Lay My Hat

aasta wrote:OLA!! After much hestitaion, we signed up with Booking.com to hopefully be able to let some of the nights still open in August (usually we are fully booked in August) and it has worked. We listed in the last minute bookings section and gave a 10% discount off standard rate....not great finacially but better then having empty nights in High Season

We’ve done this on both BCom and ABB as well as reducing minimum stay to 5 nights and it’s worked out nicely for us as we’re currently 7/8 booked for August.

Now we just need to fill up for September...

Since posting 2 August bookings

ABB have given us an August weekend booking which filled in one of our gaps. We've still got a week left to fill. I'm reluctant to break it into short breaks - we're off site and too many end to end short breaks in peak season could cause all sorts of problems with laundry, etc. I don't know if ABB will work for 7 night stays though.

All 15 booked to after bank holiday. Had to offer short breaks and flexible start dates. Most late bookings ABB and b.com

Joanna wrote:ABB have given us an August weekend booking which filled in one of our gaps. We've still got a week left to fill. I'm reluctant to break it into short breaks - we're off site and too many end to end short breaks in peak season could cause all sorts of problems with laundry, etc. I don't know if ABB will work for 7 night stays though.

Our minimum stay during peak season is 5 nights on ABB and B.Com and we’ve had bookings ranging from 7 to 20 nights via those 2 platforms.

Being flexible on changeover days is something that might have helped us with bookings as several French and Belgian quests have mentioned how pleased they were not to be forced to travel on the ‘black’ weekends during July and August.

We had zero bookings in July, but were relatively full in August. The people here in our part of Languedoc said that tourism was way down in July - probably due to the temperatures in the 40's. So, since we don't yet have air conditioning, it was probably best that no one came.

The August bookings included our first customers from Belgium and France (we usually get people from the English speaking countries as well as Scandinavia and Germany.) We have not had any bookings through Holiday Lettings for a couple of years even though we have about 28 great reviews. Most of our bookings are though HA or word of mouth.