Very last minute guests - coincidence or good marketing?

Yesterday evening I wrote a brief blog entry about P&O Ferries current ticket offer, concluding with a passing comment about our Gite being available in May and short breaks were an option. I never expected to get a result quite as quick as I did do!

This morning at a far-too-early 8:30am I was woken up by the phone ringing, with a customer who'd been looking at the Gite website and wanted confirmation that we did do part week bookings on a pro-rata price basis.

I said we did, and when was he interested in booking the Gite for, to which he replied that he wanted to book the Gite for 5 nights from tonight until Thursday next week, which was perfect for me as we have some American guests arriving Thursday evening.

He went on to ask if those dates were OK with me as he next needed to book the ferry over to Calais !

I said it was fine, found a pen and wrote down his email address and phone number, and we agreed the rental price there and then.

After I got off the phone I used paypal to send a money request for the Gite rental (normally I much prefer customers to pay by cheque as I object to the size of the fees paypal charge, but for emergencies like this, it's perfect), and then emailed our new guests with travel directions for how to get to the Gite.

Next was a call through to our Brittany agents, Cherril and Alan, to ask if they could prepare the Gite for the guests, and fortunately Cherril was in - phew!

And that was that. We've had some short-notice bookings before, but never one for a customer wanting to arrive that night.