Holiday home owners - where do you advertise your property?

[MaggieW]

I'm thinking online mainly, but if there are other say, print options, then please tell me about those too! TIA.

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Don't have a holiday home, but we and lots of peole we know have rented properties we've found on Owners Direct. It's certainly popular with the a lot of people and we've had lovely holidays as a result!

I work in the industry...Owners Direct are OK as is Holiday Lettings, but if you want to reduce your admin hassle it may be worth using an agency. Most will come and give your property a market appraisal for free, and although they will charge you fees in some way they also offer things like cancellation insurance and hold damages deposit - plus the marketing clout of an agency should mean more bookings.
A good way of finding a local agency is to google your area prefixed by self catering or holiday home and see whiuch agencies come up highest, many have owner info on their websites.
It is also worth baring in mind that the smaller regional agencies offer perhaps a better service for you as an owner than the big boys where you will be very much just a number. HTH. If you are in the Westcountry - I can help more!! Let me know.

Thanks for the info. We've used an agency in the past, when we first renovated the property, and unfortunately within a year the place was virtually trashed through damage and poor cleaning, so I've been handling bookings and management with a local person as cleaner/fixer. This has worked well, however I'm looking for a new way to advertise so will look at the two websites you've suggested. Thanks again.

I advertise on Owners Direct & Holiday Lettings - have had favourable feedback (see Trip Advisor). My 2 grandsons have been to our holiday home (at 6 weeks & 3yrs respectively) as have been other people we have rented to with small children and have been very happy there. I can obviously give our rental details if I'm allowed on here and would look forward to having bookings from families!

Just saw this post in Facebook so thought I´d pop in and say that we love Tots to Travel, and also have friends who rent out properties via Spain-holiday.com (obviously in Spain) which reaches other European countries too.

We use a small regionally specialist agency. But we have employ our own housekeeper to clean etc. We investigated several agents before we choose the one we use. They are very close to the property and are a small business every member of staff has personally visited every property and can therefore talk to customers about how it would work for them. We do also get rated every year by Visit Britain which seems to increase are bookings beyond those in the agency that are not rated. We get really high bookings - seaside location and we have 1 week booked this month.

We've used Owners Direct but generally find ours by googling with words that are on our check list - so "Holiday cottage, Wales, Pool" or something, so we can then pick up independent websites.

Owners direct. Used to rely on recommendations from friends and sometimes placed a small ad in a professional magazine but not much interest.

Started advertising with owners direct a few months ago and in the first 2 weeks had about 10 enquiries.

I am trying out this one at the moment www.rentalsforprofessionals.com (hoping to rent out my flat for the London Olympics this summer) which seems quite good as it requests proof of id and profession of anyone who registers, so you have some idea of who you are dealing with when anyone contacts you. So far so good - got a few enquiries.

My parents use ownersdirect for their place in France.

Another site is Homeaway. If you go down the agent route they take from 20% for each booking and it is so easy to do it yourself.

Owners direct has become so expensive to advertise through - Airbnb is recommended and I am trying them out

Holidaylettings is now extortionate to advertise on, I am going to try ownersdirect. I am trying airbnb but I dont like the fact that you dont get paid until the guest arrives.

Update: We ended up advertising with Owners Direct and Holiday Lettings. I am going to drop Owners Direct as most bookings over the past 12 months plus have come from HL. Regarding price, you can negotiate with them. They won't give a reduction but will give more months for your annual subscription.