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Owner NewsSeptember 2017

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arrivals. We’ll do our bit to help of

course, and you might have seen

our recent reminder that we’ll ring

you to tell you about new bookings

if the arrival date is within 3 days.

Dynamic Pricing is working hard for

us and owners alike, delivering on

average an extra 3.4 weeks and £1,700

more owner income year on year per

property. If you’re not yet enjoying

the beneits, it’s not too late to sign up – please just give your Owner

Team a call and they’ll be happy to

talk through how it could help you.

We’re delighted to welcome Allan

Lambert, as our new Property

and Portfolio Managing Director.

Allan will be overseeing both

our cottages and the Hoseasons

Parks and Lodges programme.

Hello, and welcome to this

September edition of our

owner newsletter.

Despite some diicult trading periods, we’ve continued to perform strongly

for the irst 7 months of the year. To date, this year we’ve achieved

an amazing 17.5 million web visits,

and nearly two thirds of those have

been through cottages.com.

The trend for last-minute bookings

continues to grow and we’re now

seeing 36% of total bookings made

within one month of arrival! We’d

really urge you to embrace this

change and adapt your availability

if you can, just to help make sure

you never miss out on all those late

bookings. Simple things, like cleaning

as soon as the last guest has left, will

help to make sure that your property

is always ready for any last-minute

Welcome

Simon Law

You might have read about Exeter-

based Blue Chip Holidays joining our

business earlier this year. We’ve also

more recently welcomed The Arran

Team to our group. Based on the

stunning Isle of Arran of the West Coast of Scotland, The Arran Team

is run by Jane and David Mack and

their enthusiastic team. We’ll soon

be adding their lovely collection

of properties to the cottages.com

website and we’re really looking

forward to working with them more

closely over the coming months.

April saw the launch of your monthly

inancial statements onto the Owner website and we’ve had some great

feedback from you in response to

this. If you signed up to receive

your statements electronically, by

now you’ll no longer be getting

them through the post from us,

and we hope you agree that this

is a very positive step forward.

Last but by no means least, we’ve

once again been nominated as

‘Best UK Travel Company’ at the

forthcoming British Travel Awards,

and we’d really appreciate your

support! You can vote quickly and

easily here http://britishtravelawards.

com/btaform.php?nomLink=280.

Placing your vote automatically

enters you into a free prize draw

with some fantastic prizes to be won

including holiday and travel vouchers.

I do hope you enjoy reading this

latest edition of our newsletter. If

you have any feedback or questions,

please let us know by emailing

OwnerMarketing@cottages.com.

With best wishes from all of us for

the season rest of the season,

In this issue:Sales update 4

Baby and Toddler 5

Celebrating with our owners 6

Marketing accessible cottages 7

Noticeboard 8

Focus on our Keswick oice 9

and management service

Our latest owner beneits 10

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As we approach the Autumn, it’s useful to look

back at what’s been achieved over the past

few months. It’s been a great year already in

2017, across many areas of our bookings and

sales. Such encouraging results relect your own hard work and loyalty as well as the success of

our sales strategies and marketing campaigns.

So a big thanks for your continuing input and

efort – we really do appreciate it!

Here are a few highlights from the year so far:

individual email campaigns mailings sent

in numbers

250,000Bookings taken to date

Over 49,000

74,000sales calls taken

bookings with pets

bookings with children

90,000

EASTER:

Year On Year

Year On Year

August Bank Holiday:

Our marketing activity:

Booking Trends:

MILLIONWEBSITE VISITS

17.5

facebooklikes year on year

more

14%

1.6millionMAILINGS SENT

20%of bookings are for non-standard arrival days

OF BOOKINGS ARE NOW MADE WITHIN36%

1 month

44%

are for short breaks

of all web searches

27%SCOTLAND

37%

SOUTHERN

SCOTLAND

16%

NORTH EAST

ENGLAND

17%

CENTRAL

ENGLAND

13%

SOUTH WEST

ENGLAND

14%WALES

20%WALES

Our customers:

Maximising your property’s appeal to the baby and toddler marketResearch by travel experts and Google shows that families with pre-school children love self-catering holidays.

It’s hardly surprising when you think about

how easy, convenient and lexible they can be, not to mention afordable too.

That’s why it’s a great idea to make your holiday

home suitable for this growing market sector,

especially if you want to increase your bookings

and income. This is especially true when

you remember that 14% of our UK bookings

include a child under two years old, and that

many of them book in the quieter periods

and take several breaks every year. In fact to

date this year, properties in the Baby and

Toddler collection have taken on average

22% more weeks than those who aren’t.

We’ll help you attract these customer

groups by actively promoting our Baby

& Toddler collections with searchable

listings, online microsites and targeted

marketing, PR and advertising campaigns.

If you’d like your property to be included in

our Baby & Toddler collections, there are lots

of simple, low-cost changes you can make to

attract this customer group. We thought we’d

share them here for you, and also reassure

you that anything you spend on new items is

likely to be easily recouped in extra bookings.

If your property doesn’t already have them, you should provide these simple everyday items:

We’d also recommend providing:

• Cot

• Highchair

• Microwave (for bottle

warming and food

preparation)

• Stairgate

• Fireguard

• Enclosed garden

or an area of the

garden which

is secured

• Wii• On-site parking

• Bath

• Dishwasher

• Socket protectors

• Blackout blinds

or curtains

• Rubber bathmat

• Nightlight

• Plastic children’s

crockery and

suitable cutlery

• Bedside lamps

Don’t forget, you can check and change your property listing whenever you like through the Property section on the Owner website. When you think your property is ready for marketing through the Baby & Toddler collection, please contact our Owner team who can let you know the next steps.

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Celebrating with our owners in SurreyEarly in May we welcomed 130 property

owners – together with major tourism names including Google, Booking.com and the Tourism

Alliance – to Denbies Vineyard in Surrey, for an afternoon tea and presentation.

The event was the irst of its kind that we’ve hosted, and it provided our valued owners

with a fantastic chance to learn from industry

experts. It also gave us a great opportunity to

meet and chat to some of our owners face-

to-face. We were delighted to present long-

standing owners Mr and Mrs Bacon (Ruston

Reaches Cottages in Norfolk) and Mr and Mrs

Sands (Lanes Cottage in Devon) with a special

award in recognition of their exceptionally long

relationships with us, which now span several

decades.

Google UK’s Head of Hospitality, Terri Scriven,

the Tourism Alliance’s Director, Kurt Janson, and

Booking.com’s Key Account Manager, Douwe

Stijns, all spoke to property owners about various important tourism issues, as well as

industry trends and opportunities.

Kurt Janson explained, “Self-

catered accommodation is hugely

important to the UK tourism

industry and it was an absolute

pleasure to meet property owners at the

event and share an insight into the many

legislative developments and campaigns we are

championing on their behalf. Domestic tourism

is thriving in 2017 and there is a fantastic

opportunity for owners of holiday lets to

beneit from this.”

Our own Simon Law added: We’re delighted

with the success of our debut event and to

welcome so many owners of properties across

the country to Denbies Vineyard. It is our absolute pleasure to celebrate long-standing

partnerships with our owners and we hope to

provide many more opportunities to continue

sharing expertise and knowledge from within

the industry. We would like to extend a sincere

thank you to both our valued owners for

coming from far and wide to join us for the afternoon, as well as the three travel experts

who shared their unrivalled tourism insights and

knowledge with us.”

With one in ive people now experiencing some form of restricted mobility, we’ve been looking at ways to make it easier to search for

and identify properties with accessible features, so everyone can ind their perfect cottage. To help cater for people’s very diferent speciic needs, we identiied various property features holidaymakers can search for online to meet their exact requirements.

We’ve created a special page on the cottages.com website

to explain these features, and we’ll soon add a survey

option too, so customers can give us their feedback.

We’ve listed the features that improve accessibility here. If

you’ve already introduced some of them at your property

but your listing doesn’t show it, please let us know and we’ll

happily add them.

Accessible Cottages

Your property must have bedroom(s),

bathroom, living area, dining room and

kitchen all on the ground loor.

Ground loor facilities

Hoist

Entrance ramp or level access

Electric Bed

all entrance and exit doorways, plus

entrances to ground loor rooms must be a minimum of 750mm wide

Wheelchair Access

Bath or shower seat

Walk-in shower or bath

Low kitchen worktops

Grab Rails

National Accessible SchemeVisitBritain provides lots of helpful advice through its National Accessible Scheme. Take a look at their website www.visitbritain.org/national-accessible-scheme

for hints and tips as well as case studies from other cottage owners.

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Hot tub guidance

Great news: Cottages.com has been nominated for an award in the prestigious British Travel Awards. As a valued owner, we’d love your support to help us win. Don’t forget, it could beneit your sales and bookings in the long run! Vote today for your chance to win great prizes: http://britishtravelawards.com/btaform.php?nomLink=280

Hot tubs add great value to your property

because they’re so popular with more and more

holidaymakers. And they continue to feature

in the top 3 most searched features on our

websites. To help your guests enjoy them safely, the Health & Safety Executive has issued some

important guidelines here http://www.hse.

gov.uk/pubns/priced/hsg282.pdf Don’t forget

that we’ll be happy to send you a hot tub safety

notice free of charge, or you can download

and print one from the Owner website.

Good news about late bookingsLate bookings taken within one week of arrival date now

account for a record 10% of all bookings, so it’s crucial

that we take advantage of this by processing these

enquiries as quickly and eiciently as possible. To help speed things up and help you secure as many of these as

possible, we’ll only contact you by telephone to let you

know about a booking if the arrival date is within 3 days.

All other bookings will be conirmed to you by email as normal.

We need your vote!

PROPERTY

GRADING UPDATE

We were really delighted to award our

Customers Choice Award to more owners

than ever this year. Based on 2016 Reevoo

feedback, these certiicates are issued to any property whose average is score is

based on a minimum of ive reviews. The awards are now ‘multi-season’ and date back

to 2015 on the cottages.com website, so

customers can see when a property has won

an award for more than one year. Best of

all, the Customers Choice icon also features

on the cottage’s website page, helping to

drive even more bookings to award winners.

9.5/10 or higher

CUSTOMERS CHOICE AWARDS

We know from listening to your feedback just how

much you value the property grading scheme and

so we’re pleased to conirm that we’ve renewed

our agreement with VisitBritain/VisitEngland..

We’ll be in touch to let you know when your next

grading visit is due and to explain a few small

modiications which will help modernise the scheme.

The beautiful Lake District is deservedly one of Britain’s most popular holiday

destinations, and it’s certainly always a big hit with our customers.

Demand for holiday properties in the region is

very high and our full Property Management

Service is proving increasingly popular here,

with more and more owners taking advantage

of the chance to make letting as easy and

hassle-free as possible.

Our oice in Keswick is as busy as you’d expect, and it’s been managed expertly by Carl

Ormerod for ive years now. A typical day here involves dealing with enquiries and bookings,

helping newly arrived guests resolve any issues,

and answering questions that our local owners

might have about things like enquiry levels or

booking statements. As Carl explains, “One of

the things I love about this work is the variety.

I’ve got a fantastic team here, and together

we deal with a huge range of people from

all over the UK, and the mixture of enquiries

really keeps us all on our toes. It’s something

everyone here really enjoys.”

Although occupancy has always been high

in Keswick, requests for lexible start dates and holiday durations have signiicantly increased over recent years, and so has the

percentage of bookings made online. Another

big change has been the surge in popularity

of our Property Management Service. With

our full management service, owners living

locally – or further aield – can choose from a ‘Full’ managed service covering cleaning,

maintenance and our on-call helpline, or a

‘Part’ managed service ofering just cleaning or maintenance.

Carl explained, “Wherever owners live, many

of them are increasing their rental incomes by

using our Property Management Service to

make sure their cottage is always spotlessly

clean and in tip-top condition. Regular

maintenance also helps preserve the property’s

long-term sale value too. Of course, using

our management service is also a way for

owners to save themselves work because we

select, appraise and manage the cleaners and

tradespeople ourselves. It means there’s no

need for owners to perform chores, or even

take the risk of inding reliable people.”Carl believes that the growing popularity of

our managed service is helped by the fact

that there’s no minimum sign-up period, and

also that owners are often surprised by its low

monthly fee. The service creates more work for

local cleaners and tradespeople too, which is

always a good thing for the region’s economy.

We also ofer a Property Management Service through our Windermere, Grassington, Leyburn,

Whitby, Alnwick, Salcombe, Dartmouth and Isle

of Arran ofices. If you’d like to ind out more information, please contact your Owner Team.

Focus on our Keswick oice

Flexible arrivals1 in 5 arrivals for the irst half of 2017 were for non-traditional start days

and durations. Ofering “any day, any duration” lexibility could really help boost your bookings.

The top 5 most requested durations are:

• Monday 7 nights

• Friday 4 nights

• Thursday 4 nights

• Saturday 4 nights

• Sunday 5 nights

To ind out more about joining the Fully Flexible scheme, please contact

your Owner Team.

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Your new owner beneitsWe’re continuing to add to our exclusive

range of deals and discounts available to you

as a cottages.com owner. We can help you

to buy smarter and save money on products

that could simultaneously help keep your

guests happy and your property proitable. Here’s a selection of the latest ofers available to you. For a full directory, please visit the

Partnership Plus section of the owner website.

Topstak

• Minimum 20% exclusive discount

off all authorised dealer stove

brands, including Clearview,

Chesney’s, Contura and Hwam.

• Experienced, qualified and

knowledgeable staff backed up

by over 40 years in the industry.

• Owners can also benefit from

the maximum trade discount

on chimney products.

• Bespoke chimney system

design service.

• Installation service available.

How to claim your discount

Visit www.topstak.co.uk

and call 01446 771567 and

quote Cottages.com

Terms and conditionsVisit www.topstak.co.uk

TradePoint

• The best of B&Q and a local trade

merchant under one roof for all your

maintenance needs

• Preferential pricing on keylines from

40,000 B&Q products and 12,000

trusted trade brands

• 290 stores nationwide • Open 7 days a week or buy online

How to claim your discount

How to claim your preferential pricing

Email: Admin.TradePointB2B@Trade-

Point.co.uk or call 0131 458 6256 to

request your card

Terms and conditionsVisit www.tradepoint.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/

Keysafe

• C500 KeySafe, the only mechanical

Police Accredited key safe device in

the UK

• Rigorously tested – as secure as a

domestic front door

• A great solution if your guests arrive

late or you cannot be there to great

them on arrival.

• Will not compromise or prejudice

any claim for theft from your

holiday cottage

• Installation available

How to claim your discount

Visit www.keysafe.co.uk and enter the

discount code WynVR500 on checkout.

Terms and conditionsVisit www.keysafe.co.uk/terms-conditions

Out of Eden

• Fantastic selection of top quality

kitchenware now added to the

range.

• Well-known and trusted brands

including Judge, Pyrex and Sabatier

• View the full range at

https://interactivepdf.uniflip.

com/2//99568/1084021/pub/html5.html

How to claim your discount

Visit www.outofeden.co.uk end enter

offer code WYND1 at the checkout

Terms and conditions

Discount cannot be used in conjunction

with any other offer.

Beds and mattresses are excluded from

the offer.

10% discount 10%

discount

Minimum

20% discount

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