Foreign Perspectives

There’s only a couple of weeks to go to the Spanish exam and seemingly way too much stuff to be done for it.

For a change the Open University are experimenting with the use of a photograph as the stimulus for the oral exam. This means that we’ve three articles about Spanish painting and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries to read at the moment and will be handed a photo on the day itself. Then we’ve 10 minutes to prepare a 3 minute presentation on that photo using information from the texts that they’ve given us.

I suspect that it’ll work out OK as it usually seems to with the Spanish. Unlike the French department they seem to be on the level and trying to see you at your best rather than having some trick question as seemed all too common in the French course. The overall effect of that difference was that my French marks seemed to be almost random whereas the Spanish marks have been very consistent.

That also leaves the final book of the course to complete which is fair to middling essential as I think the written question will be based on it.

We seem to be getting more and more popular with the Spanish looking for a short break outside Spain.

As we’re within two hours drive of Barcelona, it’s an easy trip for them yet it’s a very different area than they’re used to. For one thing Barcelona is a very active city whereas we’re in a very quiet area. However, people tend to like to get away somewhere “different” for their breaks and although we’re right beside Spain the local culture is very different.

But then it’s always been like that. So we’ve no idea why we’ve started picking up Spanish guests in increasing numbers. They all love it though!

Starting from early in the Summer, payperpost dropped the number of paid posts allowed per blog from 3 to 2 which combined with the lower average payout per post over the Summer dropped everybodys’ income fairly drastically.

The reverse situation is coming into effect now. For a few weeks the number of paid opportunities has been growing rapidly as had the average amount on offer. As of today PPP are taking the number of posts per blog per day up to 3 again which has already added $10/blog for us (ie, in theory, potentially $300/month).

Of course, the big question is whether or not we’ll actually be able to keep up the pace with the blogs… three in a row is a bit much but that’s OK as we can space them out throughout the day. However, it’ll soon be six when our next blog comes of age later this month and, perhaps, nine by Christmas…

Still, I imagine that the bank won’t complain too much.

Now and again we get asked that and it’s far from an easy question to answer as we don’t know anything about the people asking it.

For example, we get lots of walkers and cyclists staying with us. They usually don’t need a car but sometimes they do in that they want to walk in a number of number of different types of scenery.

Depending on where you want to go, you can do quite well with public transport or, alternatively, see nothing at all of interest to you.

If you’d like to go to the beach, it’s quite easy from here on the bus for instance. However, if you want to see the castles then you’re going to need a car unless you’re fairly fit and can cycle or walk to them.

So, if you want a sensible answer, don’t just ask us if you need a car: tell us what things you want to see, whether you like walking or cycling, and so on so that we can give you the correct answer.

Usually the guests thin out a little by this time of year but we’re getting something of a return towards full occupancy for the next few weeks this year.

How come? Well, one key aspect of it is a series of upgrades and promotions that we made to the accommodation website over the last year which have together had the effect that we get a great deal more ownsite bookings than we did previously.

Also, some of the sites that we’re listed with have clearly been beavering away with their own promotion activities. One notable groups of sites in this regard is activehotels.com which was bought by booking.com last year resulting in a very substantial jump in the number of reservations from the combined group and they in turn were bought by priceline.com in the last 12 months or so which has resulted in us being listed on an even larger group of sites and thereby bumped up the reservations yet again.

What’s the strategy for the coming year though?

As usual, we’ll be reviewing the website as there’s always something that can be improved or even simply updated. Beyond that, I’ve built up something of a backlog of sites that we could be listed on so I’ll be working through those from October onwards.

On ‘tother side of the fence so to speak, we have a number of developments on the listing sites pencilled in. They too were considerably more successful over the past year than they had been previously again due to a series of site promotion exercises and some site improvements. We’re moving the focus to our new-generation sites this year of which the key development engine will probably be Whole Earth Guide although as that uses the template of the other new-generation sites, all those in that group will be affected.

Quite noticeable already is that Whole Earth already has over 700 incoming links despite only being around for just over a month. Once we start promotion of it properly, that number should jump quite dramatically and so too should the number of site visitors.