Are listings worth paying for?

[mascamps.com]

Any thoughts on whether it's actually worth paying sites to list your place?

I'm far too stingy to pay more than 50€ or so upfront and even at that level I want something different from my existing portfolio of listings or which offers something "special" eg somewhere that targetted ramblers might be worth paying for in my own case.

But, in general, have you found it worth actually forking out for listings at all, or are the free or cheapo (50€ or less a year) ones the best bet?

If it is worth paying for a listing (or listings), is it better to fork out 200€ on one or do you find that having four 50€ listings is a better bet?

I was going to throw the commission based pricing sites into the pot as another option but I guess that they are really just paid for listings in another form. Or are they? I look on them as "free" listings at the point of sign-up and money in the bank that otherwise wouldn't be there when I do end up paying the commission (which is costing me an absolute fortune this week, hence initial idea of this thread).

 

Arnold

 

[Alan]

This will be interesting to see want others think. This is our second full year running a chamber d hote. The first year we started in the july and  most of our business came from the Office de Tourisme. Last year we got no business from the office de tourisme and all our bookings came from our two paid advertisements or referrals , one French based and one English. Cost about 120 pounds and 100 euros

So far this year all our bookings have come from our paid sites, we also have advertisements on 7 free sites but have not had an enquiry from any of them

But I found last year most of my bookings were made within about 4 weeks of the commencement of the holidays, its not like gites where these seem to get booked 4 to 6 months in advance. Do others that operate B&B find the same as far as bookings are concerned or maybe its down to our areas.

 

[mascamps.com]

We haven't had more than a half dozen or so referrals from our tourist office but then they aren't known for being totally on the ball so that's no great surprise.

Last year I had a three way tie between our own website, a couple of reservation (not listing) systems and phone/driveby. Over the winter it was almost all via the reservation systems but lately it is getting back to the three way split. My one paid for listing has been sitting there since last June and only in the last week did it come through with a booking (although that may be just me picking a duff site of course).

Four weeks would be an eternity to us! The vast majority of our bookings come within two weeks of their arrival although we do get the extremes of next day and our current record of about nine months in advance. I don't know if it'll be typical for the summer but we had an empty reservation book for Easter three weeks ago yet we have been almost full over the last week.

 

Arnold

 

[Alan]

Our season seems to be short I would say its starts in June and runs to September, any business picked up in the winter months tend to be English house hunters. We don’t have road signs out of choice, but also feel that as we are far from a main road I don’t think these would help and the cost involved would be to great.

For next year I think we will go with Gite de France as I think this might be the way to go

[Quillan]

Three years in now and here are a few tips I have learn't the hard way.

Do a search on google an yahoo, try to think like a possible client. What would you type in if you were looking for a B&B in a specific area? Have a look and see what comes up in the first four pages. This is very important becuase studies have found that people will rarely go beyond four pages. It takes a lot of effort not just to get in the first four but to stay there.

A bum in a bed is a bum in the bed (hope that comes out if not insert bottom), it's a bit like bum's on seats really so the nationality does not matter so do the same sort of search using the same search engines but for adjacent EU countries like google.de for the Germans and yahoo.be for the Belgians. You really need to do this several times over a 6 months period to see if the companies that come up keep staying in the same or better position. You will gradually come up with a list of internet sites that can then be approached to advertise on.

It is absolutly imperative to keep a track of where you get your leads from and to set a advertising/marketing budget and to revise it each year. We have paid 25€ or so to be on some sites and never got a booking. Thats not much money but given that you might spend this on 4 or 5 sites thats quite a bit money you could spend elswhere with companies like Visit France etc, not that they are doing so well since they changed their website, but you get the idea.

The comment about nearness to a main route for passing trade is very true. You really need to be around 2km max from a main road with clear and proffesional sign posts to get this trade. Any further coupled with bad signs will just make people turn round, go back to the main road and find somewhere else. That is often a hotel which will probably cost them around 20€ more than staying with you but they are happy to pay this rather than get lost is some back road miles from nowhere.

Sign posts are another area worth investing in. We have paid around 1,500€ for ours ( 2 big ones and 4 small ones) and I have had all that money back plus a lot more. Get the panels made in metal and the base colour done in plastic coating, saves money if you want to change something as it does not come off. Get the artwork done in stick on material, it can be changed latter. Get a 'devise' from the guy and make it plain on this that it's his/her responcibility for the placement and any authorisation required and that you want said authorisation in writing. Keep them simple but smart, use a font that is standard to give a corporate type image (ours in monotype corsiva in blue) people do remember and helps join a brochure, website to physical directions. Don't clutter the panels so as not to draw the eye away from what you really want them to say like All Rooms Ensuite - 1KM on Right. Don't insult the French, always do it in French first the English second, your signs will stay there longer and not get vandalised.

Thats a few point, good luck and I am sure others will add more excellent sugestions.

[mascamps.com]

I know what you mean about trying out searches as though you were looking for a place and I agree that it's very useful. However, I find that glancing through the searches that people use to reach us, whether you have the appropriate keywords on your pages is almost entirely potluck. In our own case, the single most profitable word has been "gite" because that's how our réveillon family found us yet we've only booked the gite itself for one week in the last year and are planning on ditching it!

All those 25€'s add up alright. I was actually looking at Visit France and am totally confused as to what their charges are. They seem to be entirely for running you up a .co.uk website from what I can read from it; all I (might) want is a little ad with them but it's far from clear how to place it (in fact, I've still not worked it out!).

Incidently, the French language websites seem to charge a good deal less than the average of the English language sites. I saw one or two the other day for under 20€ which, I think, is an unknown level of pricing on English sites (I find that they usually kick off at 40€). Whether it's better paying the 20€ or the 40€ is, of course, up for this debate.

Is passing trade anyway reliable normally? We're right on a main road yet had virtually none last year; was that a peculiar year? That's in spite of a CdH (well, accommodation) sign at the front door and a massive auberge sign on the side of the building.

That's a lot of cash for signs! I must nip up sometime and check yours out.

I'm sure you're right about it appearing an insult to not have the French first but only 30% of our clients are French speaking so I think that English would actually be the best (as indeed it is in other countries). I spent a lot of time rewriting our website in French too yet we get less than 10% of our hits from it and very few direct bookings (I do appreciate that the French tend to look you up on the web and then phone you).

 

 

Arnold

 

[Quillan]

Having the right key words is simple. Do a search on the type of business that is the same as you in your area, just like a punter. Look at the first private website that comes up and then call it up in to your editor and 'rip' the keywords and add them to your own and then wait. To be honest that’s what a lot of "professional" people do to get their clients website up near the top. I didn't design websites but my company was responsible for getting websites 'seen' (amongst many, many other things).

You need to look at VF's website quite closely; you don't have to get a website built by them to get your B&B listed with them.

A cheap website, even a free website is no good if it can't been seen and is not in the top 4 pages. Even an expensive one isn't, whatever the language.

In our first year we had our signs put up and had no other advertising, the signs were responsible for getting 83 bookings at an average of 40€ a booking that’s 3,320€, speaks for it's self. The rest was made up by the local tourist office (invited them round for drinks the day we opened, always a good ploy), advertising at the three local airports and putting cards in all the local estate agents.

Our website is in French and English and as of tonight since the 31st of Dec 2004 we have had 1208 English visitors and 1887 French speaking. The bulk of our trade is French followed by Spanish, Belgians, Germans and about 10% English speaking. To be honest we much prefer non English because if you are going to get a problem it will always be with the English, the rest just seem to love the place.

[mascamps.com]

I will have to have another even closer look at VF. How much is it anyway?

I have the self-imposed "problem" that we're now listed on so many places that our own website is having quite a job fighting its way to the top. The net effect is that we get the hits but lately they have been mostly via listings that we have rather than directly from the search engines.

We did the airport brochure thing too but had no success with it at all. We found that by the time people arrived, they'd already booked somewhere to stay so we had to move a bit further back and now get them at the time they're booking their flights which is working very well for us.

Our breakdown as of this morning is 30.61% English, 30.61% French (amazing to tie like that!), 10% Spanish, 5% Irish and the rest something of a mixture. I actually thought that we'd had a lot more Belgians but apparently not. However, in terms of website hits, the English one is way up there, French about 25% of that and the Spanish is about half the French total (that's misleading as the Spanish version went live much later).

Fully agree with the English comment: they are the reason we started taking deposits, the reason why we got strict on the cancellation policy, etc.

 

Arnold