Clair"]Chris, you could visit the Lay My Hat forum. It is a more specialised forum for rental owners. [/quote] Thanks Clair, sorry it tookso long to reply. Have signed up for LayMyHat also. Chris

I am in the process of building backlinks to our website to improve our search engine position. Anybody got any tips to share?

Hi lenny don't know if you are still looking for info but if you are we have had great success with our own website and listing it on a number of gite listing sites to pull in business. Ownersdirect and gitelink have provided high referral levels to our site and we have a number of other good backlinks. Try these two, but your own site is the key to converting hits to customers.

[quote user="Quillan"] Because of the way we purchased our B&B we actually created our website some six months before we moved in which was in January and took our first guests in March [/quote] I agree with this, we created our website and published it in March before we opened in July 2008 and had bookings throughout the summer season and into Autumn. A spread of links from accommodation listing sites is also needed to bring in the business.