Advertising holiday homes

It is possible to own a holiday home that either pays for itself through letting or makes money as a business. A lot of people manage to accomplish both. The difference between them is effort, cost and legality.

I have known people with holiday homes offer them out to friends and relatives to use for a fee on an informal basis. This subsidises their own use of the holiday home, and assuming that one has a large circle of friends and relatives or acquaintances down at the golf club, this may be sufficient. Problems could arise if a friend or relative suffers an accident on your premises and sues for negligence. The chances are that rental agreements and disclaimers are not in place to protect the owner of the holiday accommodation.

Legally, any rentals should be run as a business and proper accounts kept and taxes paid. This inevitably raises costs and the degree of effort required. A regular cleaner will require a weekly wage, the laundry and maintenance companies will need their fees. Any advertising and taking bookings also require a fair amount of effort. Advertising holiday homes can be quite expensive. Most people have their own web site for their holiday home so that they can send potential guests a link to it in their brochure and offer a virtual tour of the house. Guests like to see what they will get for thei money. A website for your holiday home, although nice to have and informative, especially if you are able to edit it yourself, will not provide you with enough visitors. Additional advertising of your holiday home through other means will usually be required to obtain sufficient visitors all year round. It is easy to obtain lettings during school holidays but much harder outside school holidays. You may need to target certain groups such as hikers or ramblers outside school holidays.

For advertising your holiday home you may wish to consider a variety of media and means. As circulation of printed publications has dwindled, people have turned to the web for much of their advertising.  You may however want to set up a marketing mix for various reasons. Certain publications may provide you with guests in a certain income bracket or social class. A single advert in a quality magazine may cost the equivalent of an annual advert on the web.

Should anyone want to advertise their holiday home in a printed publication, a web address reduces the number of words comprising the adverft. There is a cost per word in printed publications so if you can get people to look at your website by providing a link you can then present them with as much information and photographs as you like.

Advertising in specialist web holiday home sites also directs visitors to your holiday home. The better ones offer provision for a link to your own site. You also have the choice of fully managed advertising on a commission basis or simple advertising in portals which feature your advert.

Fully managed advertising means that you give a certain percentage, generally over 20% to a company in return for advertising on your behalf and dealing with bookings and inquiries. The company may themselves advertise on a number of holiday home portals or produce brochures which can be collected from travel agents or sent out to prospective guests.

Whether you deal with the advertising and bookings yourself is a matter of time and choice.

Sometimes holiday home owners do their own cleaning and laundry between lettings if they live locally. In this sort of situation, running a holiday home  becomes a lifestyle business.

 Advertising holiday homes in a holiday cottage portal - straightforward annual advertising