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Sorry, havn't read all posts.

You have a great looking property so plug that first, your best picture (one or two large pics) of your house and area on the main page with a few words, the painting holiday, location etc can be a menu option - ie. Home - Rooms - Location - Painting holidays - etc etc
Your main page should make people look further on into your site so plug the best looking part of their holiday.
And your a little pricey.

Google UK stats show on average 81 people search for 'painting holidays France'  per month
Google.co.uk - your 67th - needs work
Google.com - your 37th - not too bad

Have you looked at your stats to see how people are getting to your site.

Other google UK stats -
Holiday burgundy 231 per month
Cooking holiday in france - 27 pm
google.com - Cooking south west france - 663 pm

Lee

 

 

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This may have already been covered and if so, please forgive me, but how many of your potential English speaking customers (probably living in the UK or the USA) have French euro cheque books? And then, you want to charge 15 pounds for banking a sterling cheque!! This would really put me off (apart from the high cost of the holiday and then being told I must go out to eat for two nights which I believe I've paid for).

I often get sterling cheques as presents, or for the odd ebay sale or as a very occasional payment for work. These cost me the price of a stamp to post to my bank, so why does it cost you 15 GBP (sorry no pound sign on this pc)?

If you need to check payments just get folks to transfer, preferably on-line, deposits and payments into your bank account. The check your statement on-line. Simple and of no cost to you.

I really think, as others have said, that you should take out and forget all the off putting and negative stuff, trim down and emphasise the positives, and get realistic. My Mum had a fantastic painting holiday in the Loire Valley a couple of years back at a house owned and run by two French artists. Full board in late June plus loads of tuition (plus chateau tours) and materials supplied - 790 euros!
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I can see Cat has been working on the site and is 'getting there'.

One thing I would say is that it may be better to put the 'not included' stuff on a seperate T & C page, that would allow you to use your main pages to 'sell' your holidays unfettered by negative stuff.

Keep accentuating the positive - how about a programme for a typical day ?

If you don't want to cook two nights a week, offer the opportunity to sample local restaurant cuisine with perhaps an offer to arrange transport (Contact local restaurants and taxi companies) Perhaps I have missed this bit?

All credit to you for realising you need help and asking for it, and for not taking offence at the comments which are frank, but kindly meant.....

Good luck.....

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Hi everyone,

Yes I am listening but not responding often as I'm busy revamping our site which is not finished, I hasten to add.

I've sifted the wheat from the chaff as some of you can imagine but it is quite hard to please all! People read things differently!

Firstly I'm using a web programme that is quite complicated and I haven't the time or money to change for now, so the look, even if amateurish is because I'm not a web designer. However, I do try. I've just found some navigator buttons, downloaded and used Illustrator to name them. I've tried to add more photos and have resized them in Photoshop so I hope they will not be too slow to download.

As for my prices - well that is subjective. We are offering quite a lot. Having ones husband spend maybe 8 hours a day with just 1 or 2 guests giving them total individual attention and me devoting the whole day to offering breakfast, lunch and really good quality evening meals, plus all the refreshments plus wines etc, then remaining with our guests until mid-night plus, is time consuming and I do give a good service. I'm sure quite a few people running a similar set up will understand.

We are not dealing with the masses but a slightly niche market. One person critisised me for not accepting children and another for explaining about not smoking. Well, I have 3 children myself (now in their late teens)and am also an x-primary school teacher. I don't dislike children but, our house here is not set up for children. Our primary aim was to attract painters and not families. We do not have any family sized rooms and that is that.

With regards to smoking, I've again chosen to live in a smoke free environment indoors. Anyone can smoke outside. Even I do on very very rare occasions. 

So, quite a few comments have been great. It is the reason I posted the thread. Thanks to the ones who have been helpful and encouraging. I run a friendly place here and all my guests so far, who have spent time with us, keep in contact as friends. I must be doing something right!!!

Regards,

 

Catherine

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Hi Cat71, seperate out your services. Place emphasis on your B&B business and have a separate site for your painting holidays. Push yourself as B&B first and foremost. Get 'heads on pillows' first and treat the painting business secondly.

I also despise the holier-than-thou 'you should have done your homework' brigade. Usually said by those NOT running a business here, who have no kids to educate, use an E form rather than pay tax here, and are nicely ensconsed in a pretty cottage with bags of money left over from the sale of their UK house. In short, those who do not have to deal with ALL the realities of living in France as many of those realities do not make themselves known until after you sign at the notaire. No matter how much bloody homework you do!. Maybe some 'know-all' should write the definative book...'How to know, and do, ALL your homework before you move to France'. I feel it would sell like hotcakes...if only one knew ALL the research there was to be done first!.

Keep at it, what you have is worth keeping.

 

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It is not just the website. There are issues with clarity and marketing and most of these issues have been covered above. Basically I found the site a bit drab - the last thing you want is a drab site when you are asking people to come and stay with you on holiday.

The marketing angle needs work on. Find all the clasic car clubs and tell them what you offer. After all, you love classic cars and people do like to stay with like minded people (as a cyclist I am more likely to stay with cycling enthusiasts than motorbike ones!). You can market through the various clubs. For example: Come here in your classic Saab (or whatever) show us your membership card and we'll give you 10% discount. Use the classic car clubs, painting clubs and cookery clubs to do your marketing for you. Three separate businesses there. Do not melange them. I could say a lot more but I'm being called for dinner.

 

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Hi Dee, sounds like with what you wish to do over here you will not be working much less that those 80 hours you worked in London. Why? because we do pretty much the same as that here. And there is no way it is a relaxing lifestyle. It also appears you hope to exclude the 'family' market and aim instead at the retired couple/DINKS (Double-Income-No-Kid's). Big mistake, as many people come here with children.

Sounds like you are the perfect buyers for our place!.

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[quote user="Cat71"]

Yes I am listening but not responding often as I'm busy revamping our site which is not finished, I hasten to add. [/quote]

I've just had another look at your site and it's looking much better than before; it's already much brighter, easier to navigate and altogether snazzier.

Congratulations.

Sue [:)]

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Given the quality of your place, I don't think that EUR 60 is too high really. That's effectively around EUR 45 for the room plus EUR 7 pp for breakfast. Evening meals at EUR 25 are fine.

There are a LOT of people wanting one night stays and EUR 70 is a bit high for that. It doesn't cost EUR 10 more to do the laundry for an extra night and I think you're losing a lot of bookings because of that EUR 70. Lots and lots possibly as you're positioned pretty much half way between Calais and Italy so would be an almost ideal stopover.

It might sound silly but I would say "price" rather than "cost" basically because it sounds a lot better. People want to know the prices for things but it's best not to put the thought in their head that those are costs.

On the prices page, start off with the B&B prices because those are smaller. Finish the page with the highest prices.

With the painting holidays, I'd be inclined to separate out the prices ie accommodation including breakfast is EUR X for 2 people sharing, tuition is Y per artist (with discount for 2 sharing), evening meal is EUR Z. This makes everything look much cheaper.

Drop the charge for sterling cheques. Open an account with the Nationwide building society in the UK and just lift the money out here if needbe (this costs nothing). In practice, although we have said we accept sterling cheques, we have never been offered them. Drop the charge for paypal but say that it's only accepted for the deposit. This reduces the overall charge to 1% if you're taking a 25% deposit. As the credit card companies always say, people spend more when they're using a credit card. If I were living in the UK and looking for a painting holiday, my options would be 1) pay you 6.75% to use my credit card (your 4% plus 2.75% currency conversion) or 2) pay you UKP 15 (around 10%) to pay by sterling cheque or 3) pay my bank UKP 25 (about 15%) to pay by euro cheque or 4) look elsewhere. I'd be going for option 4.

Get a UK phone number; the 0844 numbers are available free to you, local rate from the UK (PM/email me for the details). Most bookings are made during working hours and most people can't call international from work and can't face the charges for doing so via mobile so you could be losing a lot of bookings though only having a French number.

I'd write a whole lot more about the region and in particular have some paintings on the site of the various locations you use. I'd put paintings everywhere in place of the photos that you're currently using.

If at all possible, I'd add a third guest room so that you can take larger groups. Also, if possible, discuss with some local B&B or gite owners if you can do a joint arrangement now and again for larger groups. Ideally, this would let you discount the prices for larger groups.

FrontPage can be had for UKP 40 if you're enrolled at an educational institute.

Last, but definitely not least, redo the homepage so that you have two entry points ie B&B and painting holidays, with equal weighting. As others have said, you come across as painting holidays only at first glance. As B&B bookings tend to be higher on Friday & Saturday night it might be worthwhile considering a Sunday night to Friday lunchtime painting course. Realistically, I would have thought that you wouldn't get many painting holiday bookings in July/August because of the heat so perhaps it would be worthwhile to prioritise the B&B side over that period but, on the offchance that you did pick up a lucrative booking in that time when you'd a day here and there booked as B&B, I'd be inclined to sound out some local B&Bs for use as overflow (which would have to be for the painters).

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How about making the painting side chargeable by the day ?  If people are visiting with non painting partner they may like to include a couple of painting days, not the whole time..........it may not be your long term aim, but you have to start somewhere.

I agree about the €70, how about putting  it a different way, decide on a cost and give a discount for more than X (you decide) nights. ?

 

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Good idea to do a blog but it needs to use blogging software to take full advantage of it.

You could either do this by installing Wordpress (wordpress.org) on your site (free) which is fairly easy to do or use one of the blogging sites (eg blogger.com). It's best to go down the wordpress route as it keeps everything in your own site.

Nobody knows why, but blogs list very, very well on google. So a continual trickle of posts about painting, cooking, etc. would get you right up there on google very quickly eg when I post something it is usually top 10 on google a few days later and, of course, you build up a massive amount of text over time which is great for search engines.

If you're using blogging software there are even places that will pay you to write stuff: up to around $1200! OK, it'll be a while before you'd get $1200 for a post but it's quite possible to get a nice stream of $10 to $50 posts.

 

Arnold

 

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Wen.....most people cater for p;eople with kids......and I am not so sure they need pampering and fine dinning?

Very sorry to tell you that I have no intention of working 80 hours per week 52 weeks of the year.....and I am sure that you eould be exagerating if you insited that you did.You p robably work real hard in summer and slow down after that.

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[quote user="Spg"][I've just had another look at your site and it's looking much better than before; it's already much brighter, easier to navigate and altogether snazzier.

Congratulations.

Sue [:)]

[/quote]

Must agree with Sue, just had another look, and yes, vast improvement already - immediately leads to the info you need to find out.  Well done!

Judith

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[quote user="ChezShells"]

...You have a great looking property so plug that first, your best picture (one or two large pics) of your house and area on the main page ...

[/quote]

Took the words out of my mouth! 
I think you need a cracking picture on the first page, Catherine - there is a nice one on your Links page.  Get some romance in there right away!
(By the way, there is a very strange first picture on the Links page - looks a bit like Sydney Opera House.  A bit of mousing around revealed that it is probably Lyon airport, but I think you would be better to ditch it, as all it does is raise questions in the viewer's mind.)

The question of positive presentation has been brought up a lot too, quite rightly.
For example in the Costs (yes, Prices would be better), rather than saying:
Double rooms ....60 euros per night ( 70 euros if staying for one night only).
it might be more enticing to say
Double rooms ....70 euros per night ( 60 euros for second and subsequent nights).

On that page, I do find the mass of information about extra charges, percentages, and things you won't accept etc rather off-putting.  And the lines:  "... guests staying for less than 3 nights are required to pay 50% of cost upon arrival. Guests booking for more than 3 days are asked to pay a 20% non refundable deposit..." reminded me of those brain-twisting logic tests when there are three houses and three children, and you have to work out who lives in which, when Jenny lives next to John, Judy lives in a yellow house with a chimney etc etc.

The paragraph about having eat out for two evenings is daunting, too.  It would be better if you turned it around and found a way of saying that the price included seven nights' B&B, and evening meals on five nights.

"Painting" page:  I am hugely put off by the three quotes, I am afraid!  Empty canvas, artists being vain, and Renoir touching women's bottoms (a bit pervey)...   Sorry.  Makes me think "Ugh". 
The quotes from students are far more enticing.

If customers really "...don't know a palette knife from a fish knife...can't tell a number 6 brush from a 6" brush", is it not going to be rather hard for them to decide in advance what medium they want to work in and what materials they will need.  Maybe they won't even know what a "medium" is! 
On the Painting page: "We suggest you bring your favourite medium and materials. There are many on-line art suppliers such as artyfolk who are very reasonably priced. We can offer you the chance to purchase supplies of brushes, oils, acrylics, paper and boards at local retail rates if you wish. Extra materials will be charged for,"
might be better expressed as: "If you have decided what medium you wish to work in, we suggest you bring the materials with you. It is also possible to buy brushes, oils, acrylics, paper and boards at in a local art materials shop. We can supply some extra materials at cost."

You have obviously made some great strides since the comments started - so well done! 
Keep at it, and don't forget you are selling a romantic dream...

Angela

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Thanks Angela sound advice.

Yes, the Sydney Opera house photo is in fact Lyon airport (which I thought was quite good)but I'm inclined to leave it as the search engines pick up on it I think! My links page is a mess at the moment.

With regards to the terms and conditions, it is always difficult to know exactly what to write. I may even just cut it out altogether and just ask for deposits. I'll have to think about that.

Good heavens! I hope we don't come across as perverts! I added the artist quotes for arty interest especially the Renoir one. My husband has been trying to convince me for years that the naked form is a fantastic thing to capture on canvas: shape, texture, shadow, etc etc so I kind of understood what Renoir was saying. I'll leave them in for now but if I feel they are off putting I'll change them. We also have clients' quotes in but I didn't want to do over kill!

The question of materials is always difficult as art supplies are expensive. It is just knowing how to approach it. So thanks again. If it rains today I'll be back at it.

I may be trying to sell a romantic dream but of course realism is a totally different matter! (Things to do all the time).

Catherine

 

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I do hope I don't sound patronising or condescending when I say "Well done you!"  That is so much better than it was.  Just a couple more points:  On the cost page you have "evening meals will be charged for" in bold print; you already clarify elsewhere that they are 25 euros and I don't think anyone would be expecting them for nothing, so I don't really think you should emphasise the fact by putting it in bold. 

Secondly, you have pointed out the time that you and Colin will be putting in and therefore you think your prices are fair.  First of all, it would appear that you have reduced your prices from the last time I looked, so I do think they are more competitive, but unfortunately, in this business, certainly until you are well established, you can't really worry too much about how much time you are putting in.  If I calculate the time my husband and I put into our place then we are working for a couple of euros an hour, but what else would you be doing?  Spending rather than earning, no doubt!  I agree about the wording on the one night issue.  I have decided to do similar this year - we get so many one-nighters in August that I can't afford to turn them away but they are a lot of work.  Initially I was going to say that there would be a supplement for one-nighters but have now decided to up the price as a whole but offer discount to those staying for 2 or more nights - it's all a psychological game.

Pictures of the rooms is a great improvement - if people find out about us from some of the websites that I advertise on that have only one or two internal pictures they always email me and ask if I have any photos of the other rooms.  People want to see what they are getting for their money.

Overall though I think your improvements are great and hopefully will bring in some business.

One last question:  Are you advertising on any of the holiday company websites?  So far this year about 70% of our business has come from just one website that we have paid a pretty nominal sum to advertise on.

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Thank you Coco,

I've still got loads to tidy up on the site. Will keep at it.

No I haven't advertised a great deal this year. We were with Visit France last year but only got one booking! We're still with but only just, Goin2Travel which is an American site and we've advertised with a really good local site Burgundy Eye, which covers all of Burgundy,  is very classy and full of information. If fact we also have an article about painting hols on the site. So much better than any official tourist site.

We are also with Ourrins and several free sites. Of course I've linked with British Arts and othe art sites and quite a lot of traffic comes via these. Hopefully, now the site is looking clearer, we'll  get some more bookings.

Regards,

Catherine

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This is going to sound picky I'm afraid; but whilst including your sample menu for potential guests to peruse is a good idea, it doesn't sound that inspiring or complicated, just the type of good home cooked food that most of us here could do. That in itself is not problem, but if I was going to spend a week on a cookery holiday and that menu was the level that my host had attained, I would go elsewhere.[:(] 

Do you not have a more intricate/ inspiring menu that you can put on display ?( even if you don't serve it?)

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I see Beryls point but some people may be put off by more exotic fare, perhaps the answer is to show two menus (make it clear there is not a choice though) or just add a trendy' sounding ingredient or two to the menu you have, for instance make the salad dressing sound interesting for the first course,(or just mention one) perhaps add another vegetable for the main course, mention a few local cheeses by name and/or add a liqueur to the desert or coffee. 

I think the menu would be lovely, I'd eat it in a moment........its just this marketing stuff !

 

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Personally, my take on the menu is that if you know anything about cooking you're not taken in by the fancy words of menus these days, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.  I've just started doing that dessert that has just won the Great British Menu competition- can't remember how he markets it but I call it jelly and ice cream cos that's wot it is and I get the most phenomenal response when it's served up!

Cat, I was with Visit France for 3 years and had a great response but last year I had less than half a dozen bookings, hardly covers the cost.  PM me for my latest favourite.

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Interesting that, Coco, as I have had a good response from Visit France - when I was with French Connections absolutely zilch.  I've not responded to this thread before as each time I think of something to say someone else has beaten me to it.  The site looks better already Cat, and for advertising I would try some small specialist magazines - e.g. we have had a few decent bookings this year from a £10 ad we did in the club magazine of a classic car club of which my husband is a member, only a small readership, but a concentrated one ditto one we ran in a local photographic club journal.

If I am honest I think the next couple of years are going to be very lean for B & B and gite owners in France.  The bookings at this end of France are very poor.  I am on committee for local tourist office and every weekend we have a round up of who has rooms/house for the week to come for passers by.  Certain people who normally are always full for the whole summer are among those still trying to sell weeks in July and August.  If I was relying on passing trade I'd be bankrupt as there is none!  My French bookings are down a lot and the enquiries at the tourist office - apart from camping - are poor.  I think the elections, the weather and a general lack of cash are to blame.  Reading in this week's English papers that holiday companies are selling packages for as little as £5 (yes you did read that right)  I can understand that for cash strapped families the DIY holiday to France in a gite or B & B is an expensive option.

It is still pouring with rain here so I, myself am contemplating building a big boat and offering accommodation to pairs of animals and old blokes with long beards[:D][:D]  Chin up Cat and keep working at the site - you are getting there.

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I think it is swings and roundabouts with the different advertising companies. Some work for some, others for others. At the end of the day one couls spend thousands and if I had a decent budget, I'd know exactly which mags and publications to put ads in!

Like you Cerise, we have no passing trade at all and are in a very non touristy spot for passing bed and breakfast. It may sound a bit odd, but that is why we chose this region. There is not a huge amount of competition here and certainly no one too close offering painting and cookery breaks. That is why we are attempting to specialise or offer holidays with a flavour in a part of France that is still very French!  My husband truly is an artist but I am not a professional chef. However, I'm perepared to offer cookery experiences as all my guests who have stayed here have suggested it to me. Survival is all about re-inventing oneself and utilising ones skills! At this moment in time, I'd sell my soul to the devil.

Our local tourist offices do not appear to want tourists. I've been in several times to try and promote the B&B side but they really are not interested. I gave up trying to explain about our painting holidays. It appeared to be a concept they couldn't quite grasp!

I'm now net working with other businesses in Burgundy to try to link with them in some way to offer 'package type hols'. It all takes time.

Catherine

ps. Your ark idea may take off if the storms that are threatened in the next few days are bad! Why don't we get together and offer painting, cooking and sailing courses?!!!!!!!!!![:D]

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