December 2011 Newsletter
We are launching our new Availability Calendar!
We’re happy to announce that our new Availability Calendar is available for you to use for your listing. We’ll shortly be sending out an email detailing how the calendar works. We’re also making the calendar available for you to use directly on your website if you don’t have an availability calendar already, making it an excellent piece of software for managing your bookings.
Half Price Premium Websites
As it’s Christmas, we’re offering half-price premium websites for the first four owners who apply before the end of December. Starting 2012 with a modern, fresh website is an ideal way to attract even more bookers to your property, and our package includes a professional photography session. We’ve already produced many high-quality cottage websites, proving incredibly popular with owners and bookers alike. They not only look good but, like a Formula One car, it’s the combination of superb design principles driven by a powerful engine that guarantees their performance. Examples of our work include Higher Mullacott Farm Cottages, A set of period farmhouse-styled countryside cottages. Oyster Cove is a modern beachside holiday home. To make the most of this offer, email us at info@mfhc.co.uk or phone us on 01598 710631 for further details.
Launch of our Supersites
Alternatively, for those owners who feel their property doesn’t need a premium website, we are launching our new Supersites. Owners can now use the service to have a new website produced for them quickly and easily from a variety of attractive templates. With a whole host of additional features that can be attached to the package, it’s an ideal way to have a customised website that works for you. You provide the content – we upload it for you. Prices for the design start from £198, so for full details, have a look at our page here: In this season of Goodwill, we’re offering to produce a Supersite for just £98 (Save £100) to the first four owners to contact us before the end of December. To make the most of this offer, email or phone us on 01598 710631 for further details.
Top Tip: Using QR Codes
Many of you have probably seen square barcodes popping up frequently in newspapers and magazines, which look like the one above. These are called QR (Quick Response) Codes and can be used by anyone with a smartphone to easily access a website without having to type in a website address. The best thing for owners though is that producing a QR code is completely free. You can use a website such as ‘QR Stuff’ to make your QR Code. All you do is add the website address you want to turn into a code; it does the rest for you! We currently use them for some of our offline publicity, and for owners, it’s a brilliant way of directing people to your website who might be reading your printed materials in the real world. Check out our blog post for further details.
Festival Cottages
2012 sees the launch of our new ‘Festival Cottages’ section on My Favourites. This exclusive section will promote holiday cottages to potential bookers attending local festivals. Visitors to the Festival can find accommodation, owners can get more bookings, and festival organisers gain increased ticket sales. As well as providing another search function on My Favourites, you’ll also attract extra traffic from a link placed on the Festival’s own website to the Festival Cottage page. The venture is still in development; if you know of any festivals close to you that would like to be involved in this exciting partnership, please feel free to pass our details on to them or tell us!
Ongoing Publicity
We were delighted to be mentioned in The Times on the 14th of December for an article on where to spend New Year. Crooked Lake Cottage was featured and should provide an excellent boost to website traffic in the run-up to Christmas. This coming February also sees the launch of three competitions in national publications carrying the My Favourite Holiday Cottages brand: Country Living magazine will offer a short stay at the fabulous Emmett’s Grange in Exmoor National Park. The publication has an impressive monthly circulation of over 206,000, so the property should be popular with readers. Lavender House in North Devon is also the prize for a short break stay featured in Coast Magazine, which has a circulation of 42,000. Finally, Cloven Stone Cottage in the Lake District looks set to receive some good publicity as the magazine hits the shelves in the prime booking month of January.
Finally...
We would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas. As always, we’d love to hear from you about the articles in this newsletter, or if you fancy a chat about the services we can offer you, feel free to get in touch.