Snaptrip Group issues

[Pengman]

I recently asked Last Minute Cottages (LMC), part of Snaptrip Group, for a quote to list on their site, only to receive an invitation from the Snaptrip Group to list on Independent Cottages (IC) which they acquired recently. I pointed out that I already listed on IC expressing surprise that they didn’t know this, and that it was LMC that I now wanted a quote for. I received an apology for them not realising I was already listed on IC but that with over 4000 owners on IC and having recently acquired it, it was taking time to get to know their customers. They also said that they were no longer inviting independent owners to list on LMC as their ‘focus and budgets’ were on IC. This raises a number of questions in my mind:

1. I seem to remember reading in the past year or two that IC had over 2000 properties listed. Now this has doubled to over 4000, is part of that increase due to independent owners listing on LMC and other sites owned by the Group (Big Cottages and LateRooms) being shown the door and invited to list on IC?

2. Being denied access to LMC (and I would guess Big Cottages and LateRooms also) means that the marketplace of listing sites for independent owners has shrunk, which can’t be good. In particular, where do independent owners list late availability/special offers? I accept that IC allows owners to list special offers, but for guests searching on the site the default search is not on special offers and I wonder how many guests searching actually change from the default search to the special offers search?

3. If none exists for independent owners, is there a market for a new true ‘Last Minute Cottages’ site with access only permitted from independent owners and where all the deals are Last Minute deals?

[newtimber]

LMC started off well for me, but the results were gradually getting worse even before the take-over. I wasn't sure of the advantages of having a last minute thing, as people can search by dates now and anything that is within the current week is going to be "last minute".

I'm sure that some guests are attracted by "deals" but those tend to be the guests we don't want anyway. With more and more people using dynamic pricing, what is a special offer anyway? I'm sure some owners just advertised that it was a reduction from a higher price that had only been available for 10 minutes beforehand and there is no way that the listing site could check it was a genuine deal.