One thing that troubles me as a gite owner is the lack of good cheap advertising for holiday rentals, chambre d’hotes etc. Owners of gites etc are pretty much forced to pay an arm and a leg to be listed on the main holiday rental sites, and even then there is no guarantee of results. But what other choices does an owner have?

It is also confusing for people looking for holidays when there are a multitude of sites to visit and research.

What we all want is free advertising, on a site that also shows up well in google for relevant searches, and where everyone planning to visit the region knows they will find a great selection of properties. A free listing on a website with no visitors is pretty much a pointless idea.

OK perhaps free is too much to ask, but at least cheap and good value would be useful.

It just so happens I have sites about the Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne departments that have been quietly collecting cobwebs for the last couple of years. They need a bit of a facelift, and more coverage of the places in the departments – unfortunately I find all my time is taken up with francethisway – but Mrs B is committed to spending the next year venturing into the furthest corners of the region investigating.

The thing about these two sites is that they rate very highly in google.com for related seaches (eg currently no. 2 for ‘Dordogne’, no. 1 for ‘Dordogne gites’, no. 1 for ‘Lot-et-Garonne’ etc) and gets lots of people visiting them looking for information and holidays.

I have now set it up so they can offer free advertising for properties that fall in these two departments. There are still a couple of tiny ‘behind the scenes’ issues to sort out, and I’m sure others will emerge when we go live, but we’ll get started on publicity in a few days and as soon as we have more than 10-20 properties listed they can replace the current not very impressive holiday rentals sections.

So if you do have rental properties (or chambre d’hotes or hotels) in these departments, or know anyone that does, get them added now at Advertise Dordogne Holiday Rentals. In case you missed the price – it’s completely free!

By the way, don’t keep this remarkable opportunity to yourself. The best chance of making a success of the idea is if you tell everyone about it, on any relevant forums, blogs or websites that you have or know about, and we get a good number of properties added as soon as possible.

It perhaps won’t stay free forever, Mrs B says we have to pay the bills whether we like it or not, but if we can make it a big success and get lots of owners paying a very low price, it could just work don’t you think?!