We have now been officially open for a week and have only had one paying guest, I am getting worried, John tries to placate me by saying there is nothing to worry about, we've had bookings and the website has only been live for a week, how can people book if they don't know we're here, I suppose he has a point, but I am one of those people, I expect everything to be done yesterday and as such I truly did expect us to be full as soon as we opened!
Which now means I have to spend most of my time on marketing the B&B, I have looked at so many different sites for advertising and many cost so much money.
We don't want to spend a fortune as this cannot be claimed back as expenses, if you go the Auto Entrepreneur route in France as we have done, you cannot claim any expense,s so if we spend a thousand Euro’s on advertising, that is money we still have to pay tax on without any tax break!
We are on Trip advisor, but to have a full business listing costs a lot and we don't feel we would benefit from paying for any extra, if you have any feelings on this please let us know your thoughts!
We look at Brittany Ferries but, this appears to be beneficial for those with letting a full property. And it is impossible to contact them on the telephone as they only have an 0871 telephone numbers
We have also found airbnb, this one looks great and only charges 3% on each booking, we sign up with airbnb (and I now expect the bookings to come rolling in, 10 minute later we still haven't had a booking and I'm gutted (patience was never a strong point).
So I head for social media and set up another facebook page, how I am ever going to remember all my facebook pages I don't know.
I have also considered booking.com, but this is a 15% charge per booking. I have lots of advice from one particular B&B and I am so grateful to them for all their help, their B&B also looks amazing (it is in a totally different area to us so if you are visiting South Vendee have a look at their website, if they can be this helpful to strangers, I can only assume that they give a fantastic service to their guests).
Maison des Amis
We are still waiting to be registered with Google and to receive our Google postcard (I sound very knowledgeable now, I'm not, our website designer has told us about this and registered us, this will mean we show up on Google maps and Google searches)
Well I had better get back to my advertising, and if anybody reading this post has any idea's we would really appreciate you letting us know in the comments below
Rooms available now
Huelgoat B&B
Hi, the thing that worked for me was Google, it takes a bit of time but you do need to at least get on the first page of the search reports ( nobody ever seems to bother with the 2nd or later ) what I did was to keep looking for free listing sites I eventually got onto around 20 or so, all of these had links back to my own site. The other thing I used to do was to try and put new information, photos Tec onto the web site at least once a week and preferably more often, Google seems to rank sites a lot higher if they are constantly being updated. In the end anyone doing a search for b&b in Credit on would see our site as I was always in the top 3 spots and often at number 1.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing maybe to think about is Google AdWords at least you get to control how much you spend. Good luck
Thanks Michael, and thanks for letting me e-mail you :)
DeleteHi there, I always read your blog articles where I can. While the AE scheme does not allow for business expenses to be recuperated, your yearly tax form takes into account a reduction in tax because you cannot claim your expenses back. Your pics in your blog if you click on them take you away from the blog and my chrome browser did not allow for back step to bring me back to the blog post. Pics should be labelled wherever possible. Google does not like the word jpeg and when trawling through content it would not register, so label it, eg. the last one is of your b&b bedroom so using key words and name of your b&b would be helpful. In key words where you are mentioning your B&B create links to your website or FB page. You have very kindly done it for maison des Amis, which again takes you away from your blog post. If you have a google+ page look for hashtags using words that are being used alot for your industry area. Same for twitter. Anyone searching with these particular hashtags you will find your content scooped up in them. Also make sure links are added to email signatures. Also consider FB promotion of page.... yes it does mean spending money, but it does mean you can choose your demographics outside of your current FB fannage.
ReplyDeleteHi Micala
Deletethanks for such an informative comment, unfortunately I don't fully understand all of your advice (I am not the most computer literate person) could I e-mail you please?
Our e-mail address is jennyandjohninfrance@gmail.com
Jenny. Get yourself registered on Booking.com. they take 15% on each bookingbut I have had many bookings from all over the world. They just wwouldn't have found my website. Like you I am in my first season but its making a huge difference to me.
ReplyDeletethanks Claire, we have just joined them and they are great, well worth the 15% good luck to you also
DeleteHi, have you thought of dropping off some brochures with your local tourist office? We found them very happy to promote local places to stay and as they were often approached by people looking for a stop over, they sent us quite a lot of business. Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteHi Hiyaken
Deletewe have done that, unfortunately our tourist office is not open very often, but we have had a booking from their website, so was worth registering