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Where are the enquiries


Felix

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Is it only us???  By now we are usually turning enquiries into bookings but this year would be nice to receive an enquiry (apart from a scam - they are still out there!!).  Have had some good years during the recession years but this is worrying and could be our worse year if things do not pick up.  Anyone else noticed a considerable downturn in interest?
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[quote user="Felix"]Is it only us???  By now we are usually turning enquiries into bookings but this year would be nice to receive an enquiry (apart from a scam - they are still out there!!).  Have had some good years during the recession years but this is worrying and could be our worse year if things do not pick up.  Anyone else noticed a considerable downturn in interest?[/quote]

Long term bookings are down I think, we have nothing yet for Easter. Saying that many French will wait till almost Easter to book because of the weather. It may also be how you market your Cdh, to whom and who you advertise with. With the exception of Christmas when we closed we have had at least one person in a room every day and the bookings (there's a clue) just keep coming but at short notice like 48 or 72 hours in advance. For this time of the year you need to work out if you just want to make a profit or just break even i.e. pay all your bills, feed yourself etc. If you want to do that and just make a little beer money then start a price war which is what we did. We currently sell our rooms, till Easter, as 5 Euros per night cheaper than anyone else in the area and after taking all our running costs out for the whole house including us we make about three to seven euros per room which is better than a kick in the crutch. Another thing we did is to contact all the companies that operate in our area offering them accommodation for their staff and cheap meals (10 Euros for two plates). We have had people from EDF, INSEE, Tresor Public etc even a couple of Gendarmes stay during the winter. I have also found that commission based websites are now better value than single payment websites because they have to work to get you bookings which in turn makes them money. Don't expect so many Brits either what with the value of the pound.

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We are only a 2 bedrooms and only do B&B as there are restaurants within walking distance.  We have always kept our room rates at good value and no extra charges for breakfast which is a generous one.  Our advertising is the same as all our good years and we are still on the first page of google on almost every type of search.  We have never had to rely on the Brits as normally our bookings are half Brits to half around the world.  Another B&B we know in the village is also finding it quiet.  Just seems as though someone has switched us off which is very odd this time of year.  Our website is still getting hits although these are down a little.  We have done very well with bookings in the past from a couple of free sites that always seem to pop up on the first page which is good.  We have recently come off a quite expensive site which did not produce the goods or appear on the first pages. Obviously money is tight everywhere.  Hopefully the awful weather in Blighty will encourage people to sit down soon and think of Summer.  I do agree with a comment you made in a previous post that the French need to advertise their country a lot more.  We are still getting people who had never heard of the Dordogne!!!!   Oh well, will keep paying the RSI monthy bills and hope things improve.  At least we still have our main job to do, if the gites are taking bookings that is!!!!! 

 

 

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[quote user="Felix"]

We are only a 2 bedrooms and only do B&B as there are restaurants within walking distance.  We have always kept our room rates at good value and no extra charges for breakfast which is a generous one. 

[/quote]

That caught my eye, as a Cdh your not allowed to charge for breakfast, it must be inclusive by law.

Everyone is hurting financially and people are looking for the cheapest even if it is not the best deal. Having 'hits' is nothing if they don't convert in to bums in beds as I like to say. Spend your advertising money wisely, always try and discover how your guests find you. Your hosting company will have a control panel which allows you to track how people get to your website and there is always Google Analytics. We also found that having two separate websites, one in English and another in French has helped because they will rank differently depending on if your using google.co.uk, .com. .fr and .be. This we have discovered over the years is much better than having French language pages within an English language website or the other way round and is definitely better than embedding translation within your website. It is also handy to find out how people find you via a search engine, what do they type in rather than guess what they may type to find you and optimise for those phrases or words.

As to the Brits well even in Spain they are complaining about the lack of bookings especially if the exchange rate stays so low. Those that do, and can afford to, go on holiday look more for all inclusive deals because overall it is cheaper.

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Your first comment is very interesting.  There are many established cdh in our area, especially in the main tourist town, that show separate price for the room (not cheap) and then an additional cost (8 or 9 euros per person) for breakfast.   If we ever get asked for a room without breakfast we have always said that there is no such price, our rates are Bed and Breakfast. 

Our website provider has a very good optional extra where we can view exactly what people have searched for and which site they have been referred from and where the enquiries have come from.  Very useful detailed information and you would be amazed (well you probably wouldn't, being in the same business) what people search for.  Without this info we would not have realised that a number of the free sites are producing so much business for us.  In our experience the French, bless them, do not always like booking too far ahead.  In "silly season" the urgent phone calls and knocks on the door start with French looking for a room or rooms at the last poss minute.  Many times we have phoned and had local B&Bs phone us trying to find rooms for these people who think a room will "just be there" in August. 

If there are any chd owners left out there (this forum has gone very quiet on this front) it would be interesting to hear how your enquiries/bookings are going so far this year. 

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No - it's not just you but us too! Normally we've got quite a few Spring and Summer bookings by now but this year's been unusually quiet so far. However from this weekend we've had a lot of enquiries, so I'm feeling more hopeful about the summer. What we have learnt in the10 years we've been doing this is that nothing is predictable!

Bon courage,

Jan

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Try bookings.com, we have had so many bookings from them since registering it is unbelievable. Yes they charge commission but they have produced far more reservations than any of the sites we previously advertised on paying big annual subscriptions. The only reason I saw this last post was because I was at my computer processing three reservations for seven couples (group of 4, group of 3 and 1 couple  ranging from 3 to 10 nights). Wherever you search for accommodation now booking.com comes up first and because it takes only a minute to make a reservation people love it. It's like Laterooms was two years ago who now have seemed to have gone out of favour but then as you pay nothing to join you have not lost any annual subscriptions for no reservations.
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I tried to book a couple of nights at a CdH in the Ariège this weekend and all I got was a ringing tone, no recorded message so I couldn't leave an enquiry. In the end I stayed at a Hotel.

Either the place doesn't need my custom ot it has closed down, although in that case I would have expected a different reply from the phone.

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Thanks Norman, PM received.

There is a B&B near us which we have used in the past for our walking holiday when we have more guests than rooms. I had a request for rooms for eight couples for Easter who were coming to visit the Cathar Castles. I tried desperately to contact the other B&B because I could fill all our and their rooms for Easter plus they had booked demi-pension. All in all it was worth €3,200 split two ways. I phoned, I emailed, I phoned and emailed again but no response. A few days later he phoned me having returned from a short break to ask if the deal was still on as he had no booking for Easter at all. Unfortunately I couldn't muck the people about so I told them we could not accommodate them so we have both lost out on a nice little earner.

The guy is French and I asked if he checked his phone messages remotely, had he a mobile phone and did he check his emails when away from home, the short answer is no because he is on holiday so why should he. We on the other hand take our calendar with us and have our phone redirected to our mobile.  We have free national and international calls on our mobile so phoning people back in France or elsewhere is no problem, we can tell them if we have rooms available plus they can book direct on our website. In this business you have to be available all the time to take bookings else people, just like you have done, will go elsewhere. I always say my favorite sound is tintinnabulations i.e. the sound of the bell on my till and that the name of the game is bums in beds.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Just an update. I have just uploaded all my future reservations in to my mobile phone so when I am out and about and somebody phones I can tell them if we have a room available and just counted them off from today till the end of the year, 71 so far. I looked back through my stats to see how we were doing for reservations this time last year and we only had 23. Looking back over the last nine years this is the largest number of reservations we have received in the first quarter of any year. Further analysis shows that this increase is primarily down to one advertising source which does not have an annually advertising fee but charges a commission per reservation. It's something we have not done before but feel that this type of advertising is pretty good as they work for you rather than taking your money and sitting on their bottoms.
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Is that like booking.com etc, that pop up when you are looking at a place on Trip Adviser?

I have often used them to make a booking, and have even found some very good deals - better than going direct to the hotel/B&B. But i often wonder if the accommodation provider feels a bit cheesed off at being forced to cut his/her price as well as presumably pay commission.

It's encouraging to hear that it works so well for the owner.

Angela
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It is but we don't drop our rates, our website prices are nearly always the same or cheaper in one or two cases. A friend of mine was responsible for over 40 hotels in his group and they always had higher prices for 'walk in' guests which they discount down for these sites. They can do this because of their high walk in prices and it is not illegal and most hotels that use these companies work this way. You can also 'adjust' your visibility buy increasing your commission rate, the more you pay the higher up you go. We use the lowest commission rate which costs us about 5€ per night per room. When you consider how much we were paying in annual fees to some of the prestige websites and the quantity of booking we received from them we feel this type of advertising offers better value for money. I see that the Tripadvisor reservation company Flipkey has now moved away from it's $350 pa fee to 5% commission only, they collect the money on your behalf then deposit it in to your PayPal account (less their 5%) the day of arrival. This is the cheapest but then they get interest on the money they hold.
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  • 3 months later...
Well we are now virtually full for the next six weeks. The last week in August just a couple of bookings but that is fairly normal as families get ready for the kids returning to school. In total from today till the end of August we have 35 weeks full (over four rooms) with confirmed, deposit paid, reservations. As for racking up the prices in restros, well not round here they don't. I think many of the 'comments' are based on hearsay. Most of the shops and restaurants are closed from mid September till July down on the coast so how can they be cheaper then? Most coastal resorts are like ghost towns after September.
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For lack of bookings ,a good portion of blame can be laid at the door of dear Brittany Ferries. I intended to book a 5 day trip over in the next couple of weeks and I'm just recovering from the shock. Poole to Cherbourg , ONE WAY,car+2, £284, return £320.Add the word 'from' in all their bookings now and yes I do know the cheap days to travel. This was out Thursday,backTuesday. My daughter ,partner and granddaughter had a week in Spain ,flights from Bournemouth and a flat for virtually the same price. B.F. seem to be commiting financial suicide.They still offer the cheap day trip but penalise you for staying longer.The fares increase the longer you stay. Our trips to France now consist of ferry from Dover,usually about the £110 price return,car + 2.then going into Belgium,Brugge/Brussels etc. and doing all the required shoppingin Lille commercial centre on the way back via Ypres/Ghent. B.F. fares must affect the economy of the stores in Cherbourg and also the holiday trade.I fully expect to see the Barfleur up for sale again after this season. Another stroke of genius from B.F. is that they won't allow car passengers to use the Freight ferry Contentin, even in the winter.

Regards.

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