Costa Blanca Holiday Renting - Spanish Real Estate forum - Spanish property

Homefinder · 09-09-2008, 07:44 PM

Holiday Renting 2009 – Not all bad news!

With the credit crunch and falling property values meaning that more and more property owners are deciding to rent because they cannot sell, the holiday renting market is not looking good.
Meanwhile Spanish tourism has not increased in the past 10 years – yes, that’s right, not one single iota, in spite of what you might read! It is a fact hat tourist entries across Spanish frontiers have actually increased by 50% during the last decade. On the other hand the current trend is for shorter holidays in smaller groups and the number of properties available for renting has increased by a whacking 400%.
However, it is not all bad news! Obviously when times are hard every household has to cut back but holidays are the last thing to go, in fact they become more important than ever. The poor summer in the UK has probably helped. Right now, self-catering holiday companies are receiving an unprecedented number of enquiries for 2009 and many of them are maintaining 2008 prices for early bookings while the impetus lasts.

The best advice for new and existing renters of holiday properties – Obviously it is vital to “get on sale” as early as possible. Clued-up holidaymakers know to book low fare airlines as soon as they go on sale and that means October to December (latest).
Also important is to keep all options open and increase advertising, if possible without spending a fortune.

1. Internet Advertising Sites: Currently the Internet produces around 80% of all self-catering reservations and advertising sites are “coming out of the woodwork”. Advertising this way is not expensive, £90 to £150 for a year. Some sites are absolutely enormous, with 100,000’s of properties advertised but take care, as business can be very localised.
Check that your chosen site features well with search engines (Especially Google.co.uk). Test first! The way to do this is to search the area with the right keywords e.g. “villas moraira” “holiday rental moraira”. If the site is not on page 1 (better 1st 5) they simply won’t produce many enquiries.

2. You Own Website: This is vital because you would want to direct clients there from your advertising and most won’t wait to receive a leaflet through the post. If you are not a complete “Computer Dum-dum” then Google provide a small website complete free.
Alternatively lots local advertising site provide inexpensive mini-webs.
PLEASE NOTE: There is absolutely no mileage in going to the expense of setting up your own domain name these days because, unless you also pay for expensive SEO (optimisation), the site will never be seen.

3. Write about you Holiday Property: An easy way to do this is to join a holiday or local forum (like this one). Lots of them allow you to place live links in your signature directing clients to your mini-web or even in the text of your forum posts.
It is surprising how much business this produces – and it is FREE!

4. Register with a Local Rental Agency: They probably won’t pay you what you could earn directly but the important thing is to fill as many weeks as possible.
An important service offered is “meet and greet” and they should do this for your clients as well. Can you imagine how off-putting it could seem if clients are sent a key through the post or have to resort to those awful key-boxes?
Also important is that they have an online booking service so that you can see all bookings in your property and make reservations for your own clients without having to phone continually.

If you follow this advice you should have online enquiries coming from 4 directions. You could add to this with a classified in your local paper. Only a few lines are necessary because you can direct enquiries to your mini-web where they can see your property in glorious colour.

Best wishes for a successful renting season.

Homefinder

sanchia · 10-26-2008, 10:38 PM

Good post Homefinder but you forgot one other very important option!
Another way that owners of quality villas, anywhere in the world, can get holiday rentals for their property is with a villa company like Villa World. We are fully bonded.
We do not actually arrange our own local servicing, this would be almost impossible as we are so widely spread.
We prefer to arrange this via our local representatives around the world who are mainly rental and service agancies. Most of them have joint venture arrangements with the villa owners and, I promise you faithfully, that they have all been carefully vetted - Villa World has it´s reputation to maintain!

If any owners need help or advice on this, I can be contacted via the Private Message Service or you can visit my website (see my signature).