Foreign Perspectives

Travel accommodation listings sites are a peculiar beast and not handled very well by the search engines since it’s frequently the case that people are searching from one country for somewhere to stay in another one and that scenario just isn’t dealt with well by the algorithms.

How come? Well, basically they operate on the logical assumption that if you’re searching for something then it would make more sense for them to tell you about somewhere that you could find it locally. Clearly that’s a good thing if you’re looking for a plumber. It’s not nearly so good if you’re looking for somewhere for your next holiday.

The effect of this is that it’s rarely worthwhile for a European property to list on an American hosted listing service. That’s a bit of a shame as obviously there are Americans who go on vacation in Europe and vice versa.

Unfortunately, the only foolproof way around that is to mirror the sites on both sides of the Atlantic and we’ve been doing just that for that past few months. So far the effect has been largely to attract new rental properties in America but there’s a steady buildup of Americans using the sites hosted over there too.

So, having the first results of that little experiment behind me I’m now thinking of hosting a feeder site elsewhere. Australia seems the obvious choice although it will mean that I’ll need to set up Australia in the database. Oh well, another “to do” for the coming winter.