Advertising

[Yvonne]

Hi,

I am looking at various web sites and companies who offer to advertise your cdh for an annual fee. Can anyone let me know what experience they have had from Chez Nous, BABFrance (Maison d'hotes) or fleur de soleil? Are there any others that may be useful?  

I noticed that BABFrance take a 10% commission off of you advertised price, how do you deal with  this, do you add 10% on or do they increase your price by 10% on their web site? Alternatively, do you effectively 'lose' 10% from any booking that they may get for you?

Do others take commission or is it simply the annual fee?

Finally, can we work with as many of these web sites / companies as we like?

Thanks,

Abi

[Le martin-pêcheur]

Hi,

We have advertised with a very well known site and got one booking....... so we looked around the web for alternatives.

I can recommend www.holidaylets.net and www.holidayhavens.co.uk

Both of these sites give you 3 months free trial and are a doddle to set up with text and pictures etc, giving you complete control.

We have now taken out a years advertising with one and will shortly take out the same with the other. Between them we now have 5 weeks booked since May and plenty of enquiries. This more than covers the costs of the advertising.

Hope this helps,

 

Tony www.flyfishinginfrance.com

 

[lizzy h]

Re holidaylets they donot advertise bandbs just gites, In my own experience and may I add this might not be the case of other b and b owners, visit france, owners direct and perfect places are good, holidaylettings I also found to be good, french connections was excellent last year but ive had few enquiries this year its better to get your own website and go on adwords google or overture adwords, Also go to laymyhat forum and they willl give you loads of advice on where to advertise, by the way holiday rentals is also good. What may be good for you one year may change the next so set yourself abudget on what you want to spend on avertising and make use of the free trials and see what works for you

good Luck

[Yvonne]

Hi,

Thanks for all the advise - I've never heard of most of those! Free trials sound far better than ChezNous annual fee of €610! 

Still, there's plenty to go at as we have a cdh and an apartment/gite so I may try for something combined. This looks like a full time job in itself!

Thanks again,

Abi.

 

[mascamps.com]

Go for all the freebies that you can get. They aren't guaranteed to bring in any custom but then nothing is.

The only limitation to the listings (aside from the cost) is with the "guaranteed bookings" systems. Since you must accept any reservation that they send you, in practical terms a 3 room B&B couldn't be on more than three (and more likely one is the effective limit in high season). For "on request" places, there's no real limit though it does get to be quite a chore keeping on top of them all in high season.

 

Arnold

 

[Mikey]

If anyone is interested in FREE advertising they could try www.bonjourlafrance.co.uk

The website is currently being extended to cover all regions of France. At present they only have Brittany, Normandy and currently working on Aquitaine. Owners of accommodation in other areas can register and add their details which will be on the website when the relevant region in released.

If anyone has interesting information on a particular region/department/town/village then please let them know and they will included it

http://www.bonjourlarfrance.co.uk