The numerous emails we receive on support from potential clients, frustrated about calendars and prices not being up-to-date are a bit too much in our opinion.
Here are some examples:
“site is a waste of time...booking calendars are not updated. :( “
“Bonjour, Je commence à penser que les annonces sont bidons... Les appartements annoncés disponibles sur le site ne le sont réélement... Toutes les réponses sont négatives !!!!!” = "Hi, I am starting to think the ads are fake..the apartments advertised as being available are actually no..all the replies are negative!!!"
“hej - jeg har ikke booket hos jer fordi ejerne ikke opdaterede kalenderen, så når jeg forespurgte, så var lejlighederne allerede lejet ud i perioden. Det kan jeg ikke rigtig bruge til noget.” = "Hello, I have not booked via your site, as the owners don't update your calendars. When I enquired, the apartments were already booked. I can really not use your site."
“Vi har hørt fra begge udlejerne af lejligheder i Spanien, men begge VAR udlejet, selvom det ikke fremgår af deres kalender, systemet virker ikke særlig seriøst." = "We heard from both the owners we contacted, but both were occupied, although this was not clear from the calendar. The system doesn't seem very serious"
“Je suis un peu déçue de la non mise à jour des loueurs car je suis en train de perdre du temps....et la sélection qu'on fait dans les critères ne sert à rien dans ce cas.” = "I am a little disappointed of the non-updating by the advertisers because I am losing time...and the search we make on advanced search doesn't lead anywhere in that case."
There are many more, but as you can see, it is a general complaint coming from all the sites, people from all nationalities are annoyed at this fact and most of them blame spain-holiday.com about it and then simply don’t use our website anymore. This is of course a loss for all of us. I therefore kindly ask you to please make an effort to update your calendars as good as possible, it can only be for your benefit and the one of the website in general. Ads with not up-to-date calendars have 15 points less in their quality score compared to these who do update their calendars. The higher the quality score, the higher your ad's position on the listings, so an effort to keep the calendar up-to-date is rewarded.
Who needs enquiries for fully booked periods anyway? If the client is flexible, he will contact you for sure if he likes your property. But if a clients is searching for one specific period which is marked as booked on your calendar, he won’t contact you. This will give you correct statistics and enquiries of higher quality, meaning enquiries sent to you for available periods, will easier convert into a booking. Holiday makers will in this case also come back for their future holidays.
Same stands for the prices. Many of you updated their ad with prices for 2012, but this is now coming to its end and the ads need to be updated with the prices for 2013. This adds 20 points on the Quality Score, as having outdated prices for 2012 are no longer valid for the QS.
I am aware this is not the first time we are writing about this and we may sound repetitive, but if we receive so many emails about non-updated calendars or prices, it is probably because we have not repeated it enough :-)
It may be seen as a cheer for the owners that always update their calendar so well, and an encouragement for those who don’t have the time or see it as useless: it can only bring you benefit! The high booking season is only a couple of weeks away from now, so let's all be prepared with an updated calendar and prices for 2013 and keep it that way as bookings come along.