Company News
New office brings us all together
If you haven't heard already, we recently moved offices, having been lucky enough to find a fabulous new venue at Los Patios de Santa Maria Golf. We're now just a few minutes further down the road from our old Pino Golf offices.
The Los Patios office is an exciting new location for us because it now brings the entire HomeCareontheWeb team together under one roof, and has helped us reduce some of our costs, which is more than welcome in the current climate.
Because we are so centrally located, our inspection, housekeeping and maintenance teams can easily access all areas of the Coast.
In addition we have special provision for owners and holidaymakers in the Estepona area, should they need to collect keys when arriving from Gibraltar airport, as one of our inspectors will be on hand to deliver the keys. A secure 24-hour key safe facility is also planned for this area.
Welcome John Hollway, new Business Development Director
We're pleased to announce the recent appointment of John Hollway, our new Business Development Director.
John has lived and worked on the Costa del Sol for many years, and brings a wealth of directorial expertise to the company. His role with us is not only to forge new business avenues and collaborations, but also to oversee all aspects of our sales operations, including property management, holiday and long-term rental sales, as well as property sales, and to ensure new owners, rental clients and business associates benefit to the maximum from our wide range of services.
Hot results from recent marketing campaigns
Recently it's been an even busier time than usual for our Marketing and Communications department. In additional to our ongoing intensive email campaigns keeping the travel market up to date with our special offers, we've been developing our relationships with various travel-related printed and online media in the UK and Scandinavia, to promote the Costa del Sol as a number one holiday destination to our travel partners and holidaymaker clients.
As for visitors to our websites, our HolidayRentalontheWeb website experienced a significant 25.8% increase in visitors in February compared to January.
This is coupled with a 54.7% rise in the number of pages those visitors viewed.
So, more people are now coming to us to look for holiday and long-term rental accommodation, whilst at the same time investigating more properties within our portfolio.
This supports the trend now being perceived by the travel industry and published in the media, that more people are taking an interest in self-catering holidays in rental properties rather than booking traditional hotel accommodation, in an attempt to control their costs during the current 'credit-crunch'.
Press give us a field day!
The media have been kind to us of late, publishing many pieces about the Costa del Sol as a holiday destination and linking through to our website as providers of premium holiday accommodation.
For instance, a substantial editorial piece was published about our company and its services in the Birmingham Mail. The article appeared just before Christmas, reaching a readership of approximately 180,000 people.
The current March/April issue of Holiday Villas Magazine also features a double-page article about the benefits to villa owners of HomeCareontheWeb's property management services.
Holidaymakers reading this will see that the properties managed by HomeCareontheWeb are maintained to a high quality standard and that holiday guests will be looked after with care when they come to visit.
Distribution of the magazine includes:
- 15,000 copies sold through UK supermarket outlets and newsagents such as W.H. Smith.
- A further 3,000 controlled free circulation to travel agents and high-traffic waiting rooms across the UK such as doctors, dentists, opticians, gyms and hairdressers, where average readership is estimated at 65 people per copy.
Next month, HolidayRentalontheWeb begins a colour advertising campaign in the Costa del Sol section of the Holiday Villas magazine for the coming year, specifically promoting to holidaymakers the discount offers available on our owners' holiday rental properties.
Online articles promote the Coast!
We also have a webpage on the magazine's villas website Villaseek.com, highlighting discount offers on specific rental properties, as well as providing links through to the whole holiday rental properties portfolio on our website, HolidayRentalontheWeb.com.
In addition to the press pieces that have been published about us, we've had two editorial pieces published on the popular travel website Travelbite.co.uk.
The first piece entitled 'Costa del Sol Christmas Wonderland' appeared at the beginning of December promoting all the things there are to do whilst on holiday on the Costa del Sol over the Christmas and Winter holiday season.
This article was based on our popular 'Winter Sun and Fun on the Costa del Sol: A Complete Holiday Guide' which is available to our website visitors as a free download.
The second Travelbite.co.uk article, 'Costa del Sol Year Round Holiday Ideas' appeared in January promoting the idea of the Costa del Sol as an all year round destination.
We have also been featured in the run up to Christmas on the Andalucia-travelguide.com website, and they have just published our editorial piece on 'Costa del Sol as a Year Round Location'.
Also, currently running on the front page of the influential The Times Online Golf Club, is a link through to our website promoting 10% discount on our holiday rental accommodation, which is yielding significant click-throughs to our site.
Interestingly, 2009 has already seen our bookings well up on last year, as people begin to tire of the economic climate and are booking their holidays early so they have something to look forward to. Also many are now turning to self-catering accommodation rather than more expensive hotel packages, in order to better control their costs.
Following the tremendous amount of interest which has been shown in our holiday properties by UK and Irish travel agents and tour operators, we're also well on the way to establishing key new partnerships with the travel industry in Scandinavia.
We have a policy of keeping our travel partners regularly informed about the special offers on our holiday properties so they can in turn provide a great service to their clients. A lot of interest is also being seen from golf tour operators and other specialist travel organisations - as well as those holidaymakers who have booked direct with us before, as they return year on year to visit us again here on the Coast.
News about golfing holidays
Golf rentals have always been very popular on the Coast, but with the recent announcement that the Volvo MatchPlay Tournament Championship is coming to the Costa del Sol in September, the golfing holiday market is set to expand even more rapidly, with Spain predicted to be one of the leading golf nations of the world.
We're now regularly in touch with UK Golf Clubs and Societies, sending them special e-mailings about discount golf accommodation, especially when tournament events such as the Volvo Championship are happening, to pass on to their members. This compounds the launch of our 'Fairway Collection' of specially selected golf holiday accommodation for golfers heading for the Coast for what have been described as some of the best courses on the planet!
Not only can we offer golfers quality accommodation on or within a short distance of a local golf course, we can also give them discount green fee deals on all 47 courses on the Costa del Sol, plus a facility to pre-book tee times online and get discount car hire.
Technology and hands-on service working in perfect harmony
Over the last few months, we've been actively implementing new Internet technology not only to automate many of our previously labour-intensive procedures, but also to improve our service to our owners, tenants and holiday guests.
These initiatives will contribute to our company's overall productivity so we can continue to thrive in these current tough economic times, and do well in the future.
The recent automation of our cleaning schedule procedure is the perfect example of this.
Now, when an owner logs on to their Owner's Area on our website and fills out their visit calendar, our system automatically issues the required documents and checklists to our housekeeping team for the clean to be done.
Once the clean is complete, details are entered into our administration system and an invoice is automatically generated and delivered online to the client via their Owner's Area.
Our maintenance procedures will be similarly automated shortly, where our inspectors will use portable terminals with 3G Internet capability to complete 'live' inspection reports at an owner's property, and upload them directly to our website for the owner to view instantly.
It's modern technology combined with good old-fashioned service!
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