Best places to advertise my property???

[Smiley]

Hi there, I have recently finished refurbishing our house in Ariege and would like to rent it out for a few months of the year to assist with the running costs. I have set up my own web-site but need to know the best places to advertise. I am fortunate that some friends I have made while being down there are prepared to act as changeover agents for me and keep an eye on the place. I know there are lots of 'free' sites charging commission only but which sites actually pull in the bookings?

Any help gratefully received. Thanks in advance

 you can e-mail me at tony@midipyrenees.co.uk

[Deane]

Hi, we are starting up in the Languedoc to offer gîte advertsing - but out of your region, unfortunately. Looking at it from the other side I'd expect a potential advertising customer to ask me about site visits and check out my rankings. then check teh site out, is it one where you'd expect people to book their holiday through?

 

I hope ours is, but so far we haven't attracted any bookings for advertising despite expecting high google rankings (to new to show it yet) and being cheap (i.e. €50 for a year - introductions).

 

As a point of reference AngloInfo have just opened in your neck of the woods. check them out, although, I don't know if they are cheap. 

 

 

[mascamps.com]

I don't think you'll get many B&B/gite advertisers asking about site visits and rankings, essentially because 1) such figures are generally commercially sensitive and therefore not widely available and 2) they wouldn't understand them anyway.

The site visits in particular are usually not directly comparable between sites as some people report all visits, others report unique visitors whilst others report hits. Do I for instance for last week report 28,500 hits, 3,000 page views or 2,200 visitors? Not all of your advertisers will know that the 28,500 figure is totally irrelevant yet some of your competitors use figures like that to promote their listings sites.

I don't think that you'll pick up a whole lot of holiday advertising this year simply because you've no track record in this area and there are a lot of good sites around at similar prices. I also think that legally you need to quote the price including TVA (ie 59.75€) as you are selling a service to consumers who won't be registered for TVA (few/none gite/B&B owners are registered as companies and I think none for TVA given the 77k€ minimum for TVA registration).

AngloInfo wouldn't really be an appropriate place to advertise accommodation as their main audience is people who actually live here and who rarely (although not never) look for accommodation in France.

 

Arnold