First Visit for 9 Years

[MTP]

Chris7,

I can't help but concur with your comments about the positive nature of these boards, and I think that this is reflected in the number of thanking comments, made by other posters to the positive responses received. I think most people on the boards, MRKW, take the attitude to get the topic dicussed openly and fairly, and to always respect other poster's opinions.

I have once posted a request for a villa using the OV site, and I was overwhelmed by the response, in saying that I only received about thirty responses. I guess part of the problem is reading a lot of responses that are similar and in our case our dates wouldn't have been flexible, so it was frustrating that we were having to wade through responses that couldn't meet our basic criteria.

Could there be a parallel search route designed to cater for both markets using the advanced search criteria. this could work along the following path: Andvanced Search -> Exact Criteria or Flexible Criteria -> Exact Criteria would then generate a very exact search; the flexible criteria could have the same questions with a radio box beside them asking for a selection of unflexible, mixed, flexible. All though this may take a wee bit of work to get quite right, it would at least give villa owners a better idea of what the renter's are looking for. I think that this may both improve the success rate of responses to searches v's bookings gained and guest's booking experience.

I hope you can kind of see what I am getting at.

[Chris7]

What you sugest Euan shouldn't be too hard to do. The airlines already allow a +/- days either saide of your selected date, and as Lesley says if the only info the owners get is what is entered on that form, it would help them avoid wasting their time in chasing leads which could never come off.

[huckleberry house]

Hi Euan ,Chris and mkrw
I like the idea of a + - box ,and maybe size of home flexible,yes no.I think that would be a great benefit,and should reduce the amount of replies guests receive that dont match their request.Presumably this would be fairly simple to add as it only needs to be a box that renters could fill in with the amount of days either side rather than being a full search engine like the BA one.
Discussions like this are beneficial and I for one think it is great that we have the opportunity as owners to hear from renters how they feel about the site and the responses they receive so thanks mkrw for the opportunity.

Lesley

[MRKW]

Have finally made a decission on a Villa, on Eagle Point ( Sue Greenhalgh's ) Sorry to all the other villa owners i had to turn down this time

Thank you all for your time

Kevin

[Elaine311]

I browsed through the villas first, then put out an enquiry. I got a lot of response, which was great but a tad overwhelming when you've never done this sort of thing before! I browsed some more, found one that everyone in the party liked (had all the features we were looking for) and enquired about it. Alas, it was booked for our dates (we had very little flexibility due to my partner's work commitments and my son's school commitments!). So, I browsed some more but was much more focused, as I knew exactly what I was looking for. I found a villa with practically identical features/extras to my first 'find', found out about availability and booked it. And boy, am I looking forward to going!! My Mum, my 6 year old and I are having a competition to see who can get the most excited, I think.......

Elaine

[MRKW]

6 Weeks to the day until we go for two weeks of FUN!!!!

Can't wait.

This year it's soooooo much cheaper then last year thank you the US Dollar