Blog - Cape Town Holiday Accommodation - Places to Stay in South Africa

Archive for December, 2008

Beware of fraudsters when booking

At onelocation we try and check ALL the properties and owners on the site but as well as us checking here’s a few precautions you can take to make sure the 3 bed holiday villa in Camps Bay or the Cape Town guesthouse actually exists. Believe it or not there are some dodgy people out there who post adverts on sites and then take the holidaymakers deposit and run, never to be seen or heard from again. Read more

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Marketing tip #4 Eliminate those roadblocks!

Let’s start with an assumption: You can only measure how successful your marketing is by how many enquiries and bookings you have. So for every $1 you spend on marketing you would expect to see a % return in bookings or at least enquiries. And so it goes that the more you spend on marketing, the more bookings you get, assuming this rudimentary calculation holds true. Read more

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Marketing tip #3 Sharing is caring

Biarritz by night
photo by: Kafeole

I have a problem with this blog. My problem is that I am talking to holiday home owners, yes that means you! And you’re a secretive bunch. The problem is that none of you will share this wisdom with your fellow holiday accommodation owners. The reason is obvious. If you share with others they will also know how to improve their bookings and you will receive less. Of course this statement makes sense, but only in the short term. Let’s take a longer term view of how sharing could actually increase your bookings and push up your prices. Read more

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Ants? What ants? I don’t see any ants!

Ants

Okay so it’s been a long week [is it really only Wednesday ... oi oi oi] but this has been irritating me for about 3 years. Not in a daily ’shout at random people in the street with one pupil slightly dilated’ way, more a hmmm, why didn’t they just ‘acknowledge the problem, find a solution and move on’ sort of way. Read more

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Marketing tip #2 Choose your target audience

Let me guess, you want to attract all holidaymakers to your property. The more flexible your accommodation is then the greater the chance you have of filling those beds. This is true and I’m not going to argue that flexibility is great when it comes to being available for all types of enquiries from all types of holidaymakers. The problem is that your marketing will be unfocussed and will not yield the results you hoped for. So whilst other, more niche accommodation continues to post the ‘no vacancies’ sign on it’s window you can’t understand why you aren’t getting the same sort of response .. especially when you have flexibility on your side! Read more

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