At the risk of sounding cliché. The internet is here to stay.
Gone are the days of going down to your local trusted travel agent and having your holiday plans in his hands. With the increased availability of high speed internet connections, cheaper and ever faster computers, the whole World is connected. Or they soon will be.
No industry has the felt this online presence more than the travel one. People are turning to the internet for everything travel related. From deciding where to go, how to get there and most importantly of all, where to stay? The travel industry has seen a massive boom in online activity.
You do not need a degree in computer science these days. Just the ability to get online, do a search and send an email. It is as simple as that. Every year, the barriers seem to be getting lower and lower. Everyone and anyone can get online.
With literally billions of online travel searches every month. It makes perfect sense that people are increasingly using the internet to advertise their holiday home.
How do you go about it?
Well the simplest and most effective way is to use an established holiday lettings site. Preferably one that is specialised in the country in which you want to advertise your holiday home.
Most of these sites have been specially designed to make the process as easy as possible and more importantly to give your holiday home the exposure it needs. Exposure being the operative word, some of the better known sites has millions of visitors a year. You could never get that kind of exposure elsewhere.
The benefits of advertising your holiday home online are:
- Exposure – some of the bigger and better known sites receive millions of visitors a year. No other advertising medium can compete.
- Should I pay? Yes – sites that offer free listings tend to be the sites that will not spend a lot of money on promoting their site and by extension your home
- You have complete control over your online advert. Your account is typically quick and easy to set up, allowing you to edit them to your heart’s content and offer ample space for photos and property descriptions.
- The best holiday lettings sites will do the marketing for you. They’ll work hard to make sure your property gets to the top of search listings as well as working with various offline advertising mediums such as newspapers, magazines. They’ll make sure your property gets found.
- Holiday makers contact you directly. You have complete control over who stays, when they stay and for what price. It’s your home and your choice. Some even offer the ability to receive enquiries via SMS messages.
- When deciding where to advertise your holiday home, ask questions and ask the questions that really matter. How many visitors do you get on your site every month? What percentages of these visitors send enquiries? How many enquire about your area/property type?
- Ask about extras. Many of the better sites offer all kinds of additional services. SMS messages sent to your mobile whenever you receive an enquiry, high definition area videos, automatically updated availability calendars etc
- The holiday site should also be very user friendly. People should be able to refine their areas, searches and get just the kinds of properties they came to find
- A good starting place is always the testimonial page of a webpage – look for other people’s experiences and comments
Check out spain-holiday.com for an example of an effective website to advertise your rental property. The company holds top positions on Google and other major search engines. Spain Holiday offers an unparalleled service and websites in ten different languages. With over 4 million unique visitors last year, Spain Holiday focuses on Spain and only Spain.