Direct Holiday Lets Blog

Just a quick post to let you all know that although we were doing free advertising for owners on the site, we are going to have to bring this to an early end for a number of reasons.

We have been inundated with new registrations and have had lots of properties added. Unfortunately a lot of these have been of a poor standard probably due to the FREE nature. I feel that this can only reflect badly on the site as people want quality when looking for a holiday home and not some shack out in the boonies. Some of the ads that have attempted to be added have been almost laughable and I cant imagine that for one minute these people can truly beleive that they are going to rent them out.

It would seem that people only really value something when it costs them money.

So from June the site will paid only. The new price is going to be 75 Euro’s per year for the initial property and then 45 Euro’s per year for each additional property. This still represents great value for owners as we are still getting lots of traffic to the site. We are also creating more and more content on the site which should help to bring even more interest.

I wish you all a good summer and hope that your advertising is successful.

Rob

Thought I would make a quick post in order to give everyone and update on the state of play with Direct Holiday Lets.

Its only been a week or so but we have already been inundated with owners adding their properties which has been fantastic. Keep adding them, the more the better.

Don’t forget that for just 20GBP you can make your property featured on the site, giving it lots of exposure.

Also, please, if you have your own website and are using my free service, please place a link back to Direct Holiday Lets. It is appreciated and will help us all. It doesn’t take long to do, so please help us now that we are a free service.

I would like to say one thing though. If you think FREE means that you can just add any old crap then you are sadly mistaken. If any listings are not complete in any shape or form, for example, poor quality photo’s, lack of info(one sentence followed by “take a look at www.xxx for further info”, no rates and poor use of the English language, they will be removed in a HEARTBEAT!! You will recieve no explanation and no warning. Don’t waste your precious time or mine.

Just because we are offering free advertising does not mean we want crap properties OR dirty old bloody caravans listed.

Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest

Hello,

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we are now offering advertising on the site for just 25 GBP per year for all properties. This is a saving of 10 GBP from our previous price.

The reason for the change is that there is so much competition within the holiday rental listing market I felt that trying to follow suite and do as the big boys do would be neither practical nor financially viable as a lot of the big sites are owned by large corporations and have large marketing budgets to play with.

So, I felt that it would be better to offer what I still believe to be a very good service at a really competitive price. Lets face it, 25 GBP per year is not that much money considering we are still getting around 20,000 visitors per month. I think this does represent great value for money.

This does not mean that we will be working less on the site and promoting on the web on a regular basis. I will be working even harder to reach as many holiday makers and owners as possible in order to show both that Direct Holiday Lets is probably the webs most cost effective form of advertising and a great source of quality holiday home rentals.

If you need to contact me, please use the contact form on the site. I am only too happy to hear from you all.

Have a good day.

Rob

Good Afternoon,

Over the coming weeks I will be adding a series of holiday destination guides to the site.

I have already added a guide to France and also a guide to Italy. I hope to added many more guides to the most popular destinations very soon.

These guides are mainly for renters but hopefully they will be of some use and interest to all.

Have a good week!

Rob

Evening,

Wow, I cant beleive it. U.S based Home and Away Inc have now purchased http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/ which is their fourth holiday listing site acquisition in less than a year!! Read it officially here http://www.homeaway.com/index.cfm/tgt/od_press_release_100207

This means that they now own a whole host of holiday rentals sites inlcuding holiday-rentals.co.uk, vrbo.com, abritel, cyberrentals and many others.

My thoughts on this are how is this going to affect the online holiday rentals market? And more importantly from an owners point of view how is this going to affect you?

As a lot of you know that Direct Holiday Lets is still a relatively young site as it was only established in early 2007, but already we have almost 200 properties listed which is great(big thanks to all you owners).

My main concern though for an owner of a properties listed on one of these “mega sites” is “Will they ever be seen??”. Afterall, when a holidaymaker has the choice of hundreds if not thousands of properties in there chosen country or region how do you know whether yours is going to get the exposure you want and not lost in that proverbial haystack?

I think that having too many properties listed on a listing site can also have an effect on the holidaymakers whole search experience.

We already know that a lot of the big sites have special deals for placing your property further up the listings or making them more prominent on the site but WHAT NEXT with these “mega listing sites”? Well, you know about Google Adsense dont you and cost per click? Yes Mr and Mrs owner, have your property listed across our 500 sites pay per click style!!

Think im kidding? It could be the only way you will be able to have your property consistently viewed on these sites in the near future. Pay more dear owner and someone will actually see your rental property!!

Im proud to say that Direct Holiday Lets still only costs 35 GBP per year for the first property and 25 for each subsequent property. Now, that I think is great value! Oh and your property will be found!

Just a thought!

Rob

Hello,

Good afternoon from sunny spain.

I thought I would take a few minutes to let you all know that we are now offering all owners 6 months FREE listing on Direct Holiday Lets in the event that you do not acquire any new bookings through our site after registering and paying for a years advertising with us.

So, this means that If in the unlikely event that after a year you have not had any bookings via our site, simply let us know and if we are satisfied that this is the case, you will receive 6 months advertising completely free.

If you have any questions in regards to this, please contact me via our contact form on the site.

Happy renting.

Rob

Morning All,

I just wanted to talk about the increasing amount of spam being posted on the net not to mention an increase in phishing and scam email activity and how we all need to be on our guard in fighting this menace.

Its only natural that Direct Holiday Lets will also become a target for such attacks and recently the contact forms have been abused by these scum bags(yes you, you know who you are!) Although we are able to combat this to a degree, a few of these emails will get sent to the owners. Please be carefull when dealing with any enquiries.

Fortunately enough the scammers and spammers do a lack…..how can I put it? A brain. Most of the scam emails that have been sent via our forms look like they were written by my 2 year old!!

Things to look out for in scam/bogus emails:-

Written in all caps(Spammer obviously doesnt know how to turn this off)
Terrible punctuation(Never went to school)
Start by introducing themselves and include their age(Probably lieing like the rest of us on that one eh?)
Stating that they are away on business at the moment(meaning that they are unable/reluctant to speak to you by phone)

Once again please be careful. If you are in any doubt about an enquiry, please contact me as I am happy to help you and advise the best I can.

Well, thats my rant over with for today. I hope you are all doing well both owners and renters and that you have a pleasant spam free day.

Rob

Hi All,

Another update to say we have now added the Florida portal site that contains lots of information on florida including articles, news and books. The site can be found here holiday rentals florida. Any owner with a property in florida who has it advertised on directholidaylets.com will automatically have it advertised on this site also for free.

The same applies to owners of properties in spain and france who have already advertised on directholidaylets.com. As stated in our previous posting we have also started two other portal sites www.directholidayspain.co.uk and www.directholidayfrance.co.uk

All of these sites will be updated some more over the coming few weeks. Please take a look.

Have a great day.

Robert

Hello All,

I just wanted to let you all know that we have added another 2 websites to the Direct Holiday Lets network of sites. holiday rentals spain site and holiday rentals france site.

These sites serve a number of purposes. Firstly it gives all of you advertisers of holiday rentals in France and Spain the added bonus of having your properties shown on another website of ours at no extra charge. Secondly, the two new sites will help to attract more viewers to the main Direct Holiday Lets website giving all of our rental properties even more exposure.

The sites also provide lots of information on their respective countries including news, articles and books and will be of interest not only to holiday home owners but also to people currently living in France and Spain or planning to make the move.

I hope you all find these sites of great use. There will be more and more content added over the coming weeks.

Good luck.

Robert

Hello Everyone,

Once again, I know that a lot of you are aware of online scams and that its very important to keep your wits about you when dealing with all enquiries.

I just wanted to make everyone aware of the following email address which is being used by an abuser of our contact forms and who you may have been contacted by. The email address is tbrown_work@yahoo.com

This “person” has been trying to scam a few of you by pretending that he has paid too much money and that you need to send him the difference back. Needless to say if you are contacted by this individual do not entertain him.

Always clarify that payments have in fact been made into your account and that funds have cleared etc before ever paying anybody any money back. Its also advisable to get them to fax a copy of their bank transfer receipt to you as proof that money has been sent. In all cases when dealing with online payments get as much information as possible from the enquirer.

If you have any worries or concerns about any of the emails that you receive please let us know.

Thanks

Robert