We have some friends who come and visit us most years, and stay in various gites, chalets etc in the region. This is always interesting for us, because we get a chance to see the competition and pick up useful ideas. We also get to see the faults of places.

So here is a whistle-stop guide to how you can spoil someones holiday and make sure they don’t come back to your attractive holiday rental, as experienced by our visitors over the last few years:

- have insufficient chairs to seat the number of people sleeping in the property

- have mattresses that are so uncomfortable that it is impossible to sleep on them

- charge extra for everything eg x euros for using the washing machine or y euros for electricity or z euros for parking. To be extra sure, make sure these charges are completely excessive and out of proportion with their real cost – so if your electricity costs 10 cents per unit, be sure to charge people at least 30 or 40 cents

- have garden furniture and barbecues that are dangerous to use. Plastic chairs with a leg that gives way when someone sits on it is highly recommended.

- have a husband who hangs around the pool a bit too frequently every time a female starts sunbathing…

You get the idea. All the places they have stayed have been essentially very nice, but have had one or two ‘quirks’ that are sufficient to stop them returning.

I am well aware that people might leave our own thinking the same, I’m not trying to suggest we are perfect. Most people don’t like to complain – they just don’t come back the following year or recommend it to their friends if there is a problem.

But I would suggest that if you have a holiday rental property and a very low return rate there might just be a problem that you need to identify (about 50% of our guests are returning visitors or recommended to come, if that gives a clue to what your target % should be).

Very often the problems our friends have encountered would be relatively cheap to resolve. And charging people an unexpected 20 euros for electricity at the end of their holiday means they go away with a cross feeling not a happy feeling. Not a great idea if you want them to come back – just include it all in the rent in the first place!