Your holiday matters
Way back in the mists of time – well, about four years ago – I was part of a group of holiday rental property owners who created a holiday rentals company and website called Your Holiday Matters.
The goal was simple – to try and ensure a quality holiday experience for those booking a holiday rental property from the site.
This is harder to achieve than you might think, since everyone has different ideas about quality, but the general principle is that the properties listed are owned by ‘owners who care’ – so people staying in them can be confident that the owners really do want them to have a great time and a stress free holiday.
Notably the site is run entirely by volunteers who themselves own listed rental properties.
This doesn’t mean the properties listed are all ‘posh’ or expensive – they aren’t. You can have a great time in a small cottage or a terrible time in an overpriced and poorly maintained villa.
Of course even in the most well cared for holiday rentals things can go wrong, so another goal was to be sure that when this happened the owners would make every effort to get things sorted out as quickly as possible.
One of the key aspects of the application process for owners wanting to have their properties listed on Your Holiday Matters is that they need to provide contact details of people who have already stayed in their rental accommodation. These are then contacted by the applications team as a way of gaining an independent view of the property and holiday experience offered.
Properties listed on the site are also entitled to use the ‘Your Holiday Matters seal of Approval’ on their own websites.
So why do I mention this now?
Well, the original design was looking rather dated and unexciting (guilty as charged, your honour), but now someone (one of the volunteer property owners) has come along and very kindly redone the look of the site to bring it into the 21st century, and the new Your Holiday Matters site is launched today. Congratulations to all involved in the re-launch, it looks great!
So if you are looking for holiday rental accommodation for 2010 (not just in France!) you would do well to check out the properties listed – but be warned, quite a few of them get booked up very early on.
Visit the Your Holiday Matters website to learn more.
And if you own a property yourself you could do a lot worse than applying to be listed – it’s a site that’s going places!
Actually, Boris (name changed!!) in his usual modest way, has not shared the whole truth: the original idea was his! He’s a caring owner par excellence!
Thank you for your post and spreading the word to your ever-increasing numbers of visitors, from whom we’d love to hear of course!
Being volunteers, dear readers, means that we have no budget for marketing so the more exposure we get from blogs such as FTW, the better! It’s fantastic.
We are levying a small charge to be listed, so this should help in the future. Meanwhile we look forward to seeing you there, and when you get in touch, tell us FTW sent you!
Ah yes, modesty is my middle name! But YHM was (and still is) a great team effort and that’s the important thing.
As you say both potential members and holiday hunters all very recommended to take a look!
I look for.
As much information and photos as possible, the best show interior shots and what you look at outside from inside.
Genuine comments from those who have previously stayed there.
If something does go wrong how it is fixed. I always judge on how well problems are delt with.
I must comend you all on Your Holiday Matters. I will use it next time a book a holiday abroad and I have sent a link to friends and family. The site does not have that nasty corporate style it feels human and personal. The owners own web sites are very good indeed I thought
http://www.experienceburgundy.com/view.php?page=index&ref=francethisway
was so good it even had floor lay outs. You would know just what to expect.
I just picked this out as an example as I have not looked at them all and there may be better.
Having a reasonably informative website with a good number of photos etc is actually part of the approval process – since it helps eliminate potentially unpleasant surprises for visitors – so most sites listed would be of a decent quality. As you say, some are still better than others, and many owners go to a lot of trouble to provide additional information.
I’m interested that you think floor-plans are a particularly noteworthy feature – we don’t have them on our own gite website but perhaps it’s time to get on and add them.
The floor plans in that particular case were important as it had a very unusual lay out over 3 stories.If the property is a fairly standard layout the information is not as important.
I’m so glad to hear that people find our floor plans useful! We did put them up because our layout is unusual, but also because floor plans convey specific additional information that is difficult to get any other way. I don’t think they’re any kind of replacement for photos and vivid description, but they are a nice compliment to them. Growing numbers of owners (including many on Your Holiday Matters, which is really a fantastic website) are adding them.
Boris, there are now lots of online floor plan tools to help you, like floorplanner.com, and if you’d like help with yours, just let me know!
Thanks for stopping by Brooke, and for your suggestion for the floorplanner site – I’ll take a look. Both our properties are pretty ‘normal’ layouts but it still sounds like a worthwhile idea…as always it’s a question of finding the time.
Incidentally I was in Semur-en-Auxois in September, not sure if I saw your place but it’s a lovely town.
Cheers