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

Holiday Home Owners don’t use the internet. Yesterday’s blog piece ‘You’re not selling a washing machine’ eluded to that fact and then writing ‘The Ultimate Holiday Home Owners Marketing Guide’ just confirmed my suspicions. The World’s No.1 marketing tool, which I dare say brings in more bookings and enquiries than all the other marketing combined, is a Pandorra’s box of wizardry that only bespectacled nerds know how to use. Proof of this fact has been landing in my inbox all month. A recent owner, we’ll call them MrX, wrote and saved their establishment description in MS Word and was very disgruntled that our website wasn’t able to see this document, suck out the contents, re-format and insert it into their listing and post it live on the site using cosmic interwebby magic. “Surely your site can do that, I thought it was supposed to be clever” … hmmm!

So my advice to all holiday home owners who want to get ahead in the holiday rental game is LEARN TO USE THE INTERNET. Spend 15-30 minutes each day surfing, joining, uploading and viewing. Do this for a couple of weeks and then see if you get it. If you do, then great … you’re on the way to increasing your bookings … if not, then increase the time to 30-45 mins. Keep increasing the time until you have palpatations if you haven’t switched on your machine for a day or so. This is called Online Oxygen Starvation and is roughly the state we’d like you to achieve. This is also the point at which enlightenment occurs and the wonderful world of the web opens it’s doors and lets you in. Happy surfing!

If there’s one area you should NEVER skimp on with your holiday rental accommodation it’s the photographs. Why? Because holidaymakers scan properties on sites, they NEVER read what you’ve written until you’ve given them a reason to read it. AND the reason they read it is because they like what they see. Think of it like dating, you walk into a bar and are confronted by hundreds of potential matches, but which ones do you engage with? You engage with the ones that catch your eye and push your buttons. The same goes with holiday accommodation. You only view the ones you like the look of. So get a professional to take some killer shots of your rental accommodation and then use them everywhere. I guarantee you’ll have more enquiries and more interest as a result and the cost of getting them in the first place will soon be swallowed up in the avalanche of increased bookings.

We’ve still got a few free subscriptions to give away. Advertise your holiday rental accommodation on onelocation.com now and get a full years subscription completely FREE. We’ll also throw in a featured property listing which puts you on ALL key pages on the site AND at the  moment ALL Late Deal listings are completely free too. Adding a Late Deal listing to the site gives you the following:

1. Site homepage Your Late deal will be listed in prime position on the site homepage
2. Search results Your Late Deal appears as a special banner above your listing in the search results making it stand out from the crowd.
3. Twitter We tweet your Late Deal instantly to all our followers
4. Holidaycrunch.com Late deal instantly added to holidaycrunch.com which has a permanent link to the Times Online Travel section in the UK (this is a big deal!)
5. Facebook. We’ll automatically add your Late Deal to our Facebook page.

You will also get al this when the site goes live to the public in a few days time:

1. RSS feed. Your late deals will be instantly pinged to holidaymakers who have opted to receive our RSS Late Deal feeds.
2. Newsletter mention. We will be adding some of the HOTTEST late deals to our regular newsletters. Depending on your Late Deal offer we’ll include you on this too.
3. Gumtree. To give you extra exposure we’ll add your late deal to Gumtree.

It only takes a couple of minutes to add your late deal and already we’re seeing some pretty good results. Give it a bash, register your property and take advantage now.

Often the last thing you want to do when you get a booking is update your availability calendar on the plethora of sites your accommodation is listed on. However a few minutes spent doing this could be the difference between a booking and not being seen. Here’s why it’s so important:

1. It increases your search result ranking. Most Holiday Accommodation sites list their most recently updated properties near the top of the search results. The reason for this is obvious. If you regularly look after and maintain your availability calendar and listing then the more chance is that the holidaymaker will get an accurate insight into what you’re offering. Sites like onelocation.com also tell holidaymakers when your calendar was last updated so they know that the information is accurate.
2. You will appear in date specific searches. Some date searches ONLY display accommodation where the calendar is marked as available. If you leave your calendar blank or only partially filled it means you could be missing out on all the date specific searches by holidaymakers. And believe it or not this is possibly the most popular filter used by holidaymakers because it saves them time looking at suitable holiday accommodation only to find they are fully booked.

Keeping your availability up-to-date shouldn’t be a chore and is a vital part of any successful holiday accommodation marketing strategy. If you find it difficult to keep track of all your sites then get a white board, or a spread sheet. List them all (with login details if necessary) and whether they have an online availability calendar or not. Whenever you take a booking go through the list and amend your listings. 10 minutes spent doing this will keep you ahead of the game and more importantly the competition.

Tags: increase bookings, Marketing tips, Online availability
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How do you fill those annoying gaps in your calendar or those last minute cancellations? Here’s 3 simple ways that literally take minutes and won’t cost you a penny.

1. Add a late deal listing to onelocation.com
   As an owner you get these for FREE. Just enter the dates, the price reduction and click submit and your late deal will be live on the homepage within minutes. You’ll also appear higher in the search results and on the Late Deals page. We also mention your late deal on Twitter and Facebook.
2. Place an ad on Gumtree
   This is a super-quick way to get your availability out there. It’s free and only takes a couple of minutes.
3. Send an email to old customers
   You should have details (email addresses) of old clients. Why not drop them a quick email informing them of late availability. Not only does it keep your accommodation in their minds but it also spreads the word to other people who may be looking.

Tags: increase bookings, Late deals
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Take a look at your availability calendar (if you have one). Are you fully booked? Do you expect to be fully booked? For all those empty bednights why not cut the price and offer a late deal. Work out the the lowest price you’d except to make it worth your while. Factor in your changeover costs such as maid service, paperwork, welcome basket etc Decide what you’re minimum stay would be. For some holiday rentals offering Late Deals is only cost-effective when 2 days or more are booked. Then all you have to do is:

1. Register (if you’re not already) on onelocation.com
2. Login and click ‘Add Late Deal’ (You can only add late deals to properties that are live on the site)
3. Enter start / end dates, select the offer price and hit submit.

That’s it. There’s no approval process so your late deal listing gets published instantly and the great thing is you can edit the offer price as the day of the booking gets closer with the click of a button.

Yesterday Bullet for my Valentine pulled out of the Zero Coke Fest citing studio commitments as the reason. Zero Coke Fest is an annual rock festival in Cape Town and Joburg hosting some the world’s biggest bands, this year Oasis and Snow Patrol are the headle acts. Tickets for the event are around R600 for the Golden Circle (the mosh pit area!). So the point is that hundreds of Bullet for my valentine fans have scrimped, saved and borrowed to get a ticket to see their idols up close and personal. They’ve committed their time and money to support them and now they’ve been jilted at the altar. Ask any one of those fans whether they would rather the boys spend the day in the studio so they could hear the new album 1 day earlier or share a day of excess and loud live  music with their loyal fans and guess what the answer would be? Read more

Imagine walking into a car showroom. The salesman walks over and you think, okay, ’sell me the car’. Now imagine that he gives you a list of features. ‘Yip, it’s got doors, an engine, steering wheel and 5 seats and it’ll get you to the Komm in 5 minutes’. Would you buy it? And what is the Komm anyway? The car over there has all that stuff and is 5 grand cheaper! Read more

Okay so on the face of it giving somebody a free postcard to send might not seem revolutionary. And that’s the great beauty in this simple, but oh so effective, method of ‘discreet’ marketing. Read more

Howzit, Hello, Aloha and Kia Ora (hello in Maori and a really cool series of TV ads in the UK over 20 years ago for orange cordial) to onelocation.com. So what is this ‘blog chitty chatty’ thing all about? It’s just a place where we can share some creative thinking [and some 'not so' creative thinking] about how effective [and cheap] online based media and intelligent consumer focussed marketing can be as well as giving holidaymakers helpful advice and tips on choosing the perfect holiday accommodation in Cape Town and the Western Cape. We’ll be offering the wisdom of over 20 years experience in the industry [we were the early adopters of the new web era!] and posting regular tips and hints on how owners can increase their bookings, streamline their business and fill those empty bednights. We’ll also post some random thoughts, brain dumps and the occasional rant. Read more