2.2.1 Improve Your Profile
We have a commitment to our holiday makers that the information provided is accurate, meaningful, and worthy of an immediate decision.
AIDA is an acronym used in marketing and advertising that describes a common list of events that may occur when a consumer engages with an advertisement:
- A – attention (awareness): attract the attention of the customer.
- I – interest of the customer.
- D – desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.
- A – action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.
The booking price, photographs, accommodation description etc, represent the accommodation offering (allowing rapid decision making, from looking to booking).
Just as a homeowner selling their property showcases the best quality photographs with accurate descriptions on an estate agent profile, you are effectively selling your holiday accommodation on a week by week basis. Showcasing the property in the best possible light, and with content that best matches holidaymaker demand, will optimise viewings and bookings.
The better the content and description, with at least 8 quality photos, and the more functionality you choose to use (at no extra cost), the higher the score. There is an on-board score to help you as you go.
Key profile elements:
Accommodation Summary
Tick relevant ‘suitable for’ check boxes
Summary description
The Summary Description should be short, meaningful, and attractive. Promote the key selling points of the accommodation here. This is one of the first pieces of information holidaymakers will see about your accommodation, so make it attractive to engage the interest of the Holidaymaker effectively. Marketing people would describe this as the ‘elevator pitch’ – getting your proposition across to the prospective holidaymaker quickly and effectively so they will take a closer look at your accommodation proposition.
Accommodation Description
What sort of guests are you looking for? Who is your ideal target audience? Think about them when writing or updating your accommodation description. Think about why they are coming to the area, or why they may wish to come to the area because of the way you describe it. For example, if you are trying to attract hillwalkers, do your research: write briefly about the hills in the area; tell them about the facilities you offer to store equipment; are there facilities for drying clothes and boots? If it is people who like mountain biking, are their safe places to store the bikes? In terms of families, think about things like what to do with the kids on wet days: what can they all do or visit in low season; are their good family friendly village pubs or eating establishments nearby? Not everyone wants to cater for themselves all the time.
Remember, you are not just writing for human eyes. You are also writing for ‘search-engine’ eyes too, as they will pick up on key words, terms, phrases, descriptions (thematic/geographical) and, through the ability to extrapolate content, return your accommodation to holidaymakers who ask the search engines specific questions. To put the importance of this into perspective, less than 8% of new site visitors to LovetoEscape actually land on the home page of LovetoEscape. The rest of them land on specific pages as a result of a search. YOU WANT THAT TO BE YOUR PROPERTY. Most searches are almost sentence-like, commonly called ‘long-tail’ searches such as “pet friendly holiday cottage in Scotland with open fire near a beach”.
Content is king. Good, original content that will be caught in searches is everything in terms of attracting the right guests. However, don’t be fooled by copying and pasting your usual text description into the site. Search Engines aren’t. They detect immediately when content is duplicated from the same site, or other sites, and directly penalises both parties by dropping your ‘result’ in the ranking order. This is why it is of the utmost importance that your content is new, original and fresh. Don’t get caught out by Copy/Pasting your accommodation description from somewhere else on the web.
Location
The location is important for finding your accommodation in searches and allows holiday makers to locate your accommodation on the interactive map as well as view areas of interest nearby.
Address
Once you have input your accommodation address details, the Google Map will automatically place your Pin over where it thinks your property is. It is absolutely essential to ensure that the Pin is in the correct place, and you can do this by simply dragging the pin to the correct spot on the map. This is much easier to do when using the Satellite view rather than Map view. Our Holidaymakers are increasingly using our interactive Google Map to have a good look at or around your property/street/area. If your Pin on the Interactive Google Map is not accurate you are effectively sending your guests to the wrong place: maybe even to another property!
Location Details and Tourist Region
Theses should be accurate and all applicable tourist regions should be selected to ensure the full categorisation of your property. You will appear on searches for your geographical region as well as the tourist region or area.
Location Summary
This is a short text description where you can describe where your accommodation is in terms of the immediate vicinity, or of any points of interest in the local area. An example would be “Situated just five minutes’ walk outside the town of XYZ. Close to shops, bars and restaurants. The parish walk starts just a few yards from our front door.”
Accommodation
Price Details and Capacity
Is it important to make sure your capacity details are correct and that your pricing details are accurate and up to date. This saves a lot of confusion for Holidaymakers, and you, by ensuring you are giving the right information at the time of booking.
The Area
Area Features
This section allows you to tick which of the area features listed correspond best to your accommodation. These selections are each linked to a set of categorisation pages when searched on the site, so it’s important to make sure these are correct and accurate to ensure the best visibility possible on the site. With relation to long-tail search terms (see above – accommodation description) these categorisations are important as they form the bulk of search add-ons when searching for accommodation. An example search might be “Holiday Cottages with Fishing on site”, which contains two area feature categorisations. A Profile with both of these options ticked would appear on the proceeding search page for the combined search.
Things to Do
You can select the best Things to Do and Attractions in the area around your accommodation, and each of these will appear on the Interactive Google Map on your Online Profile. The accommodation Profile will also appear on the Attraction’s Interactive Google Map, allowing for cross-linking between your profile and your favourite attractions. From here, you have the ability to suggest further Things to Do in the region which you feel will be of interest to your Holidaymakers. These can include your favourite restaurants and bars, favourite monuments, or even the best walks or cycling routes in the area.
Suggesting Attractions
Lovetoescape.com isn’t just about Holiday Accommodation. We have a large number of Attractions listed on the site, each of which is linked to all the accommodation in the area, and vice versa. Just Google search Holiday Accommodation and Attractions to see what we mean. By linking through to favourite attractions in the region, and adding any that aren’t there, owners are helping to market themselves more thoroughly while contributing to the LovetoEscape.com Online Tourism Community.
Clicking on Suggest an Attraction from the “The Area” tab will open a new tab containing a form for suggesting an attraction. Filling in the information will allow you to submit a request for the chosen attraction to be added to the site. You will then be able to link to the attraction from your interactive map, and vice versa. You can add a description, suggested categorisations and a photo for the attraction.
Photos
Adding Photos
Adding photos onto your online Profile is easy with the LovetoEscape on-board photo manager. Five photos can be added at a time, up to an unlimited amount (We recommend at least 8). You must only use photos which are original and owned by you. Once added the photos can be rearranged, captions added and a Primary photo chosen. This is a very useful feature for owners because Holidaymakers use LovetoEscape like a catalogue, flicking through descriptions and photos. If a Profile showcases lots of great photos of the property and the surrounding area, they are more likely to ensure a booking.
For example if it is indicated that the property is perfect for Hill Walkers, we recommend the Owner adds scenic photos of local hills and mountains. If the property claims to have amazing views, then several photos of them will compliment the Profile perfectly. Adding good photos is one of the main ways for owners to get the best out of their Profile.
Your Primary Photo is not exempt from being watched by the search engines for signs of change, and they like change! Showing a different photo each season, for example, will increase the ranking of your page so make sure to change it several times a year. However this does not uniquely apply to search engines: repeat users of LovetoEscape.com frequently use LovetoEscape as a catalogue, flicking through listings until one catches their eye. Changing your Primary Photo is like giving your “Shop Front” a complete makeover. Coupled with a new summary description, a new Primary Photo could significantly increase your page visits, and in so doing generate more bookings.
Finish
Once the Owner has clicked Save and Next on the Photos tab, they can proceed to the Finish page. This page gives information on what remains to be done to the Profile to ensure it is of the highest quality, and invites the Owner to finish their registration by upgrading to the Premium Profile and going live on the LovetoEscape site. Now there are several other ways that a Holiday Accommodation Provider can use LovetoEscape to maximise their online visibility and get the most out of their membership.