Occupancy within months

mascamps.com · June 3, 2005

A few months back I asked the question "what way does your occupancy break down over the year?". Amazingly, those replying had quite similar spreads and even better, when I used their spread to forecast my own occupancy in the months since then, it's been within a few percent.

However, what hadn't occured to me then was that the occupancy wouldn't be evenly spread throughout each month. OK, I expected more people over Easter than the rest of the month but I didn't expect to have just about all the guests in May being here at the weekends.

So, what way does the occupancy break down in each month? July/August look like they're pretty full for the old hands but does that equate to, say, 80% each day for those months or is it normally 100% for a few weeks and 60% for others? May looks very dependent on weekends, but what about the other months?

Arnold

June 3, 2005

Hi Arnold

Have a heart!! I doubt if anyone has this information at their fingertips.

Go to my website and look at my booking chart. Work it out for yourself. What is perhaps more relevant is the order in which things get booked up. We get about 70-80% advance bookings for the high summer months, the very high season first, then the first two weeks of July and last two weeks of August afterwards. The rest gets filled in at the last minute, usually.

mascamps.com · June 3, 2005

I suspected that it wouldn't be quite so easy to answer this one or at least not to 100% accuracy Ian.

However, I don't think that's really necessary. What I was looking for is if there are any patterns like May having pretty much all the business at the weekends. Easter is an obvious one but I never expected the weekends in May to be so significant.

We're seeing an apparently similar pattern to yours ourselves. Almost full the second and last weeks of July already and the second & third week of August are starting to look similar.

Arnold

Coco · June 4, 2005

As far as May is concerned Arnold the first and last weekends are British bank holidays and the first and second this year were French bank holidays (and some still took the 3rd weekend as a bank holiday). So this could have some bearing on it.

For us, being only 2 and a half hours from Paris we find that August weekends are in high demand, especially if the weather is good because they decide on a Thursday night that they want to come out to the country/coast on Friday. We also get the one-nighters passing through from the ferry to the gite they have booked for a fortnight, which inevitably runs from Saturday to Saturday so we get them on their way out on a Friday night and on their way back on a Saturday night.

During the canicule if we had had ten bedrooms we could have filled them all every weekend in August, but probably only two or maybe three would have been filled during the rest of the week.

Just quickly looking back at March and April, most of our bookings were for 3, 4 or even 7 nights, and even the shorter stays weren't necessarily over a weekend. The advance ones we have for June and July do seem to cluster around Friday to Sunday nights.

Let us know your results when you've finished your analysis.

mascamps.com · June 4, 2005

Yes indeed re the bank holidays. However, after the first one in May it had me thinking that we'd be full all the weekends in May yet the final weekend we had hardly anyone in. Overall we ended up within 4% of the occupancy predicted way back in March which is pretty close.

We're starting to get the Paris weekenders too courtesy of that Millau bridge being completed. The snag is that they leave work at the same time on Friday as they do to reach you but by the time they get here, it's about 5am. For some reason they appear to be under the impression that because they've booked "Saturday" that they can get the room at 5am too.

It was mostly 2 & 3 nighters in March for us with a pretty even split between 1 and 2/3 nighters in both April and May. Mainly over the weekends in May but spread through the month in both March and April.

It's still very patchy for us in June with just a few fairly big reservations. None at all from what's normally our most common source either which is very odd.

For July and August, we've presently got a few large reservations but we've still got a whole lot of gaps in both months. We even have our very first visitfrance reservation just a few weeks after going onto it (I figured that all the grief that they were getting here was bound to kick them into action!).

I'm going to tidy up the overall annual spread and put that on here & ourinns as it looks like it would be very useful for those starting up as a rough guide to what occupancy might look like after a year of running.

Arnold

Coco · June 4, 2005

I'm surprised you've only had one Visit France booking Arnold. I should think that 50% of our "English speaking" bookings are via that site. It's the only one I spend a lot of money on but for us at least it certainly seems to be worthwhile.

mascamps.com · June 5, 2005

We've only been on them a few weeks and in that time we've had two queries and one reservation. We might have had two reservations but we are completely full on one of the days they wanted.

I suspect that it probably will be worthwhile for us over the year but I'd say that we will probably get more reservations from them next year than this as we've probably missed a lot of booking time from them this year through being on so late.

I'll really have to do something about getting the number of French up more though as we're already at 42% UK vs 26% France over the last 12 months which seems a bit odd as the French seem fairly keen on their holidays. We've actually had very, very few bookings via listings (4.5%) and get most via reservation systems (47%) which we think is a bit odd too although I guess that some of the 20% notionally listed against our website are effectively via some of the listings that we have.

Arnold

mascamps.com · June 5, 2005

Coco: Just noticed on my VF stats that I've had a whole lot of people going to the enquiry form but I've only had three enquiries as such. Is that normal?

Arnold

Fmn · June 23, 2005

Hope this isn't moving away too much from the topic, but our enquiries from VF have resulted in NO bookings at all. Am I not giving the right info back to the enquiries? When you receive a 'general enquiry' what do most of you e-mail back, bearing in mind that all the info including availability dates are on the site. I tend to say we would be very happy to accept their booking, re-confirm that the dates required are available, and give our website address. Sometimes I go into more detail but never have had another e-mail to confirm. As this is our first year doing B&B/Gite in France we are not panicking and have met our modest target with bookings already, but I have to wonder what I'm not doing to get the VF bookings.

Fran

www.gasconyretreat.com

mascamps.com · June 23, 2005

I'm only on VF a matter of months myself and I've noticed that the percentage of people following through with a booking after an enquiry is very low. It's actually a bit worse than that as I was speaking to the people behing VF and they tell me that a lot of people go onto the enquiry page and don't follow through with the enquiry; can't remember exactly what the numbers were but I think it was of the order of 10% actually making an enquiry once they'd reached that page.

I suspect that it's something to do with the type of people which VF attracts as we don't get nearly the quantity of enquiries from anywhere else - normally it's something like an 80/20 split in favour of bookers vs almost the reverse of that from VF enquiries. Having said that, the sheer number of enquiries has meant that we've received a pleasing number of bookings and have more than covered the annual subscription.

If you've met your target already, you're doing pretty well. It appears to be a bit of a variable year for people with some being full already and others being empty.

Arnold

Alan · June 23, 2005

As I have said before this year the response from visit France has not been as good as the previous year. I have only received 10 enquiries from them this year and only two of them have been turned into bookings. One could say that visitors to our area are down on last year and i know of others who do not have bookings but we have done better this year so far than the previous year. Last year in June we had 7% occup this year so far has been 62%, July last year was 38% this is 90% August last year was 100% so far is currently 51%. But having said that last year we did not fill August up until the third week of July so I am still hoping to get more for August.

When I respond I normally confirm the dates are available for the rooms that they require, give details of what is included in the price, confirm the daily rate and the total price, in some cases I also send photos of the bedrooms that they will be allocated and ask them to confirm by email if they would like to book. I no longer follow up enquires, I find if I don’t have a response within 24 hours then it normally does not turn into a booking. I also find in some instances if I call them in the first instance and then follow up with an email these turn into bookings.

I do find that the enquiries from visit France do tend to give all the information that is required, I am on other sites and the enquiries that I get through on some sites are not clear at all and I have to end up emailing or phoning them back to check the requirements

Fmn · June 24, 2005

Thank you both of you. It seems we are par for the course then. Almot all of my bookings are coming in late and the B&B is far more popular than the self-catering. Almost all are househunters and the last three visitors have all bought whilst staying with us!! It's been a fascinating first year...

Fran

www.gasconyretreat.com

mascamps.com · June 24, 2005

Forgot to say that one thing we do extra is say something along the lines of "we are holding your room until XXX pending receipt of your deposit as confirmation". I usually give them a couple of days to get back to me though if I get the enquiry on a Friday I usually leave them 'til the Wednesday in case they've only got mail at work. Before we put a limit on the time we'd keep the room for people, we had a fair number of enquiries that weren't closed.

This is only your second year, isn't it, Alan? We've had a similar jump in occupancy ourselves for the year to date and already have almost twice the reservations for July as we had people in last July and the August reservations are almost matching last years arrivals. Most people book us just two weeks ahead so it's looking like 100% might be achieveable in both months. Bit disappointed in June to be honest; it's triple last June so far but not quite on target.

Arnold

Coco · June 24, 2005

We too have a lot more going to the enquiry page than actually clicking through. Also, thinking that you have no VF bookings, do you have a link to your own website from VF? I had this last year and was convinced that I had only had about 3 VF bookings. However, I thought I'd give them a second chance and signed up for another year but removed my website link, so now all enquiries have to come through on the VF form. My VF enquiries have now dramatically improved, and I've had at least a dozen bookings from them since my renewal in mid-April.

As far as people not responding to your emails, I'm afraid that's life. It doesn't just happen with VF but with most enquiries. At first I used to worry that I was saying something to put them off but I think it's just human nature. Often people fire off enquiries to half a dozen places and don't bother to let those who they don't choose know that they have gone elsewhere.

However, recently I have started to worry about the non-responders from VF a little because on a couple of occasions I have been fortunate enought to have persistent enquirers who have contacted me via VF, believe that I have not responded and have then found me via another website and enquired again. This horrified me, as I always check my email at least 4 times a day and therefore reply to all enquiries within about 3 hours. It seems to be that all of those that have said I haven't responded have had an ntlworld.com address. I don't know if it's a problem with ntl or my wanadoo email but it's got me worried that perhaps others aren't getting my emails either. Fortunately, because these people have come through on a VF enquiry form they have usually put their phone number on it, so I have then followed up with a phonecall. Got two bookings like that last week!!

Well a couple of weeks ago I was pretty low about the number of bookings we have, but it seems to be a time of year thing with me. I got like it last year I seem to remember. I think I panic because I realise that it's mid-June, we only have another 8 weeks to make a large percentage of our annual income and we seem to be only a quarter or so full. However, we have already matched last year's August bookings and are only 5 nights behind on the July ones, and of course, so many bookings come within two weeks of arrival. At the beginning of June I think I had about ten nights booked but already we have done 22, and have another 4 booked to the end of the month. On a two room (therefore 60 night) property, I'm quite pleased with that. It was higher last year, but then it was the 60th anniversary of D-Day and we're only 30 minutes from Omaha Beach.

mascamps.com · June 24, 2005

Interesting coco. I was just allocating VF enquiries to VF but there could be somewhat more than that as we've the website link on. I must add something to the confirmation e-mail to ask about the place they found us to allow for that. As it is, we've only allocated VF as the source for three or four bookings so far but thinking back on it, there'd be several others that look like VF bookings.

I wonder though if, whilst getting more VF enquiries, you're actually losing some potential enquiries through not having the website link?

It's not NTL specifically that there's a problem with. What has happened is that wanadoo has been used by some spammers to send out the spam therefore, from time to time, the automatic spam protection used by NTL (and AOL plus some others) blocks all mail sent from a wanadoo IP address. I don't even use wanadoo to send my mail but because my IP is a wanadoo one, it's still blocked. Even using a webmail account didn't get around the problem as the NTL/AOL software works back to the originating IP address and the only way I found around it was to set up a redirect specifically for the NTL/AOL address in question and mail to that which resulted in the mail appearing to come from an American IP address rather than a wanadoo one.

Usually you will get a mail message back from NTL/AOL within a day or so saying that your mail has been bounced as being spam. Depending on how you've set up mail on your computer, this message might itself get filed as spam by your own software ie you may not have seen it.

Arnold

Val_2 · June 24, 2005

One of the main headlines today in the main regional paper is that the tourist bookings are very very low this year for Brittany as a whole compared to previous years. The only way for it to recover is a continuing heatwave in the centre and south which drives people to the cooler north but increases in fuel,health charges,insurances and other daily expenses are cutting people's spending power and holidays are always the first things to suffer. I think there will be a big knock-on effect from lack of tourism this year and many will be forced to rethink their plans to open new gîtes and the such for next year. Friends who have a B&B business inland are selling up and moving to Spain as they have had hardly any business for the past 18 months when previously they were inundated with guests most weekends from April to Sept.

Coco · June 24, 2005

So Arnold, I think what you're saying is that my wanadoo.fr email address will almost certainly get blocked. And even if I use the .co.uk address attached to my website,but use my wanadoo dial-up connection I will still probably get blocked. I have a freeola dial-up which came with the website. This is a UK phone number and obviously more expensive to use, but if I sent an email using my .co.uk address on the UK dial-up do you think this would solve the problem?

Not a lot of people like Wanadoo do they? We recently had US military people staying here and when I asked if there was a firewall blocking all email to .mil addresses (because any emails I send to .mil enquirers always bounce back on me) I was told that if I was using something as general as wanadoo.fr it would DEFINITELY be blocked and any .fr address would PROBABLY be blocked because we're no longer regarded as a CP (coalition partner) or a FCN (force contributing nation) and could therefore be a potential danger to US national security! ooo werrr!!

mascamps.com · June 24, 2005

It's certainly come to something when even Ian has said that GdF didn't fill him up as usual this year for sure.

Out of curiosity, how long were your friends doing B&B here prior to the last 18 months?

We've an excellent little market research note each summer courtesy of the tourist office in the area next to us which effectively lists the occupancy of all of the local accommodation. Last year both the local hotels were running on empty most of the summer and one had nobody at all in for two weeks straight in August. We were speaking to them a few months ago and I get the impression that they will be closing if things don't pick up this year. But I think that's a lot to do with their marketing - we were in the laughable position last year (our first) of having more people in every day than both of them put together.

I'd say the days of being able to start up a B&B/gite business from scratch and sit back waiting for the cheques to roll in are gone for sure. You need to have a lot more commitment to marketing these days and be committed to upgrading the facilities all the time too.

Arnold

mascamps.com · June 24, 2005

It's not so much the @wanadoo.fr address but rather the wanadoo IP addresses that have been blocked. It's supposed to be only a temporary block 'til the number of complaints from NTL/AOL drops down and I seem to be able to mail AOL now.

Mailing from a UK ISP (or any non-wanadoo one) should do the business. On that front, I just remembered that I've a Tiscali France free dial-up connection. It's probably best to sign up for that in that it's free (local phone rate to dialup) vs 1€ a minute or so to dialup to the UK. It's prudent to have a backup dialup connection anyway.

Interesting re the blocking of .fr from .mil. We've not had anything from .mil but didn't get any response when we replied to an enquiry from a .gov address so perhaps there's a block there too. We always quote our address as [email protected] so it may be that any blocking is applied at the IP level (firewalls operate using IP addresses rather than domain names so this is more likely).

Arnold

Quillan · September 30, 2005

Just did a occupancy report covering our three years on a month by month basis, not particularily good in growth, lucky we don't depend on it for a income (0.00 means we were closed).

Jan

Feb

March

April

May

June

July

Aug

Sept

Oct

Nov

Dec

Percentage Occupancy 2003

0.00

10.74

27.33

16.19

52.42

44.59

18.40

21.14

0.00

Percentage Occupancy 2004

0.00

26.00

41.11

14.57

Miki

Posted September 30, 2005

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Posted September 30, 2005

Not bad figures Chris.

I think it should be made clear though, that percentages are only a part of the overall picture

For instance, if you have just one room, you can show 100% on many nights/months. You can perhaps show similar figures with two rooms in certain months. The percentage though will drop out of July/August period, especially as the room ratio increases. We have rooms and a suite of two rooms and let as such, counting 5 in total, with a capacity of 15 people.

Now that is when percentages do not really count for much, as far as yearly figures (Euros)are concerned but, will count more as a pointer to how ones business is going forwad but again, bottom line is the actual Euro turnover.

I will see how my percentage pans out after October, as that month can still be fairly busy here, especially in the half term period.

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mascamps.com

Posted September 30, 2005

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Posted September 30, 2005

Pretty good growth actually Chris. If you take the March/April figures out, you've almost doubled the occupancy in two years.

For sure re the percentages Miki. Once you get below 3 rooms I suspect that they're meaningless but even above that you've the complications of double rooms, family rooms, etc. which can obviously have a big impact on income. Our little family suite brings in about twice what a "normal" room gets for a start.

Our own figures are totally up the left this year yet again as we were able to draft another couple of rooms into action in the course of the year but, taking that out of the picture, we've been averaging just under triple the occupancy of 12 months earlier which we're pretty pleased with.

Incidently, from my similar question at the start of the year, it looks like it generally takes about three years for the pattern of occupancy across the year to settle down. You should still get growth after that (hopefully) but, for instance, if at year 3 your occupancy for May is much the same as that for September then that relationship will probably hold for year 4 too. I think the principle behind this is that it probably takes people about three years to get all their marketing in place and that in turn determines when people will come to you.

Arnold

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Quillan

Posted September 30, 2005

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Posted September 30, 2005

2003 = 2 rooms

2004 = 3 rooms

2005 = 4 rooms

If that makes sense?

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mascamps.com

Posted September 30, 2005

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Posted September 30, 2005

Well in that case, the figures are even better. Adjusting for the lesser number of rooms in the previous years gives you (on a like for like comparison):

jan

feb

mar

apr

may

jun

jul

aug

sept

oct

nov

2003

0

5.37

13.67

8.10

26.21

22.30

9.20

10.57

2004

0

19.50

30.83

10.93

44.67

52.26

50.94

19.89

16.83

0

Quillan

Posted September 30, 2005

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Posted September 30, 2005

No changes for next year want to see the impact of new advertising. Thought the following might interest you (Booking Source shows only ones that gave a result, we advertise with a lot more including your websites).:

Booking Source
	*2004*	*2005*
Friends etc	16.52	4.41
French Connections	1.74	4.41
Great BNB	0.87	1.47
Late Rooms	0.00	1.47
Recommendation	2.61	2.94
Repeat	1.74	19.12
Phone	0.87	1.47
Tourist Office	18.26	8.82
Visit France	0.00	Prev 1 2 Next Page 1 of 2 Please sign in to comment You will be able to leave a comment after signing in Sign In Now Share Followers 0 Go to topic listing All Activity Home Forums Owning/Running a Business B&B/Chambres d'Hôtes Owners Occupancy within months Cookie Policy Manage Cookies Contact Us Copyright France Media Group Limited Powered by Invision Community × Existing user? Sign In Complete France Browse Back Browse Forums Online Users Leaderboard Activity Back All Activity Search × Create New...

Occupancy within months

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