Ways To Advertise Holiday Home
So what are the ways to advertise your holiday home? This page serves as the full list of holiday home advertising means. It is constantly updated. Do you know of any other ways not listed here? Let us know!
Advertising Holiday Home Online
Methods of advertising on the internet.
Personal website
+ Handy most complete and most up-to-date source of information on your holiday home
+ Information is easy to distribute and easy to access: just pass the link to potential guests, all they need doing is typing the link into a browser
+ Good way to show you are professional and serious about renting your home
– Difficult to position high in the results of search engines
Blog
A blog can increase your online presence. It is better hosted on the same domain as your personal website. However can be successfully run on a different domain, which is more suited for a targeted niche had you decided to go this route.
Forums
You can put a link to your personal website into your signature. Beyond that forums aren’t of much use for holiday home advertising as they are normally intended not for marketing or promotion but for discussion and exchange of experience. If you break this rule people will get annoyed and may treat you as a spammer.
Rental listing websites
+ Broad exposure (some sites work better for some owners, other sites work better for others, there is no universal listing site that works for everyone)
– Easy to get lost in the crowd: the more properties on the website the less likely yours will be noticed
– High cost of advertising
Google contextual advertising (AdSense)
+ Thoughtful strategy can generate genuine inquires
– Easy to waste lots of money with wrong strategy
– Expensive clicks may be wasted by “curious” users
Craigslist / Gumtree
+ High exposure for the first few days
+ Free
– Easy to get lost in the crowd
– Difficult to track / maintain your adverts
Video
You can put up a video about your holiday home and post it on youtube.com (for example). Though the idea is original I am not sure about its effectiveness in reaching potential guests.
Advertising Holiday Home Offline
Non-internet methods of advertising.
Paper catalogue
+ Well targeted advertising
– High cost of advertising
– Inability to change the advertisement once the catalogue is out
Word of mouth
+ It’s free and it works!
+ More trustworthy guests
– This method alone cannot supply enough guests for most holiday home owners
22
AM
I think one of the major issues in getting your holiday home rented is location. We are just developing our own holiday home advertising web sites http://www.edenleisure.co.uk and to get known on the web is not an easy task.
The location has to be popular to attract the widest range of potential holiday makers. If your home is in a rural area with little to do but walk then you have narowed your market to walkers and possibly bikers. If you are in a coastal area with good beaches, theam park within 30 min drive, good costal walks and night life entertainment your holiday home should always be full.
Great what you have done with Advertise your Holiday Home.
29
PM
To successfully advertise your holiday home in the UK, you need to either get listed on holiday websites that actually work, or be very pro active and get your own site to the first page of Google. Either way, it costs, and it’s easy to spend your money on holiday websites that will never generate you any enquiries. Strangely, the feedback I get from many of our customers is that the tourist boards own official websites for a region aren’t necessarily the big enquiry earners you may expect (especially as to be included on these costs quite a bit), and this could be because many of them are turning to the very lucrative “book online” forcing the visitor to make a choice and book online. I believe that most visitors, especially those looking for self catering holidays, like to speak to someone first before booking, so that they can double check that the property they are interested in fulfils their requirements - particularly if they have children or a disabled traveller. Our own holiday website British Holidays Direct allows our advertisers to add their property, and then let the visitor contact them via the phone or using the enquiry box on their listing. Whilst we are still considered a new kid on the block, we’ve already got a huge number of advertisers, some of whom, (Haven, Park Resorts, Holiday Inn, Blue Chip Vacations etc) have taken up spaces on our site, and are looking forward to seeing our site develop and rival these tourist board sites.
We welcome any comments, please visit our site.
11
PM
That’s a really good list of resources you have put together.
Owners with holiday homes in the Costa del Sol can add a listing at http://www.costadelvillas.co.uk. We are currently offering 12 month free listings drop us an email at help @ costadelvillas.co.uk for more info.