nimportequoi Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Do you think it is better to show your property/ies availability on your website or not? I'm interested in the views of people who book rental accomodation as well as property owners. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KathyC Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Personally I've always found it very helpful and I would be more likely to book. However, you must keep the system up to date as it is very annoying when the system shows availability and then that is not the case when you make direct contact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clair Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 [quote user="SusanAH"]Do you think it is better to show your property/ies availability on your website or not? I'm interested in the views of people who book rental accomodation as well as property owners.[/quote]I do not show availability on my own website, but I do show a link on the calendar/price page to one provided by one of the listings I use for advertising.As I update that particular entry daily (to keep it up at the top of the listing) it makes it easy to update the calendar if a booking has come through.As my listings refer to my website and the website refers to an availability calendar, I receive enquiries mainly for free periods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alnmike Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 I agree that availability is very useful for guests when looking as many are restricted as to when they can book - ferry crossing, annual leave etc. and it saves them plowing through adverts that may then prove unavailable. For me, I think it keeps the enquiry to booking conversation rate high! As mentioned, it must be up to date! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJ Posted March 25, 2006 Share Posted March 25, 2006 I wholly agree with alnmike, but it must be kept up to date. Chez Nous have an availability calender which is easy to keep up to date, althought I am amazed how many people do not use the service, especially in view of the cost of advertising with CN.I also have an availability calender on my own website. If I were looking for a holiday rental myself I am sure I would be tempted to go for a property with availabilty shown, it would save a lot of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marie Posted March 25, 2006 Share Posted March 25, 2006 We have an availability page on our own website, which we always keep up to date - including showing if something is provisionally held, or firmly booked. It never fails to amaze us how many people simply ignore this facility, and email us directly to find out if certain dates are available, or try to book dates which are marked as unavailable. My husband is a website designer, so he put a handy set of buttons down one side of the page to access all the areas of the site, but even this seems to complicated for some!Personally, I would much prefer to be able to check on-line if a property was available before expending time and energy trying to make a booking. Marie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viv Posted March 25, 2006 Share Posted March 25, 2006 I think if you are an established gite and you know or are fairly confident that you will get plenty of bookings, having a online availability is a very good thing. If on the other hand , you are not, wouldn't a more vacant than full availability sheet have a detrimental effect on the psyche of the booker? I don't own gites, but I think I would be a little put off if I saw a rather empty availability sheet (depending on the time of year I was viewing it of course) but that may just mean I am a very shallow person! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimportequoi Posted March 25, 2006 Author Share Posted March 25, 2006 The reason I asked is because last year I put an availablity calendar on my site, following an irate e mail I received from someone looking for property in the school holidays last year who was fed up of sending e mails to enquire about holidays when the period was already booked up. I agreed it was a waste of time, not only for the people enquiring, but for me in replying. However,I agree with Viva, if I saw an empty availablity calendar, it would probably put me off booking. Other disadvantages of having availability are that you don't receive the e-mail address of the person, which you could use for marketing later on (although I have never done this myself and probably wouldn't). It is a problem too, when you have more than one unit and if the one they want is shown as booked up, you don't then have the option of offering alternative accommodation. I admit that my calendar is not 100% correct on this basis, however if all gites are booked, then they are shown as booked. One other disadvantage is that if you get an enquiry, you can at least give a friendly 'no' reply and you may get their business next year. Possibly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eslier Posted March 25, 2006 Share Posted March 25, 2006 We have four properties which we let, and deliberately don't show availability. The main reason for this is that, sometimes clients can be "sold up" to a larger property and occassionally we may choose to upgrade a client to a better/bigger property if we wish to create availability in quiet periods. If we showed the availability on our website then we wouldn't get the enquiry and lose out on the opportunity to take this decision. We also sometimes find that people can be persuaded to consider alternative weeks if offered.We advertise with Cheznous and sign up for the availability calendar because if we didn't then our properties would be excluded from date specific searches. We don't block out any of the weeks until all properties are booked for the whole month for the same reason as above. I guess many advertisers do this so don't take too much notice of the Cheznous availability.However, having made the decision to operate in this way, we check e-mails at least three times per day and make sure enquirers receive a prompt reply. Also, by receiving the maximum number of enquiries, regardless of availability, we are able to monitor the effectiveness of our advertising, not to mention getting the maximum exposure for our properties. I know for sure that a friendly chat on the telephone has resulted in people coming back and booking the following year even though we were unable to offer them anything at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anton Redman Posted March 26, 2006 Share Posted March 26, 2006 << We have four properties which we let, and deliberately don't show availability. >> The mirror has two sides. In high season when the area may be fully booked I might follow up. In the shoulder months with high availability I would not follow up. About a dozen times in spring or autumn we have woken up on a Friday or Saturday morning having thought we would have a relaxing break in Northern France. Taken one look at the weather and decided that a days hard drive will see us on the Med. My late parents were even worse. Lost count of the times I waived them off saying we are only going to Les Anderleys or Rouen too old for long drives now. Only to get a post card from Spain or worse still Italy saying they would be late home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimportequoi Posted March 27, 2006 Author Share Posted March 27, 2006 Anton, maybe I'm being a bit thick here, but I didn't quite understand what your reply means with regard to showing an availability calendar or not? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anton Redman Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 Put simply unless you show availability you would probably never get me to book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lizzie15 Posted March 28, 2006 Share Posted March 28, 2006 I have an availability calendar and I always keep it up to date however I've had so many enquiries from people for July /August that I sometimes wonder why.I could have filled August at least 6 times over. My calendar has shown "full" for this period since late last summer!! Mind you, I have just had a cancellation for a week in July so a few enquiries will be welcome now.It seems as though people don't trust calendars generally to be kept up to date so it is a bit frustrating all round. [ap] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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