Montblanc Posted October 26, 2009 Share Posted October 26, 2009 We have just opened chambres d'hôtes and rental apartments in our home in Languedoc and would like to learn where to advertise or promote our offers - where do people look etc? There are so many websites now that we could spend twice as much on advertising as we would ever expect to earn. - Help and advice please - Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
les Favets Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 It's a long journey trying to find the best avenue to follow ( not because we are on this forum ) but in the past we have used Living France together with one other magazine published in the U.K. with some success. If you have the time to sit on the web for a long time, there are many websites under the heading " Free advertising holiday web sites" which we have also used but not many of them produced lets because as I suspect and you have found; that there are too many available to advertise on, so just as an exercise; only use free ones to see what your returns are.Regards les Favets Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fi Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 If you are hoping to attract French/Belgian/Dutch guests, we have found pour-les-vacances.com , abritel and 1000gites.com effective. These are paid for sites though. (For Holland, marktplaats.nl is popular with the Dutch for finding holiday accommodation, but you will need some knowledge of Dutch to navigate round the site, even though a listing in English is acceptable (better if your header is in Dutch though e.g. Vogezen rather than Vosges, Lotharingen rather than Lorraine etc, then the listing will be picked up in searches)).From my meagre experience (we are coming to the end of our first year of gites) we have not had much success with free sites, but the three paid-for sites mentioned above have produced around 85% of our bookings. Hope this helpsFi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lachouette Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 If you go to the Lay My Hat forum you can find some very good tips from gite and B & B owners.Bon courageJan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanT Posted February 12, 2010 Share Posted February 12, 2010 I would recommend finding an agent, they will add a commission to your rental fee (so you know what amount you will get) and then market the accommodation for you. In addition, they will tell you whats wrong with the house (by fixing it you avoid problems and complaints), health and safety and more. After that, you may wish to adverise yourself on a website / portal. holiday-rentals.co.uk is the best by a country mile of any portals at the moment. Save yourself a lot of time and money and avoid the others and just use this (no I dont work for them by the way!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fi Posted February 12, 2010 Share Posted February 12, 2010 Montblanc, will you be living on site? If so I can see little point in paying an agent when you will be there to deal with problems yourself. Different listings sites work for different markets - if you are aiming for non-Brits (and I strongly advise that you do - can't remember the exact figure but something like 70% of the French holiday in France!), a UK oriented site, like holidayrentals.co.uk will limit your potential renters. Pour-les-vacances and 1000gites - both French sites have been very successful for me, and they are both reasonably priced. As has been mentioned before, Lay My Hat is a valuable source of advice and information, both for listing site recommendations, and for all the other minutae of gite rental.Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanT Posted February 12, 2010 Share Posted February 12, 2010 Hope you dont mind me posting back in reply to yours Fi...An agent has professional knowledge of rentals, including health and safety training, insurance, travel regulations and more. A private individual is always at risk from a claim, a complaint and more unless they know what they are doing. I was not suggesting a local agent also, but located in another country which gives marketing exposure in that country also.Holiday-rentals own Arbitel (France) and have upgrade packages available. They are part of the HomeAway group, this includes A1 vacations and many more sites under one banner. I reiterate again, they are biggest and best. To test that, try to imagine what someone searching on the internet would type in to find your property, then go and do it on Google. I put my money on the fact that holiday-rentals will appear on page 1 far more often than any other company...I do agree totally about laymyhat by the way. The best bit about the site is that the worse performing portals are often listed and discussed there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Hi, Sounds lovely.Thanks for sharing this information.I am searching for vacation rentals for my holiday trip.This will quite helpful for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kong Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 We use booking.com (amongst others). Very successful for us. Not many Brits - but we prefer it that way. We are a small CdH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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