French Entree - performance over last year and 2009 renewal request

Yesterday I mentioned that French Entree have kindly been continuing to send me booking enquiries for the last year despite the end of my free French Entree advertising trial which I didn't renew back in February 2008.

Well in my mailbox has arrived another request to renew with French Entree and in light of the predicted forthcoming "tough year for French holiday home owners" I'm being offered a special deal of "just £45 (approx. 50 Euros) to advertise all year on FrenchEntrée and on their sister site TotalFrance.com".

On the face of it this is a good deal as the published 2008 advertising rate for French Entree was £139; which was then discounted down by 30% to £97 if I renewed by the end of February 2008.

Looking back on French Entree's performance, I can see from my mailbox that they have sent me 14 enquiries over the last year - a pretty good result when compared to other Gite advertising sites.
But when I drill into these 14 enquiries a bit more I noticed that 3 of these were scam bookings (all with 00 225 Ivory Coast telephone numbers), 8 booking enquiries were for peak July and August weeks (which we can and do easily sell anyway), and the other 3 enquiries were for other weeks in June and September 2008 that had already been booked.

Thus we didn't get any bookings as a result of our French Entree advert last year.

So all in all despite the good rate of enquiries I don't think I will be renewing again with FE. Unfortunately I'm just not getting enough booking enquiries that wouldn't otherwise be received such as low season or short break bookings from them to justify the expenditure.