VillaRentals / RentalSystems new website launch

Just in time for the Christmas season and potential customers starting to look for their next year holiday, VillaRentals relaunched their website on the 23rd December with a new cleaner and simpler look and feel, and a number of behind the scenes improvements including an improved ability to upload unlimited holiday property photos.

One of the most significant changes with the relaunched website is to the way that VillaRentals now shows holiday rental prices.  Previously the Gite rental price we charge is displayed against the listing, and then only when a customer progresses towards the end of the booking process are VillaRentals' mandatory credit card and booking fees added.  The end result is not surprisingly that customers are annoyed by seeing the price they pay change.

From now on all this is simplified and VillaRentals now shows from step 1 an all-inclusive weekly rental price.

Previously VillaRentals charged 2.5% for handling the credit card payment and £15 booking fee for rentals generated by themselves, or £8 for rentals that we generate and process through VillaRentals payment engine.
In the new scheme these two fees are replaced by a single combined flat rate 4.5% fee.

The nett-nett is some slight swings and roundabouts. VillaRentals generated bookings work out generally slightly cheaper for the customer (a £500 weekly rental price now costs £522.50 whereas previously the customer would have paid £527.50), and member generated bookings work out slightly more expensive (the same £500 rent would have cost £520.50 and now costs the same £522.50).

All in all though providing all inclusive prices should definitely make things better for our customers. We usually get one or two bookings direct each year from our holiday Gite advert on VillaRentals.

The early guest catches the booking discount

When I wrote the title of this Blog I was thinking about "The early bird catching the late worm" ... but in hindsight the analogy ran out of steam about half way through so maybe I'd better move on!

I've written before about a flurry of booking enquiries for 2010 I received in August 2009, and more surprisingly the booking we took in August 2007 for the following August - an amazing 363 days in advance, well I've been surprised again with how well organised some people are with their holiday plans.

Last week I received an enquiry from the Spellman family through the France holiday home advert we run on VillaRentals; enquiring what I would charge for a holiday in August next year.

I replied back saying that we normally review the prices for each season towards the end of the year, but for all bookings made this year I would hold the prices the same as this year. Our booking calendar on our Gite website and on VillaRentals only runs up to the end of December 2010 as I don't normally "open up" bookings for next year until September, but as the Spellman's were keen to book I manually marked the week they were interested in as available.

And later that day they made their booking, confirming an 8 day holiday for August 2011 - a staggering 418 days before they're due to rent the Gite.

I will have to talk to Liz and decide what we want to do for our own holidays in France next year because if I don't get organised we risk not being able to stay their ourselves. Meanwhile if you are interested in holidaying with us next year (or even this year we still have availability in September, October and at Christmas), do drop us a line with the dates you are interested in booking and I'll be happy to take your booking.

The question is, can anyone beat a 418 days in advance booking?

Clickstay.com - first with instant vacation rental bookings and confirmation

Clickstay.com from rentalsystems

This week RentalSystems announced that they've launched a new website ClickStay.com which claims to be the internet's first and only site that allows customers to book vacation holiday rentals direct with the owner and receive an instant booking confirmation.

Based on the existing RentalSystems booking engine, Clickstay.com presents to the customer the subset of RentalSystems properties that have guaranteed availability by showing only those properties which offer instant confirmation so it becomes as easy to book a Gite holiday as it is to book a hotel bedroom.

In RentalSystems there's an option that you can set to allow customers who request a set of booking dates to receive instant confirmation of their booking and proceed straight through to paying the rental deposit. Obviously this is only going to be of use to you if you're sure your RentalSystems availability calendar is 100% up to date as otherwise you risk confirming bookings for dates that you've already rented out via another source.

For me I'd previously not marked my property as being available for instant bookings as I wanted to give customers the option to check details etc before I confirmed the booking to them. Having said that though, I do always update the availability calender for our holiday home on Rental Systems as I don't want the embarassment of having to turn down bookings, and anyway I've always ended up accepting all the RentalSystems bookings that we've had, so turning the option on wasn't such a big deal for us.

When you turn on Instant Booking Confirmation you do get a few options that you can select and enable you as to which bookings will get processed via the normal request dates/confirm availability/accept booking cycle; you can select to filter on booking requests:
- over the christmas period
- more than a certain number of single sex occupants (e.g. if you want to prevent "lads away" type bookings)
- less than X days ahead (e.g. to allow you time to inform whoever does your changeover)
- with party members greater than a set age (e.g. if there's limited access upstairs)
- with party members less than a set age (e.g. if you don't want kids just turned 18)
- with more than a certain number of children (e.g. if you've only a certain number of cots or single beds)

If you choose to set these filters (and you don't have to) then you're not actually saying you won't allow bookings from customers that meet any of these criteria, what happens instead is that the booking's not automatically confirmed, instead you're sent the booking request and asked if you want to accept or decline it.

ClickStay.com's available for no extra charge over and above the normal RentalSystems booking commission (of 10% + VAT) so for me I decided to go for it as it's another possible booking source which is no bad thing.

Obviously if it doesn't work out and I start getting bookings that for whatever reason I can't proceed with I may change my mind.

If you use RentalSystems what do you think, are you available for Instant Confirmation? If not, what's your thoughts?
Please do leave a comment

2008's just around the corner, we've had our first booking

RentalSystems advert

Some people are just more organised than others.

I like to think I'm fairly organised (the reality is I'm organised about some things and not at all about others), but I'm not as organised as the Porter family of Devon who have just tonight booked a 2008 summer holiday in our Brittany Gite, an amazing 363 days before they are due to go!

The booking came through the holiday home listing we have on VillaRentals who rather than charging an up front fee, they charge on a per-booking basis. Over the 20 months or so we've advertised on VillaRentals we've had about 8 bookings via them and looking back at my Blog posts from last year I saw that in fact my first 2007 holiday booking was also made via VillaRentals; only it was slightly later on, on the 24th August 2006 vs. 5th August 2007.

If it keeps on going on like this I'll be getting 2009 bookings before 2007 is out ! [Well actually I can't as I've only published rental prices up to the end of 2008 ....]

I don't like the new VillaRenters/RentalSystems terms and conditions

I wrote in January about using VillaRenters to advertise our french holiday home. At the time I liked their model of charging on the basis of results - i.e. they charge a commission on actual rental sales they make.

RentalSystems

Although I received a VillaRenters booking only a week after listing our holiday home on their site, I found we didn't get any further enquiries, even after they relaunched and changed their name to RentalSystems.

So in May or so I decided to boost my 'RentalSystems index' (which is how they rank different properties) by putting all the bookings through their site, even the ones that had contacted us directly. This had the advantage of one central booking calender, it automated the process of requesting deposit and final payments, and provided a mechanism for customers to write reviews of the Gite afterwards.

This seems to have been successful, we've a much higher rating as a result, and we've had one further booking for this year (from Ireland) and another for August 2007 as a result.

Then when I logged in to RentalSystems a couple of weeks ago I found that they'd changed their terms and conditions. I emailed them on the way they did this before, but the same approach was used this time of simply listing a new set of terms and conditions on login, no details were given as to what paragraphs or points had changed, and I had no choice but to accept the new terms and conditions before I could login or do anything else on their site. Last time they changed their conditions they were minor changes so it didn't really bother me.

This time I find that they have withdrawn the option for renters to send payments directly to me (by cheque) and are instead insisting that all payments are made by debit or credit card through their site. Whilst I'm OK with this for rentals that they have generated as it makes it easier for them to collect the payment and to ensure that I pay the commision I owe, I'm not at all happy about this enforced change for rental bookings that I've collected myself because every credit/debit card payment incurs a 1.5% handling fee.
This change in terms now means that I have to make all customers that I put through RentalSystems pay by card which effectively means a tax of 1.5% on all my bookings. Although cheque payments mean a bit of extra legwork for us it does mean we get the customer's money straight away and in the 30+ customers we've had in 2005 and 2006 they've been happy with paying by cheque as well.

I've emailed RentalSystems again tonight to ask if there is any possibility of them re-introducing the facility for me to continue receiving cheque payments for my own bookings and we'll see what happens. If they stick to their new terms and conditions though I will probably have to stop using them as my "central booking engine". I did have some concerns about the wording in some of the emails their system produced (not being quite how I would have put it) and this new change for me is just a step too far.

Rant over!

First holiday booking for 2007

In amongst the hundreds of junk emails I received whilst away on holiday were a couple of 2007 rental enquiries for our Brittany Holiday Home.

Over the weekend I corresponded back and forth with one of the enquirers answering questions about things to do in the local area surrounding the Gite, facilities at the Gite and the various routes and costs of getting there (including pointing out the Speedferries £27 open ticket offer). By the end of Sunday they'd decided to book a a two week holiday in the Gite for July/August 2007. Additionally this was our first holiday booking received from RentalSystems (formerly VillaRenters) which makes the advert worthwhile.

Although it's great news to be receiving rental enquiries and a booking for 2007 when we're still in the middle of the peak 2006 holiday season, it did remind me that we need to make our own 2007 holiday plans for when we want to go to the Gite . One of the advantages of owning a holiday home is supposed to be the opportunity to use it yourself - if we don't get our act together then we're likely to miss out - like we did this year!

Yesterday I then had to spend an hour or so adding 2007 rental dates to the Gite availability calendar for all the way up to January 2008. We're offering 2006 rental prices for all 2007 bookings that are confirmed by the end of this year so hopefully that'll bring in a few additional bookings as well.

Two into one doesn't go!

It's great when we're receiving holiday bookings for our Gite (and not so good when there's weeks between enquiries), but today I felt overwhelmed with enquiries.

As a result of the Business Card Fridge magnets I posted to all last year's guests we received a few thank-you's and one family who asked to book again. Earlier this week we agreed their holiday dates and they emailed me to say they were going to book the ferry.

Checked my email this morning and found an email to say they'd booked the ferry, then a second email a few hours later with a confirmed booking through the VillaRenters advert we placed only 13 days ago! I was really pleased to see that the VillaRenters advert was bringing in results already ... but disaster, the dates overlapped with the other booking we'd just received.

Argh ! If only we had two Gites to rent ...

Nothing for it but to send a very apologetic email to the VillaRenters enquiry. Unfortunately the other dates we had available didn't work for them so we weren't able to help them this time.

Reminder to myself to mark the dates as unavailable on the VillaRenters calendar as soon as we agree dates with non-VillaRenters customers ...

Advertising on VillaRenters.com

We've just started advertising our Brittany holiday Gite on the property listing website villarenters.com.

It's an interesting concept, you enter everything about your property, how to find it, where it's near, facilities offered, photos, availability, prices, etc, etc so that when the property is listed on the seach site myvillarenters.com, the site acts as a fully automated booking service for customers to check availability & prices and make online (credit/debit card) bookings as easily as you would do with a hotel, flight, or car hire.

For us it gives another advertising opportunity to show off our property and hopefully take a few bookings. I quite like the way that the property details we entered are automatically turned into proper descriptive sentences such:

sleeping:

The farm house comprises 3 bedrooms in total; 2 double, 1 twin and 1 cots . This gives room for up to 6 people.

general:

The farm house has 2 bathrooms for your party's use. Central heating keeps you snug and warm.

entertainment:

The farm house has television video, satellite/cable. The music system will play radio.

eating & living :

There is room for 6 in the living room and 6 in the dining room. The open fire can be used to create a comfortable atmosphere. To prepare food you will find a cooker, an oven, a microwave, a fridge, a freezer, a kettle, a toaster. You will also find a dish washer, a washing machine, a clothes drier, an iron and ironing board. The owner has also provided cutlery, crockery, glassware, cooking utensils.

And the best bit about it is the advertising cost, £0 ! We're only charged when someone makes a booking via the site (and so as a consequence you're not allowed to include any links to your own website), and then the booking fee is a fairly reasonable 10% of the rental rate. Considering that villarenters collect the rental payment by credit card (which would normally cost about 3.5% alone), I think the fees are fairly reasonable.

In addition, we can also use villarenters to manage the booking for customers that have come to us directly and the fee is lower, 3.25%.

Here's details of our Gite on villarenters, see what you think.