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.
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