Marketing - DIY or use an agency?
One of the fundamental decisions you will make when starting up your own holiday cottage is whether to manage the property yourself or to use an agency. Obviously we want to encourage people to run their property themselves and we’re here to help you do this, but it’s only fair to tell you what an agency might have to offer.
But first, let’s look at the benefits of managing your holiday cottage yourself.
Self management
- Major cost savings! Agency costs can be significant, up to 20% of your income! If your margin for success is tight, you have more scope for maximising your profit if you do things yourself
- Managing your own property isn’t hard (we’re here to help!)
- You get to decide who uses your property
- You maintain the property at a standard you want
- It’s satisfying to see the money come in first hand!
- You can control the lettings and therefore make use of the cottage at times when it suits you
- Because you communicate with the guests before and after the holiday, you get the feedback which can allow you to make improvements
- It’s very satisfying to have customers tell you directly how much they like the look of your property!
- While an agency will manage some aspects of the property, you may still be required to do or organise some things yourself
- Most of all, you get the pleasure of knowing that the success of the property was up to you!
Using an agency
An agency may:
- have experience of setting price structures
- take care of some or all of the letting process for you (payments, book keeping, dealing with customers etc)
- advise you on improvements you can make to increase revenue
- take care of marketing for you
- deal with those difficult customers and any financial/payment problems
- be on hand to deal with any issues that arise when the guests are staying
- reduce the time you need to spend on managing your property. This can be a major factor. Will you be around to deal promptly with enquiries and bookings, all the administration, or to deal with any problems with the property?
- may provide advice on how best to decorate and furnish your property.
Finally
Remember to carefully examine what a specific agency offers:
- Is the agency local to your cottage? This is not necessarily the case
- Do they market your kind of property?
- Do they put restrictions on how you can use the property for your own use?
- How will they will market your property?
- do they market over the whole of the UK?
- do they use Internet, papers etc?
- What facilities will they provide? e.g.:
- marketing?
- cleaning?
- bookings?
- insurance?
- gardening?
- maintenance?
- What are their charges?
