Lay My Hat

Hi all, I think that guest books are a great addition to any holiday home. If you would like a guest book for vacation home then it's definitely worth buying a good quality hard back book. Soft backs can get tatty after a very short time and won't last that long. A decent hard back guest book is a g...

Hi, Currently I am promoting a vacation rental house on several sites including Booking, Airbnb, Homeaway, Tripavisor (The normal). Since homeaway stopped the opportunity of promoting the property the number of bookings enquiries have dropped substantially. I have almost 20 reviews on Home Away. Air...

Hi, If anyone would like to build a holiday rental website for their villa/apartment please feel free to get in touch. I can send you an example of a mobile friendly holiday home website with links to social media, availability calendar and ability for guests to make a booking directly on your websi...

Hi there. I also rent out a house in Croatia in Dalmatia near Split. Happy to collaborate and swap ideas. Interested to hear how you increase bookings. Any strategies? I list on multiple sites and allow bookings direct on my website I think its almost time for this forum to have a Croatia thread don...

Unfortunately I did not feel comfortable with this one so cancelled. Thanks for the feedback! Then they start responding to my emails telling me how disgraceful this is. I've had enough stress with this booking so feel a lot better cutting my losses. Booking terms have been updated to cover this sce...

I've never double booked so far. I keep a master spreadsheet for each year with all confirmed bookings that I update regardless of where the holiday was booked. I also keep a directory structure on my computer 2016 with folders July,August,Sep etc with vacation dates inside each folder "July 1s...

Thanks Nemo I think as I've already given deadline of friday to return this Ill stop chasing now. I wont follow up to mention the cancellation to stir the honey pot but will just cancel on Friday evening if they don't come back to me. To be honest I can do without this for a low season booking. They...

Thank you. I guess I can state this in my follow up email. Do you think I should explicitly state I will cancel booking if this is not agreed or just cancel the booking at the end of the week if they do not respond. I suspect they are just ignoring my emails. I'm starting to think cutting my losses ...

Hi there. I have the first guest that is refusing to sign a rental agreement following a booking via a holiday home website. First they will not put down a deposit. Spoke at length to me on the phone about this. They say it wont be guaranteed by website as its a payment outside of the agreement. We ...

As always it appears to be Nordic countries (primarily Denmark) with the highest bookings, followed by Germans then English.

HA since January - 21 Enquiries and 5 Bookings
HL since January - 0 Enquiries and 0 Bookings

Not having much luck with HL. Also cancelled free FlipKey trial due to lack of pageviews.

I've set this up but still state that I prefer to be paid by bank transfer. This is just in case there is a guest who for whatever reason would feel safer paying by credit card. It opens the door to a wider selection of guests. I selected the payment service that requires me to send the payment to t...

You don't need to use their payment system. I'd rather be in control.

I dont use them anymore but you can process payments yourself.
I only accept bank transfers.

You don't have to use the rental listings payment system. Payment to the owner after the guest has checked in doesn't work for me. I prefer to be in control.

I prefer bank transfers personally.

It seems that my property is listed on Dom.wf I have no idea how but there is a website in russian promoting my property with a few pictures and I have just received an enquiry. Im pretty sure this isn't affiliated with Home Away but correct me if Im wrong? Anyone heard of this? Or are they screen s...