Foreign Perspectives

Seems like ages since the last Mas Camps News!

What’s been happening?

Well, we had our first holiday since we got here. More on that if you read the blog entries from April. Although we just went to Turkey to see the solar eclipse, we’d like to go back as the trip was far too short. Might even drive it next time as we had some Turkish guests a month or so back who did exactly that. However, they recommend taking the ferry from Italy to Greece rather than driving through Croatia etc. as they reckon that route is a bit dangerous.

The pattern of reservations has been quite different from last year. Very, very little in February and March but once we hit Easter, the occupancy was way up. Almost triple the number of people this June as we had last year. July was slightly higher but completely with “ordinary” guests as we didn’t have the equivalent of the two massive bookings we had last year. Different from last year too is that September already has a fair number of bookings.

And we’ve launched a few more websites. With the quiet period in February, I was able to move Our Inns and Our Gites into PHP and MySQL which has reduced considerably the amount of effort required to put properties online. Not only that but I’ve taken the opportunity to add a number of enhancements and permit people to add a whole lot more information.

Once all the information was in the database (major nightmare!), I made a start on the much more commercially targetted Our Holiday Rental Homes and Our Bed and Breakfasts. Can’t really see them doing well in the search engines this holiday season but the older sites are doing very well. Both Chambre-d’Hote and Our Gites (listing B&B and self-catering properties in France respectively) regularly appear in the top 10 on google searches.

Last, but not least, I thought that I’d move the blog into my own domain. Still haven’t sussed out the full route, but expect to see it arriving at Foreign Perspectives shortly.

Popularity: 3% [?]

We’re just back from our first proper holiday since we took over running Mas Camps in April 2004. It was strange to actually close up for the first time as we’ve been open non-stop since the day we arrived. Not that it made much difference in the takings as the riots in France seem to have put just about everyone off coming here this year: a year ago when we booked the holiday we thought that we’d have been losing quite a lot of guests by being closed in March/April but in reality it was probably only one or two at best.

Still, Easter is just around the corner and we are rapidly filling up with Spanish guests as usual. Not quite full yet, but there’s still another week of booking time to go.

Following the week in Turkey, we spent a few days in Amsterdam which is a bit of a nightmare in a car but a very walkable city with lots to see. This time (our first proper visit) we just strolled around the canals and visited Anne Frank’s house so we’ve a lot to see next time.

Next stop was the first World War battlefield memorials around the Somme in northern France. The memorials are much larger than I’d expected them to be.

We’d hoped to spend some time in Rouen but the riots forced a change in plans and we ended up in a lovely little hotel in Evreux instead. This time of year, most chain hotels in France are full so it forces an exploration of the smaller hotels around the countryside which generally turns up a charming, and cheaper, alternative to the standardisation of the likes of IBIS.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Even though we’re supposedly in the high season, there are still gaps of a few days without guests at the moment which is just as well as it’s been very hot this year and we’re all a little exhausted with the heat.

Surprisingly, I’ve been able to keep going with web developments up to now and have started the process of launching Our Bed and Breakfasts.com now rather than waiting ’til September. The intention is that it will be a fully commercial site in terms of look and feel but initially it will feed off the OurInns database as indeed will the revamped Our Vacation Rental Homes.com site (initially a clone of Our Holiday Rental Homes). Whether or not I’ll be able to attract paying customers to the sites is another question of course but the stats that I started collecting for the sites in June should help the argument.

I’m also hoping to start integrating property sales into the database which could be the key to making the whole venture profitable in the longer term. Short term, it should increase the size of the site which in turn will increase the number of hits for the holiday listings.

After moving the sites back to 1and1, the adsense income (and presumably the hits) is back up to the normal of a few dollars a day. I’ve still not worked out why Marcus has around twice that but I suspect that it’s something to do with the placement and layout of the adverts so I’m going to have to explore that fairly soon.

Popularity: 5% [?]