Lay My Hat

Facebook, Twitter, G+ and Tumblr, all linked to website posts. Now dabbling with YouTube ....

rosebud wrote:I started with bath towels then changed to bath sheets ...

I personally prefer a bath sheet and most - but not all - of my towels are white..

+1 for the bath sheets, but not for the white towels, although I might switch after reading all of the above

I sympathise with you all. Early this year we looked like we were heading for the worst year ever. Thankfully bookings picked up later and we actually did better than previous year. Now we are experiencing the opposite to you, record enquiries and bookings at both houses for next year. Not sure why ...

Try having property in Italy - where tax rates start at 23% and you cannot deduct any expenses from the income, just a miserly 5% of gross income. Doesn't even cover advertising and utility costs!

I'm on subscription with HomeAway which automatically includes an OD listing. My last two bookings have come from OD via HomeAway. Last year I didn't have any from OD ... and the guests didn't care about the service fee.

HomeAway charge Service Fee on all reservations / enquiries that go through their online booking / online payments. The only way you can avoid it is if you contact the guest and explain to them they are being charged the extra service fee and ask them if they would like to book direct with you. Whic...

I am on subscription but I do have online booking / payments. This booking was a direct reservation request which I accepted and uses online payments.

I had a similar one three months ago and that clearly showed the service fee.

I just got a reservation request via HA (UK) which I have accepted. On checking the HA payment details I do not see a Service Fee. A reservation request I accepted 3 months ago for the same property clearly shows the Service Fee. Are we no longer seeing Service Fees on payment details? Are they buri...

I don't want Homeaway collecting / processing security deposits if I take an online booking. So I don't put the security deposit into their pricing data. I do however tell the guests in our first reply to an enquiry that there is a refundable security deposit to pay. I've never had a problem with th...

Essar wrote:I use adblocker to filter out all this crap.

+1

PW in Polemi wrote:I presume your T&Cs absolve you of any responsibility/liability for things beyond your control?

Anybody got some good wording for putting this into T&Cs?

Have just put up a new post about this today but not had a reply, so am glad to have found this thread to add on to! Apparently google my business has really toughened up on its 'no holiday homes' policy lately and is actively checking and taking them down. I have recently set up my website and ope...

Welcome to the forum and good luck. I remember the stress and fear when we were selling our UK house and buying in Italy. So many things went wrong with the UK sale but eventually it all fell in place.

PW in Polemi wrote:One of the terms of our booking contract is that payment of the booking deposit signifies agreement to the T&Cs, so we do say in more than one place that the guest should NOT pay any monies until they are satisfied they understand and agree with the T&Cs.

+1, and never had a problem

Yes but as l pointed out Intasure only cover holiday homes owned by UK residents. So it's useful to get recommendations for European residents. Mousie x Not so. I live in Italy and have both my own home and another holiday rental insured by Intasure. And they have paid up on claims on both properti...