Direct Holiday Lets Blog

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

Hi All,

You can now make your holiday rental stand out from the crowd by having it as a “featured listing”.

This means that for a monthly fee you can have your property occupy one of only four featured listing slots on the site. These slots are prominent on the main page as well as many sub pages and show properties regardless of whether a visitor has done a search or not.

There are two options to choose from. Shared featured listing and Exclusive featured listing.

The shared option means that your property will be rotated within one of the slots with no more than 2 other properties. The exclusive option means you have the slot to yourself and your property will not be rotated but will be fixed.

These options give your property even more exposure on the site enabling you to gain more enquiries and bookings.

Please see http://www.directholidaylets.com/featured-holiday-rental.html for further information or email us.

Robert

Hello,

We now have a directory of travel and holiday home related businesses and websites at www.directholidaylets.com/useful-links.html

If you have a business or know of a business or website that you feel could be of great use to all of our owners and visitors to the site, please feel free to email us with your suggestions.

Of particular use are property management companies, airport transfer companies, locksmiths, plumbers, pool cleaning and builders etc.

We would like to list as many as possible so get your thinking caps on and send us your suggestions.

Thanks

Robert

Hello Everyone,

Just another posting to let you all know that we are now offering a new web design service for all of our current owners.

How would you like your own private website to show off your holiday home/homes in order to gain even more bookings?

There´s no doubt that having your own private website to showcase your holiday home is a great way of gaining the edge over your competitors.

Our package includes:

Professionally designed website
1 years website hosting
Domain name/web address of your choosing
Your site will be fully optimized for the search engines
Email address
Email contact form for all those enquiries
Availability Calendar

All this can be yours for just a single one off payment of £249.

We also offer the hosting of your website and your domain name for just £20 per year. This represents fantastic value, and we are confident that you will not beat this price anywhere.

Further details can be found at our web design page here

Have a great day, and hopefully I will speak to some of you in our forum

Robert

Hello,

I have now added a forum to the website that can be found by clicking on the “Our Forum” link in the main menu or by going directly to www.directholidaylets.com/forum/

Please feel free to register in the forum and share your ideas and experiences with each other.

If you have any suggestions on making the site better in any way, please use the support and feedback forums.

Robert

Hi,

I know that some of you owners have been renting holiday homes for sometime and are aware of the amount of hoax/bogus emails that can appear in your inbox from time to time.

I just wanted to take a minute to suggest that everyone be carefull when receiving email enquiries. Some bogus emails are quite obvious and others not so.

If the enquirer doesnt want to speak to you via the telephone directly and gives you some kind of pathetic excuse about not being able to deal with you other than via email, please dont deal with them as they are more than likely not genuine enquiries.

We do our best to deal with any abuse by using the “captcha” letters and numbers on the forms but this will only prevent automated spam attacks. We are unable to prevent people entering information manually.

If you feel that any email that you get is bogus, please contact us using the contact form on the website and we will deal with the issue the best we can.

Many Thanks

Robert

Hello,

Good news. We are now offering a free 2 month holiday home advertising trial for all new registrations on the Direct Holiday Lets site. Hurry though, as this is a limited offer and wont be around for ever.

In order to receive the trial, all you need to do is register on the site, log in,click on “edit my details”, then enter the promotional code(stated when you log in or at http://www.directholidaylets.com/admin/register.html)

Then add your property with description, photo´s, rates and availability and once done click on “activate”. You will then see a link “click here to claim your free 2 month trial”. Just click on it and your done.

Hopefully within your two months you will receive many enquiries and bookings and will decide to pay the small yearly fee and extend your advertising for further 12 months. And dont forget, we are still one of the cheapest holiday home advertising sites around!

We are currently receiving around 10,000 visitors per month which is growing all the time(We are still only 3 months old) and there are many enquiries and bookings being made for our existing customers. Why dont you join them and give us a chance to show you that advertising with us should be a major part of your advertising strategy?

Whats stopping you?

Happy Renting!

Robert