Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Well, finally, I have found a way of getting the pages into a semblance of Dutch.

Unfortunately, this has the immediate consequence that I now definitely need to do something about the language bar as it’s taking over the pages. The longer term knock-on effect is that sooner or later I’m liable to get an e-mail in Dutch. We’ve already had this problem with the Spanish pages: just got an Austrian writing in slightly iffy Spanish enquiring about the apartment so I had to reply in my even iffier Spanish.

Dug out a translation someone did of part of our little brochure a while back and now we have the main pages in SIX languages. Impressive, or what?

Well, the list of flags sure looks impressive to me. Sadly, three of the languages are fairly basic (German, Italian and the new one, Catalan) but we actually get hits on them. All being well, the google link on each will produce a few more cents income (from a standing start less than a week ago, we’re up all of 40c so far).

We’re all catching the cold off James now :((

John has an absolute mountain of prescriptions to get over the bronchitis. Back in the UK, you’d be talking a cough bottle. Here, we kick off with physiotherapy to loosen up the stuff in his lungs (he definitely didn’t like that), a couple of bottles of medicine and a steam thingy. It’s not really speeding it up as compared to the cough bottle approach though.

Remember those TVs that we bought in Spain back in late December? Well, contrary to what it said on the in-store sign and indeed the menu system on the TVs themselves, they don’t support SECAM which is the TV standard used in France. Anyway, that meant a trip back to Media Markt (a German outfit) in Girona to get a refund. Apart from the massive queue at the refund counter (largely taken up with returning the same make of TV as we’d bought), it was a doddle. I even got to try out my Spanish.

Girona is close enough to Barcelona that we just kept going and did this weeks shopping in Badalona (a suburb of Barcelona). It’s a bit rundown in comparison to Baricentro where we went last time so we’ll hardly be back. Mataro seems a much nicer looking place and is even closer to Girona (and easier to get to). So why don’t we do our shopping in Girona itself? Well, they haven’t a terribly good selection of shops (at least we haven’t found any). We’d also like to get a bit more familiar with Barcelona.

I thought that it was time I upped the ante with the web design software as I was running off the end of Frontpage Expess. I’d heard good things about Dreamweaver so that was first port of call. But then I saw the price: £370!! That seemed a bit much seeing as Frontpage weighs in at £140 but it gets better as my student status results in a price for Frontpage of £40 which is a bit of a bargain. Anyway, I spent the last few days getting it into Frontpage format and the latest version is getting uploaded as I write this.

Whilst that mini-update was in progress, I realised that I could add a few more languages by sprucing up the mini-descriptions on the Ryanair site (themselves courtesy of a friend of a friend who translated the mini-English version into German and Italian for me). Anyway, we now have a very impressive series of little flags on the pages: German, English, French, Spanish and Italian. Sadly, just on the main hotel page and the transport pages but they’re the important ones. Incidently, re the other languages, French was a total waste of time as French people seem to search in English. I’ll probably get the regional guide up to date in French but I’m not too bothered about that now. Even though the translation is dreadful, we actually get quite a few hits on the Spanish site and the other day it was the top ranked Spanish language site on Pyrenees Orientale tourism!

Don’t know how useful the German version is/will be but we do get a fair number from the Italian listing on Ryanair so perhaps plonking that on our own website will get a few more euros in the bank. So far, we’ve not had any German Ryanair folk but then 2004 year was a bit of an off year for German tourism.

Oh, yeah, the weird French couple. They are our main regular guests, arriving in our third week in April and having been here several times since. Wendy was sure that they were going to skip without paying originally! We get about EUR 150 from them every time but they’re a bit of a nuisance as they carry a mountain of stuff, completely rearrange the room and always want filtered coffee first thing in the morning.

Have to see about getting a few more telly’s now. The plan is that initially we’ll run with five. One room is already wired up for French TV and the room just next to it will be very easy to wire up in a similar way so we’re intending that that will be the French side of the building. We’re hoping to roll out UK TV for the three rooms on the other side of the building but we’ll need to get a bigger satellite dish first as the signal strength just isn’t up to running more than one TV at the moment (I’m toying with the idea of trying out a signal booster first).

The other week, it was the septic tank causing us problems, now it’s the turn of the well….

We own two water sources: a spring which was used up to two owners ago and a well which the last guy switched over to. It saves us having to pay the equivalent of the water rates but it’s not “free” as we need to maintain the pumping equipment etc. Normally, it’s fine apart from very busy days in the summer and also in september when the winery are using lots and lots of water; at those times, all that needs doing is to make sure the storage tank is full in the morning which we do by flicking the pump off and on (don’t know why, but it switches off after a while and before the tank is full).

Anyway, things were going fine ’til 2 or 3 days ago when every night we ran completely out of water (the first time ever!) and had to do the flicking thing. That time actually co-incided with the arrival of the grand-daughter of the guy who owned the place two owners ago (she’s the last person living who supposedly knows how the system works!). We thought that perhaps we’d turned a tap that she pointed out as we were walking round but we think we’ve undid all that we did then and still no water: it looks like we’ve emptied the well!

We’re in the process of getting ourselves onto our first American site: www.ownerdirect.com . Hopefully, it’s not typical of the American sites as they wanted so much information entered that it took hours to type it all in and we’ve still a couple of detailed things to do like measuring up the rooms. It’s another one of those guaranteed reservation places too so we’ll have to add it to our list of places for the January update (at the moment, we’ve listed more rooms in total than we actually have which is OK for the winter but, all being well, wouldn’t be OK for the summer so the plan is to sit down in January and make sure that the total is no more than our actual number of rooms).

While we were looking round for our 1-800 number, we found out that you can call American 800 numbers from abroad if you replace the 800 by 880 eg you can call us from outside the US by dialling 00 1 880 571 6392.

As we’re in “winter mode” at the moment, we’ve been plugging away with the backlog of administration that built up over the summer (we gotta be a bit more organised about it next year!). All being well, we will be up to date with the accounts by next week which is just as well as we got a tax return yesterday that needs completed by January 1st.

On other fronts, we’re getting moving on the fosse septique on a more laid back but still brisk pace. The mairie reckon (as we did) that it would be best to have the initial survey done in conjunction with our neighbours which will mean a) it’s cheaper and b) will be done quicker as they’re already in the system. We’ll talk to them about it tomorrow (I think it’s started to sink in with them that they don’t have enough land for it to be workable).

Separately, we have contacted the local fosse guy and buildersabroad who should be coming up with a quote in due course (we need the survey done first). But it’s looking like a completion date of the new fosse around March which is awfully close to the start of the tourist season.

The Hilton has one, the Waldorf has one and now Mas Camps has one. Yes, folks we have joined the bigtime with our very own toll free number, 1-800-571-6392 . Well, as of sometime tomorrow anyway.

More anon.