Cassis Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Have any B&B owners advertised with www.cap-location.com or www.bedbreak.com or www.pour-les -vacances.com and are they any good? A couple of these sites look a bit amateurish but they do keep coming up in the top 5 for various Google searches.Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coco Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 I've been trying to decide about cap-location myself because it is only 29€ per year, so may be worth the gamble. bedbreak.com is part of the BnB France service, the price of which includes an entry into five european books as well, the UK one being the Thomas Cook guide. I recently received the forms to join, it's 100 euros one-off fee to join and 120 euros per year membership. I thought I would take the leap and join, even though I won't now go into the paper versions til 2007. However, I've temporarily held off, because I have realised that if someone finds you via the website, they then have to pay £5 to get the address and contact details of your B&B from the site. This seems excessive to me and from a holidaymaker's point of view I think I would not bother and would look on another site. I know though, that some of the more established B&B owners on this site do belong to it so I would be interested to know whether they feel that the books more than make up for the rip-off website, or whether it is just me that would begrudge paying £5 to obtain an address before I even knew if the B&B had a vacancy!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 [quote user="Cassis"]Have any B&B owners advertised with www.cap-location.com or www.bedbreak.com or www.pour-les -vacances.com and are they any good? A couple of these sites look a bit amateurish but they do keep coming up in the top 5 for various Google searches.Phil[/quote]I have not heard of the first one but I am a member of B&B France (bedbreak) and pour-les-vacances. B&B France only charge £5 for those that do not want to book through them. The booking service is free to potential guests. They have also expanded the Thomas Cook books to include Belgium and France, the latter is because they did own Petit Flute but have now sold it off due to poor sales. Don't forget B&B France also requires an inspection whish is somewhat (well it was in my case) very simular to that of GDF, again this might depend on who you get for the inspection and where you are located. We were inspected last year and will be in all the books (thats England, France, Belgium, Germany and Italy) for 2006. Thats quite a lot for your money really.If you like having French and French speaking Belgians then pour-les-vacances are quite good. We have more than got our money back with them.Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coco Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 [quote user="Quillan"]I have not heard of the first one but I am a member of B&B France (bedbreak) and pour-les-vacances. B&B France only charge £5 for those that do not want to book through them. The booking service is free to potential guests. [/quote]Well judging by the tarif on your own website and the tarif on bedbreak.com not even the booking service is free as they appear to have added 5 euros to each of your room prices. You still cannot just contact the B&B direct to make enquiries - you have to actually book and pay for the reservation before you are given the address - so how do you even know that the B&B is exactly where you want it to be located? Or am I reading the whole site wrong? But then, if I am, surely it's not being that clear. Still, the bottom line is, do you get enough bookings from it to make it worth paying the fees? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 [quote user="St Amour"]Well judging by the tarif on your own website and the tarif on bedbreak.com not even the booking service is free as they appear to have added 5 euros to each of your room prices. You still cannot just contact the B&B direct to make enquiries - you have to actually book and pay for the reservation before you are given the address - so how do you even know that the B&B is exactly where you want it to be located? Or am I reading the whole site wrong? But then, if I am, surely it's not being that clear. Still, the bottom line is, do you get enough bookings from it to make it worth paying the fees?[/quote]They obviously don't give the precise address like road and house number but then unless booking I have never known anyone to ask that until they make the reservation. We paid 600€ for three years worth of everything with them less a discount because we missed the publishing cut off date last year and were only on the internet. Thats not bad money when you consider they sell about 70,000 books (so they say) in the UK alone and I can't remember the Eiropean figures. You need to take in to account the life expectancy of the books bought this year. Most people will buy a book, use it and then put it on the shelf. They may lend it to a friend or family member so the book is going o be around for about 4 to 5 years. This means there are going to be around 180,000 books in circulation in the UK at any one time (thats assuming around 100/170,000 have been bined once used) which have been bought by people who intend to travel and stay in France otherwise they too would throw them away. On top of this you have the books sold in all the other countries as well so at least you know your B&B's details are being put in front in front of a targeted group i.e. those that want to stay in France. Do people really keep the books, yes they do, I have seen people arrive here telling us we are not in their GDF book which is 8 years old.At the end of the day it is difficult to know till the advertising clicks in properly how good they really are. We did not get 600€ worth of bookings last year from them but as I said we were only on their website and then only from August but we did get over 200€ so it paid it's years contributions. It's the same with all the rest of the places we advertise including being a member of GDF, if they don't bring in the punters then I won't use them thats why it is so important to keep records of how your guests found you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coco Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 [quote user="Quillan"] They obviously don't give the precise address like road and house number but then unless booking I have never known anyone to ask that until they make the reservation. Yes but they can't even make contact via phone or email to make an enquiry - they have to make an actual booking.At the end of the day it is difficult to know till the advertising clicks in properly how good they really are. We did not get 600€ worth of bookings last year from them but as I said we were only on their website and then only from August but we did get over 200€ so it paid it's years contributions. It's the same with all the rest of the places we advertise including being a member of GDF, if they don't bring in the punters then I won't use them thats why it is so important to keep records of how your guests found you.[/quote]Well it sounds as though bedbreak is probably worth the investment, despite my misgivings about their lack of contact details. My main difficulty is finding out just where the guests do come from. They always think they're being so helpful telling you that they came via your own website but when I tell them that they probably found that via another site they can never remember which one!!! That's why I don't bother with a website link from VF. That way people have to use VFs enquiry form and I know exactly who has come via that source; then I give them my website address so that they can look at the house in more detail.If you have any idea how to track where your bookings are coming from though I'd love to know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 "If you have any idea how to track where your bookings are coming from though I'd love to know."B&B software is what we use. We know most of what comes via our own website as they complete our form which links nicely to our software. I use the statistics from my website logs to see how they got to it, some companies send a distinctive email with the enquiry like VF and a few others, some are done via commision only (I like to see them work for their money) so we have them phoning for availability and the rest I ask. All this goes in to our system so we can see who performs and who does not. We also use it for marketing in that we send Christmas cards, special offer information etc to all our old guests which his how we get such a good rate (18.3% at the last count) return business. We have the names and address's, phone number and email address's of 98% of the people who have stayed here in the last 4 years. We don't do spam so we get them to tick a box and sign to allow us to contact them in the future so it's all above board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coco Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 Yes we send Christmas cards too and I'm happy wit the amount of repeat business we're getting - some are becoming not only regulars but friends.So what's teh B&B software? What does it do and does it cost a fortune? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 Easybook B&B, Gite, Small hotel and campsite software.http://www.easybookonline.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassis Posted March 14, 2006 Author Share Posted March 14, 2006 Phil's out working so I thought I'd have a look in.We've been thinking of setting up a spreadsheet to deal with guest analysis as you suggest, Chris. This is our first year in the GdF/AA brochure so up to now business has been arriving through word of mouth, tourist boards and the Internet. We always (try to) ask people how they found us and most come through Gites de France or through searching for bed&breakfast near Alencon on Google. But a lot are pretty vague about it, as you say, St Amour. We're using Google Analytics to see how people are finding and using the website - it's taking a while to get to grips with it but it has some useful stuff like showing visitor source and keyword searches. Not familiar with VF other than as Virtual France on Living France - I didn't think there was much advertising there, do you mean something else, St Amour?Jude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coco Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 Hi JudeYes, the VF I refer to is visitfrance.co.uk which are abysmal at after sales service and I'm still waiting for a satisfactory response from them before I decide to renew for this year. Only problem is, as much as their attitude really, REALLY riles me, they do bring us a lot of our business! However, I do take the £99 package, which doesn't allow a link to your own website but that way I feel I can tell just how many of my enquiries/bookings come via them, plus it saves £25! And if anyone wants more info about the place when they enquire I just refer them to our website at that stage. So far nothing to lose, just saved us money! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.