Wednesday 22 December 2010

Bathroom Progress

We have now sent detailed specifications of the master en-suite to our builder.  It will not have a bath any more, as, although there would be space for it, the room will seem more spacious without it.  In reality, few people would actually use the bath anyway, and if they did want a bath, there is always one downstairs.

We're hoping that the wall to the bedroom won't have to be moved by much, not that it would make much difference in the bedroom given its size.

We now await the quote and the builder starting work.  It's getting exciting!

Monday 20 December 2010

Letting Websites

This year we are experimenting a bit.  When we started, we signed up to Holiday Lettings and Holiday Rentals.  That first year, all the bookings we took were from Holiday Lettings, and I think we only received one enquiry from Holiday Rentals.  I'm not sure really what caused this: was it the site or the advert in the site? As a result, and not knowing the underlying reason, we dropped Holiday Rentals and still managed to have a good set of bookings in 2009 and 2010, with our first bookings outside of July and August in 2010. 

Not wanting to leave it there, though, for 2011, we have signed up with Chez Nous, who claim to have a different demographic from the other letting websites, and a newer site called Pure Holiday Homes.  Both have nicely presented adverts etc, although there is a downside in that I will have to update three sets of availability calendars as well as recording details of the lettings here.

Has it paid off?  Early to say - we have five weeks next year booked already, but four of those are re-bookings from previous years.  The other week is from Chez Nous.  I am reasonably confident that week would have been booked from Holiday Lettings, and the true results will come if we manage to let more weeks away from the main season - for instance the "shoulder" months.