A recent comment by Sid on my posting, ‘Movement against Trip Advisor gains ground‘, highlighted the fact the TA is trying it’s best to get a Webby Award. This is a competition to find the best website as voted by Internet visitors.
However, take a look at the comments and you can see why they may now think they should not of bothered…
Tripadvisor have more websites against them now due to the fact that it has been proved that many of the reviews are actually fake, as a hotelier myself with great Tripadvisor feedback I would still prefer NOT to be associated with them as they are unfair to hoteliers refusing many management responses and not allowing hotels to defend their reputation.
And that comes from someone with postive reviews. How much long will it take before either TA bows to demand or advertisers decide to go elsewhere and TA goes under?
Posted in Reviews and comments, Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– April 30, 2010
Are you targeting just the English speaking in your marketing? If you are then you could be missing out on bookings. The French are known for taking breaks in gite and holiday rentals. If you find that your bookings from the UK are down, you could be filling the gaps with French holiday makers.
If you think the cost of advertising is too much to attract the French market then check out this advert by Alex Wright from Gites with a pool. Text was copied from his other adverts and took minutes to create. He paid €6 for a top listing and had enquires with in minutes. A great return for a small investment.
Learning French might seem difficult but your investment in time will pay off.
Posted in Bookings, Marketing.
By Bob Toovey
– April 8, 2010
Since my post about Trip Advisor back in January, things have moved on. A website now exists that explains the review sites problems and how gite and holiday rental owners have been mistreated.
Ihatetripadvisor.org.uk, like most, accepts and supports the concept of user generated content (UGC) on travel websites but I do not accept that reviews can be posted with little or no moderation or verification. In my opinion TripAdvisor’s highly successful business model appears to be based upon a minimum of checks (and is thus very seriously abused), an arrogant disregard for accuracy and truthfulness, and a customer service regime that is virtually non-existent. My views are shared by a growing number of industry professionals. There are many thousands of hoteliers in the UK alone who are vehemently anti-TripAdvisor. We hope they will support this initiative.
I have created this website to raise awareness about these issues and to gently persuade TripAdvisor to review its business practices and to accept that along with its market leading position comes a responsibility to be transparent, accurate, truthful, and balanced.
A tarnish brand is like an open wound. If it does not get treated and repaired then the condition will get worse. I have not heard of any press releases or statements made by TA. With out treatement, the site is going to suffer badly and their reputation (what’s left of it) will effect their paid advertising.
Posted in Reviews and comments, Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– March 23, 2010
I was recently discussing the pro’s and con’s of availabilty calendars on Gite and holiday rental websites with Mark from Dordognehomes.com. I have also spoken to various gite owners and there has been a mixed view.
Mark’s site offers calendars if the advertiser wants them but to my mind they are not such a good idea.
- If there is nothing marked in the calendar, people will wonder why and perhaps choose to book elsewhere
- Many will check out the calendar and if chosen week is booked then they will find another place that is not
- When a visitor to you site leaves because of availability issues, you have no idea who they were!
Leaving off the calendar and relying on email contact has benefits
- The conversation can continue even if their chosen week is booked, you can offer something else
- Visitors have no idea how busy you are unless you tell them
- Each enquiry allows you to capture an email address. However, if you plan mailshots ensure that the visitor has ‘opted-in’
As I have said, there have been mixed views and the above is my own. If you are a gite or holiday rental owner, what are your thoughts?
Posted in Bookings, Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– March 14, 2010
Google has been putting less and less emphasis on Page Rank. It may still be featured on the tool bar but it is being removed from various sites such as Webmaster tools. Is this something for you to worry about?
For gite and holiday rental owners, it never really has been a major consideration. Why? Because you should be worrying about bookings, this is the measure from which you gage your sites and your businesses success.
The important metrics (the numbers) you should be keeping an eye on are…
- the ratio between bookings and visitors to the site
- where visitors are coming from, your adverts, Twitter, Facebook and search engines etc
- geographical locations, are they all coming from the UK?
These days, search engines are focusing more on content and it’s context. Page Rank has become a small part of a larger formular that decides on your sites position in search results.
For more on Page Rank and it’s decreased importance, read Google May Start Calling PageRank Something Else on WebPro News
Posted in Search engines, Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– March 4, 2010
Gite owners have many opportunities to advertise on the Internet. There are more and more gite and holiday rental owners now using Twitter, some now have Facebook fan pages and most seem to use listing directory sites. Each has it’s own benefit and possibly attracts different kinds of people. Is you homepage enough?
Short answer is no.
Long answer is that each visitor from each source (Twitter, Facebook, directory site) are looking for different things. Consider that directory sites is an established way for holiday makers to find a destination. They may be older than Twitter and Facebook users who will be of a younger generation. Each group will be looking for a different kind of holiday, your offerings can satsify both groups but you don’t have to do that on a single page.
Create what is called a landing page. A page created and crafted to appeal to a specific purpose.
For the older generation, create a page that appeals just to them. They may want to know about the peaceful surroundings, museums and interesting places to visit.
For the younger generation, exciting places to spend days out and places to have fun like water parks etc..
Each page can be tailored to each target group. By tracking visitors to each page (Google Analytics for example) you can see what sort audience you have and what sort of groups visit your site. Essential information for marketing your site.
Posted in Marketing, Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– February 23, 2010
Since my article The difficulty of site reviews and comments it seems things have developed with regard to Trip Advisor. According to the comments on Trip Advisor – Fake Reviews from the Visit Normandy-Pays de Loire blog entry, action is to be taken against the holiday review site.
Comment by Frank McCready
We are launching a website in the UK in February with the aim of establishing a fighting fund to challenge Tripadvisor in the UK courts. We have already recruited a well regarded firm of specialist lawyers who have kindly agreed to provide some advice on a pro bono basis, but will ultimately be expensive. Nevertheless it is only by hauling TA into a court that anything will change, and god knows it needs to happen quickly.
Posted in Reviews and comments, Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– January 22, 2010
I recently came across the website for Dave Smith, the Gite Guru. He is a web designer specialising in websites with SEO built in from the beginning. He shows off his skills with his free lisiting site, Rent Gite France. A great looking site that actually offers an RSS feed, something I don’t often come across on listing sites.
The site appears to be built on WordPress, configured to allow an interactive map and a search bar with options for region and how many the property sleeps.
A good looking site built on free software and tools. A good demonstration of the power of WordPress and what can be done with some imagination.
Posted in Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– January 20, 2010
There is more to social networking than just Facebook or Twitter, have you considered YouTube? The are millions of videos and even more members, the totals are just silly. Imagine if only a tiny fraction of those who visit or use YouTube were to find their way to your site?
One gite owner is giving it a go, take a look at Basse Copettes page (a gite and B & B in Normandy) who has uploaded quite a few already. Thomas the owner, has created video and video montages of still pictures of the area, famous places and of course his property.
The main benefits for Thomas are,
- More external links pointing to his site
- Encouraging YouTube users to visit
- Possible transfer of page rank though remote still worth doing
- YouTube vidoes can be embedded in to the gites website, you don’t have to host them yourself (think of bandwidth for a start)
- Pictures and videos can say more then you have space for words, they are also a lot more convincing
I would emphasize that a quality recording is essential however, you don’t need to spend a lot to achieve that. There are digital video recorders available for around €200 – €300. Check eBay for any special deals.
Posted in Marketing, Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– January 8, 2010
What do you get when you invest time and effort in to your gite and holiday rental website? This...La Vieille Dezie. This has to be one of the most attractive sites I have seen.
Disclaimer – I know the person behind this site but this is not a freebie plug – I really think this is the best gite and holiday rental site I have seen so far.
Posted in Websites.
By Bob Toovey
– December 4, 2009
Trip Advisor up for a Webby Award? I don’t think so….
A recent comment by Sid on my posting, ‘Movement against Trip Advisor gains ground‘, highlighted the fact the TA is trying it’s best to get a Webby Award. This is a competition to find the best website as voted by Internet visitors.
However, take a look at the comments and you can see why they may now think they should not of bothered…
And that comes from someone with postive reviews. How much long will it take before either TA bows to demand or advertisers decide to go elsewhere and TA goes under?
Posted in Reviews and comments, Websites.
5 comments
By Bob Toovey – April 30, 2010