Marketing Your Holiday Rentals

Below are some tips and advice on marketing your holiday rentals. Want to take some better photo´s or write some more compeling ads? Read on and see if you can pick up some useful tips.

Some tips for taking better photo´s
Write a compeling advert

Some tips for taking better photo´s

1. Take pictures on a nice sunny day No exceptions here. If you take pictures on anything but a sunny day, your potential guests will think that this is what they have in store for their holiday. Sunny or NOT at all. 2. Focal points within your pictures When taking pictures of your holiday rentals make sure that you have the right focal points. For example, your old rusty ford anglia or your muddy wellies outside of the front door are NOT good focal points. Nice comfortable furniture, lovely views and open fires are much nicer dont you think? 3. Pictures of the local area and surroundings Why not include not just pictures of the property but add a few of the surrounding area and its lovely scenery? Afterall, your guests will not be staying in your holiday home 24 hours a day, they will want to see what there is on offer close by. Why not show them in a few photo´s? 4. Use the natural light When taking your pictures use as much natural light as possible and try to avoid the use of flash especially where you have shiny mirrors, tables and glass where the flash is reflected back spoiling the shot. 5. Take shots from different angles When taking your pictures try taking a few from different angles. Its amazing how a simple shot of the front of a property can look so different from different angles. By stepping forward or back a few paces can make all the difference. Also, when taking pictures of smaller rooms inside the property try standing on a chair in the corner and taking some shots looking down slightly on the room. 6. Make sure the property is tidy Sounds obvious but make sure that the property inside and outside is immaculate and that you havent left cereal boxes on the kitchen work top or dirty butt ridden ashtrays on the lounge coffee table. These minor details could lose you a booking. Be diligent when taking your photo´s. 7. Editing software Ok, I admit I am not an expert when it comes to photography but if I take some pictures and they are not quite up to scratch I will use my photo editing software to touch them up a bit. If you have taken a number of pictures and there are some you like but need brightening up or need to be manipulated in some way you may want to buy some software to get the job done. I recommend paint shop pro or adope photoshop which are two of the most popular photo editing and graphic design applications. Or there are a couple of free programs that I use myself, one is Gimp(www.gimp.org) and the other is paint.NET(http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html). 8. Use the angles When taking photos of rooms containing items with reflective surfaces such as glass, a mirror or glossy furniture, shoot at an angle so reflections, including yours, are minimised. 9. Shoot your external shots with the sun behind you When taking external shots of the property if possible make sure that the sun is behind you which will prevent any harsh shadows appearing within the photo. I hope that these simple tips will encourage and assist you in taking some fantastic photo´s of your holiday rentals and make your ads on our website even more attractive.

Write a compeling advert

1. The Title Apart from the initial picture this is going to be the very first thing that your prospective guests read, so make sure that it makes an impact. "Holiday cottage England" does not sound as nearly as exciting and attractive as "Holiday Cottage in the beautiful english cotswolds". I know which one sounds the most appealing to me! So dont forget to use the title effectively and be enthusiastic with the wording to take the initial step to capturing your viewers imagination. Another VERY IMPORTANT aspect to your title and to your ad in general is the effect it has on search engines such as yahoo and google. A number of times a day the search engines "crawl" Direct Holiday Lets and store the data/text from the site within their databases so that when people do a search on google or yahoo for example they match the search query to content stored from Direct Holiday Lets and other websites. Common sense tells you that you are more likely to have your ad found if your title says "Holiday apartment to rent in Majorca" rather than "Our lovely home in Majorca". So dont forget to use both the Title, Short Description and Main Description fields wisely and include common words that are searched for on the search engines such as "holiday villa in...." or "holiday apartment for rent in....". You get the picture. Natural search terms that are used on the internet. I assure you that if you do this, your advert will become much more search engine friendly. 2. Short Description The short description is the text that is seen within the search results for each property after searching on the Direct Holiday Lets website. This shows the first 25-30 words and this is your next opportunity to really sell your property. Make this as eye-catching and as interesting as possible. Which of the two examples below sound the most attractive to you? "Nice apartment in Estepona close to shops, local facilities and just 10 minutes walk to the nearby beach." or "Fantastic modern fully equiped holiday apartment in Estepona featuring large sunny terrace with great views. The property is also very close to all local ammenities including the wonderful Zoo, Cinema and the gorgeous sandy beach." Once again, I know which one sounds the more appealing to me. If you cant be enthusiastic about your own holiday rental how is anyone else going to be? Im not saying lie or deceive your viewers, far from it, what I am saying is make it sound like their holidays here are going to be fun, exciting and entertaining and not some kind of chore. 3. Long Description Once a viewer clicks on your advert for further information this is what they will see along with your photo´s, rates, availibilty calendar and contact information. This is where you can go mad and be as descriptive and detailed as possible in writing about your property. Dont forget to mention things like the holiday rentals facilities, local events, how to get to the property, nearest airports and train stations etc. The more info you include the better. Dont leave your viewers wondering unless you want to lose a potential booking. Make sure that you enter as much relevant information as possible here including a detailed description of the property and its facilities, bedrooms, bathrooms, outside living space, heating, travel information, local info and more. If you also have your own private website for your property you can place a link here so that the viewers can get further information and photo´s if required. 4. Local Facilities This field is quite important as under the advanced search facility there is an option to search for keywords within an advert. Things that should be entered here are words that describe the local facilities such as beach, tennis, golf, cinemas, restaurants etc. So be sure that you use the correct keywords to describe the local facilities so that when someone does do a search for certain keywords within the advanced search they will find your property. So remember. Be enthusiastic about your holiday rental and include as much interesting and detailed information as possible. You pay a small yearly fee for your advert but your creativity is free. Look inside and find the salesperson in you. We do monitor all our property adverts but if you would like us to take a look at yours and give you our opinion send us an email by using the contact page on this site. Happy Writing!!