On our site, FindCottage.ca, we always try to implement the standard listing features in an innovative way. For example, when it comes to the calendar and prices, we are the only site that will give you instant and accurate price quote for any listing on our site for any given period of time and will do this really fast. We also present the regular listing in such way that it looks like your personal website site or even better.
One of requests that came from cottage owners listing on our site was to implement the regions "like on other listing sites".
If you will perform a little research, you will find that the most popular way of searching in other listing sites in Ontario is to have big map of Ontario divided in many colorful chunks (10+). You would need to select the chunk based on your location preference and you will see list of cottages belonging to that chunk. In many cases the flexibility of your search ends at that point.
One of the problems is that some renters need more flexibility. One renter knows the specific name, like Horseshoe Ski Resort. Another renter knows the exact name of the desired vacation location on Ontario map. And third one does not really care about the location, but wants to limit the driving to 3 hours from Toronto.
Second problem is that Ontario regions are not very clearly defined and not widely known, so in many cases cottage renter might not know that Blue Mountain resort located in Grey and it also can be called Collingwood and it is not far away from Wasaga Beach.
So, here comes our solution:
1. Divide Ontario Regions in 11 groups. Each group consists of 4-10 regions. The grouping is only visible to cottage owners. When potential renter searching for particular region sorted in alphabetical order, we are returning all cottages located in that Region group. So, all Blue Mountain searches would return cottages located in Blue Mountain, Grey, Collingwood and Wasaga Beach.
2. Provide distance search from 8 major cities in Ontario. In the search criteria you can specify the city and the distance limit. This option is really useful for renters who just starting to explore Ontario or renters who hate long driving.
3. UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Provide search on Google map. Renters would see same search options except Location/Distance search. Instead there would be big Google Map that displays the cottages as dots on the map based on the search criteria. So, instead of wondering how the region is called, renters can zoom-in to see all cottages in the particular part of the map.
And on top of that there are many-many additional search options available to the renter to make a scientific research and find the ideal cottage for the perfect vacation.
So, if you have any suggestions how to improve our approach, I would love to hear it. In order to make it right, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the user of our website and I always listen to the feedback. I always glad to hear good feedbacks, but I also find a lot of value in a constructive criticism and never ignore people who have something to say.
With best wishes,
Max Trenton.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Cottage for rent - Winter Edition
Dear cottage owners,
with winter season just around the corner, it is time to prepare your cottage for winter rentals.
First, you would need to change the main picture of your listing from "summer" type to "winter" type. Usually, people looking for winter fun are not very impressed by green trees and blue lakes.
Second, you need to make sure that your listing contains "winter" description and "winter" features are not missed. In winter renters looking usually are looking for active sports - Downhill skiing, Cross-country skiing, Ice fishing, Snowmobiling and Snowshoeing. After dark, your cottage visitors can play some board games or billiard and relax in sauna or in open-air jacuzzi. And just to complete the perfect day - have a glass of red wine beside cozy fireplace.
But unless you would help to draw the above picture with written listing description or vivid images of your cottage, renter would never know that your cottage is ideal place to spend winter holidays.
Third, don't forget to include your Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year rates. Usually, the rent is raising during holidays, so don't disapoint the renter with wrong price qoute.
So, please register on FindCottage.ca website if you haven't done so or update your existing profile using the above tips.
To register o login to your profile on our website use this link.
If you have any questions regarding your cottage rentals update - talk to us.
To review all cottages, cabins, chalets already available on FindCottage.ca, you can take a look here.
And the last but not least - please visit the page with new free service available for your cottage website - Website Health-Check.
Thanks and have a wonderful winter!
Max Trenton
with winter season just around the corner, it is time to prepare your cottage for winter rentals.
First, you would need to change the main picture of your listing from "summer" type to "winter" type. Usually, people looking for winter fun are not very impressed by green trees and blue lakes.
Second, you need to make sure that your listing contains "winter" description and "winter" features are not missed. In winter renters looking usually are looking for active sports - Downhill skiing, Cross-country skiing, Ice fishing, Snowmobiling and Snowshoeing. After dark, your cottage visitors can play some board games or billiard and relax in sauna or in open-air jacuzzi. And just to complete the perfect day - have a glass of red wine beside cozy fireplace.
But unless you would help to draw the above picture with written listing description or vivid images of your cottage, renter would never know that your cottage is ideal place to spend winter holidays.
Third, don't forget to include your Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year rates. Usually, the rent is raising during holidays, so don't disapoint the renter with wrong price qoute.
So, please register on FindCottage.ca website if you haven't done so or update your existing profile using the above tips.
To register o login to your profile on our website use this link.
If you have any questions regarding your cottage rentals update - talk to us.
To review all cottages, cabins, chalets already available on FindCottage.ca, you can take a look here.
And the last but not least - please visit the page with new free service available for your cottage website - Website Health-Check.
Thanks and have a wonderful winter!
Max Trenton
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Healt Check for your cottage website
I was recently thinking what is my real specialty is. Every person has a special talent and in order to be successful in life you need to discover this talent and you need to work in the industry where this talent can be applicable. So, if you look at the successful people, most of the time they are really good in what their doing PLUS they are passionate about it.
After some thinking I discovered that I am passionate about the cottages and I am passionate about the internet. I also involved in cottage and IT industries. At that moment new idea was born - create Health Check service for the websites related to the cottage living. But in order to bring real value to the community, I decided that this service should be free of charge and the results of the health checks should be publicly available, so other website owners can benefit from my findings.
And here it is:
http://www.findcottage.ca/website_health_check.jsp
Rules are simple - the website should be related to the cottage industry and the request for Health Check should be sent to me by email.
What is included in the Health Check: ease and simplicity of the website, website navigation, clarity of the message to the cottage renter, potential improvements to make the website more appealing, optimization for search engines like Google.
I will be waiting for your requests and I am really excited about this project!
So, if you have website related to cottage industry, don't miss this great opportunity to improve your website. Internet is booming and your investment in the presence of your cottage on the internet will definitely pay back.
Always yours,
Max Trenton
Health Check specialist
After some thinking I discovered that I am passionate about the cottages and I am passionate about the internet. I also involved in cottage and IT industries. At that moment new idea was born - create Health Check service for the websites related to the cottage living. But in order to bring real value to the community, I decided that this service should be free of charge and the results of the health checks should be publicly available, so other website owners can benefit from my findings.
And here it is:
http://www.findcottage.ca/website_health_check.jsp
Rules are simple - the website should be related to the cottage industry and the request for Health Check should be sent to me by email.
What is included in the Health Check: ease and simplicity of the website, website navigation, clarity of the message to the cottage renter, potential improvements to make the website more appealing, optimization for search engines like Google.
I will be waiting for your requests and I am really excited about this project!
So, if you have website related to cottage industry, don't miss this great opportunity to improve your website. Internet is booming and your investment in the presence of your cottage on the internet will definitely pay back.
Always yours,
Max Trenton
Health Check specialist
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Pictures of your cottage
There are multiple important factors which determine the cottage attractiveness in the eyes of potential cottage renter: price, location, proximity to water, attractions. However, in most of the cases you don't have enough control to change these attributes.
But there is one factor which is very important and you have total control over it - the appearance of your cottage inside and outside. Somehow many cottage owners underestimate the importance of good pictures.
The reality is that potential cottage seekers spend hours and hours of looking at the pictures and most of the time they pick cottages which look "nicer". Many great cottages are staying empty due to bad pictures or lack of pictures. From the other side, many not so good cottages got booked because of pictures made by professional photograph (of course such cottages rely only on one-time visits and never get good reviews).
So, here are some tips when it comes to pictures:
1. Try to cover with pictures as many features of your cottage as you can. Renters care about everything - bedrooms, kitchen, bath, toilets, back yard, front yard, view from the sky.
2. Pictures should have high resolution. Few years ago internet connection was slow. Slow internet caused high resolution pictures to load for very long time. Nowadays everybody got high-speed internet and pictures with good resolution (640x480 pixels an higher) appear almost instantaneously. High resolution pictures give much more information about little details which are so important to the viewers.
3. Exterior pictures should be made from some distance (10m+) to give a better feeling about the atmosphere around the cottage. When making the outside picture, make sure that the sun is behind you and the cottage is not covered with too many dark shades. For best colors try to make outside pictures hour after sunrise or hour before sunset (depending on the shades). Another good exterior shot can be taken during sunny bright day when the sky is blue with few nice light clouds and the trees/grass is green-rich (but remember to keep the sun behind you for best results).
4. Interior pictures are best taken at night with soft light. Another important rule is to use wide angle photo lens (if you have access to it), so the pictures will have broader view of your rooms. Make sure that the rooms are clean and there are no people on the picture. Do some staging - put some fresh flowers on the table, start the fireplace. Cozy rooms will attract more clients.
5. If you can afford to get professional photographer - do it. Making good pictures is not just about pointing and shooting. It is an art of light, positioning and professional equipment.
Plus you can reuse pictures for long time and your investment will pay off very soon.
6. Try to show your potential clients not only different views of your cottage, but have pictures of your cottage during different seasons - winter, spring, summer and fall. The early spring season is slightly difficult because it is dull and gray, but if you have flowers blooming around your cottage - do not miss the moment. Show you clients sparkling snow on a sunny winter day, try to seduce your potential customers with a view of a lake during hot summer day, and don't miss the colorful Canadian fall, with rich, powerful colors.
Always yours,
Max Trenton
http://www.findcottage.ca
But there is one factor which is very important and you have total control over it - the appearance of your cottage inside and outside. Somehow many cottage owners underestimate the importance of good pictures.
The reality is that potential cottage seekers spend hours and hours of looking at the pictures and most of the time they pick cottages which look "nicer". Many great cottages are staying empty due to bad pictures or lack of pictures. From the other side, many not so good cottages got booked because of pictures made by professional photograph (of course such cottages rely only on one-time visits and never get good reviews).
So, here are some tips when it comes to pictures:
1. Try to cover with pictures as many features of your cottage as you can. Renters care about everything - bedrooms, kitchen, bath, toilets, back yard, front yard, view from the sky.
2. Pictures should have high resolution. Few years ago internet connection was slow. Slow internet caused high resolution pictures to load for very long time. Nowadays everybody got high-speed internet and pictures with good resolution (640x480 pixels an higher) appear almost instantaneously. High resolution pictures give much more information about little details which are so important to the viewers.
3. Exterior pictures should be made from some distance (10m+) to give a better feeling about the atmosphere around the cottage. When making the outside picture, make sure that the sun is behind you and the cottage is not covered with too many dark shades. For best colors try to make outside pictures hour after sunrise or hour before sunset (depending on the shades). Another good exterior shot can be taken during sunny bright day when the sky is blue with few nice light clouds and the trees/grass is green-rich (but remember to keep the sun behind you for best results).
4. Interior pictures are best taken at night with soft light. Another important rule is to use wide angle photo lens (if you have access to it), so the pictures will have broader view of your rooms. Make sure that the rooms are clean and there are no people on the picture. Do some staging - put some fresh flowers on the table, start the fireplace. Cozy rooms will attract more clients.
5. If you can afford to get professional photographer - do it. Making good pictures is not just about pointing and shooting. It is an art of light, positioning and professional equipment.
Plus you can reuse pictures for long time and your investment will pay off very soon.
6. Try to show your potential clients not only different views of your cottage, but have pictures of your cottage during different seasons - winter, spring, summer and fall. The early spring season is slightly difficult because it is dull and gray, but if you have flowers blooming around your cottage - do not miss the moment. Show you clients sparkling snow on a sunny winter day, try to seduce your potential customers with a view of a lake during hot summer day, and don't miss the colorful Canadian fall, with rich, powerful colors.
Always yours,
Max Trenton
http://www.findcottage.ca
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Cottage Calendar
Cottage rental industry is very unique. One of the the uniqueness lies in the complexity of price calculations. The complexity is caused by the fact that each cottage or cabin can have different price rules defined for different periods of time.
For example, cottage owner can establish low price for early-spring late-fall seasons, mid-range price for winter and high price for summer.
On top of this, cottage owner can have different rates depending from the duration of the stay. Daily price is usually higher than pro-rated weekend price, and weekend price is higher than pro-rated whole week price.
On top of this, different seasons can have only certain duration available. For example, chalet owner can rent only on weekly basis during winter and summer, and have flexibility to rent by day, weekend or week during spring and fall. There are some additional rules when it comes to Canadian long weekends.
On top of this, some owners charge GST and/or PST, some don't.
Historically, there were two ways to handle this complexity by the websites which publish cottage profiles:
1. Just write the rules in words or in some form of table and let user to figure out the final price based on their needs. The advantage of such method is ease of implementation. The drawback -calculations are passed to the end-user, which can cause the frustration (especially when user needs to compare dozen or more cottages based on the price).
2. Make cottage owner fit the website rules. For example, some websites force cottage owners to rent only on weekly basis and each rental should start on the certain day of the week. Such rules make it easy to compare the prices between different cottages. But from the other side, it removes the flexibility from the cottage owner. Using such approach, cottage owner cannot provide daily or weekend price and cannot use non-standard rental starting day of the week.
Our website, FindCottage.ca, implements new generation of Calendar management tool. We give the cottage owner the flexibility to define different seasons (using fancy colors), with rich flexibility in choices: starting day, mid-week daily, weekend daily price, 2-nights weekend, 3-nights weekend, weekly and custom prices.
Our advanced software package will pre-calculate all the prices based on your definition and will present them in user-friendly format.
Creating calendar can take some attention during the first usage, but there is no other way to handle the variety of options available for calendar creation.
Here is the screenshot of our Calendar web interface:
We think that the time has come for better website and more intelligent ways of doing business.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments related to Cottage Calendar.
And as always, I will be more than happy to hear your questions or comments regarding any aspect of renting a cottage, cabin or chalet in Ontario.
Thanks!
Truly yours,
Max Trenton
http://www.findcottage.ca
For example, cottage owner can establish low price for early-spring late-fall seasons, mid-range price for winter and high price for summer.
On top of this, cottage owner can have different rates depending from the duration of the stay. Daily price is usually higher than pro-rated weekend price, and weekend price is higher than pro-rated whole week price.
On top of this, different seasons can have only certain duration available. For example, chalet owner can rent only on weekly basis during winter and summer, and have flexibility to rent by day, weekend or week during spring and fall. There are some additional rules when it comes to Canadian long weekends.
On top of this, some owners charge GST and/or PST, some don't.
Historically, there were two ways to handle this complexity by the websites which publish cottage profiles:
1. Just write the rules in words or in some form of table and let user to figure out the final price based on their needs. The advantage of such method is ease of implementation. The drawback -calculations are passed to the end-user, which can cause the frustration (especially when user needs to compare dozen or more cottages based on the price).
2. Make cottage owner fit the website rules. For example, some websites force cottage owners to rent only on weekly basis and each rental should start on the certain day of the week. Such rules make it easy to compare the prices between different cottages. But from the other side, it removes the flexibility from the cottage owner. Using such approach, cottage owner cannot provide daily or weekend price and cannot use non-standard rental starting day of the week.
Our website, FindCottage.ca, implements new generation of Calendar management tool. We give the cottage owner the flexibility to define different seasons (using fancy colors), with rich flexibility in choices: starting day, mid-week daily, weekend daily price, 2-nights weekend, 3-nights weekend, weekly and custom prices.
Our advanced software package will pre-calculate all the prices based on your definition and will present them in user-friendly format.
Creating calendar can take some attention during the first usage, but there is no other way to handle the variety of options available for calendar creation.
Here is the screenshot of our Calendar web interface:
We think that the time has come for better website and more intelligent ways of doing business.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments related to Cottage Calendar.
And as always, I will be more than happy to hear your questions or comments regarding any aspect of renting a cottage, cabin or chalet in Ontario.
Thanks!
Truly yours,
Max Trenton
http://www.findcottage.ca
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Rent options availabe to cottage owners
So, you got your vacation home and now it is time to get some value out of it by renting it to other people. In this article we going to go through three basic options for renting your cottage, chalet or cabin.
First option - do everything yourself. By everything I mean:
1. Advertising. There are multiple options for advertising your cottage - newspapers, magazines, websites (like http://www.findcottage.ca/).
2. Taking calls and email from potential customers. You would also want to perform some screening procedures. For example, you don't want bachelor party taking place at your cottage.
3. Process booking and damage deposits. If you have only 1 cottage for rent, it does not make sense to run Visa processing. So, most likely you would need to deal with personal checks.
4. Greeting the guests. Some owners try to give the keys in person, just to check if people who are renting the cottage have good intentions. Otherwise you can leave the keys in lock box and give the code to your customers.
5. Saying goodbye to the guests. At this point you need to make sure that no damage is made to your cottage during the visit. Usually you would have $500 damage deposit taken, so if any repairs are needed - you can take these money. If the damage is more than $500 - your insurance should cover the difference.
6. Cleaning the cottage. Some owners take cleaning deposit and if cottage needs cleanup - you do it yourself and take cleaning deposit as extra income.
Second option - let others manage the advertising and payments. In some cases it will be more convenient just to manage "Greeting", "Goodbye" and "Cleaning" part, and let somebody else find customers and get the payments. Nowadays customers want to book the cottage online using credit cards.
However, there are not too many companies that provide such package. Advertising/payment services cost around 15%-30% of your rental revenue.
Third option - give the keys to company which provides full cottage management including advertising, payment processing, cleaning, security, etc. Usually such companies are managing only certain areas, like Muskoka or Bruce Peninsula. You can also book your own usage of the cottage, but you can have some limitations. The downside of such option is that it costs a lot of money. It starts from 18% and goes up to 30%. In some extreme cases (like Intrawest resort) it can eat up to 50% of your rental income, but it is rather exception than the rule.
Now it is your turn to decide!
Truly yours,
Max Trenton from FindCottage.ca
First option - do everything yourself. By everything I mean:
1. Advertising. There are multiple options for advertising your cottage - newspapers, magazines, websites (like http://www.findcottage.ca/).
2. Taking calls and email from potential customers. You would also want to perform some screening procedures. For example, you don't want bachelor party taking place at your cottage.
3. Process booking and damage deposits. If you have only 1 cottage for rent, it does not make sense to run Visa processing. So, most likely you would need to deal with personal checks.
4. Greeting the guests. Some owners try to give the keys in person, just to check if people who are renting the cottage have good intentions. Otherwise you can leave the keys in lock box and give the code to your customers.
5. Saying goodbye to the guests. At this point you need to make sure that no damage is made to your cottage during the visit. Usually you would have $500 damage deposit taken, so if any repairs are needed - you can take these money. If the damage is more than $500 - your insurance should cover the difference.
6. Cleaning the cottage. Some owners take cleaning deposit and if cottage needs cleanup - you do it yourself and take cleaning deposit as extra income.
Second option - let others manage the advertising and payments. In some cases it will be more convenient just to manage "Greeting", "Goodbye" and "Cleaning" part, and let somebody else find customers and get the payments. Nowadays customers want to book the cottage online using credit cards.
However, there are not too many companies that provide such package. Advertising/payment services cost around 15%-30% of your rental revenue.
Third option - give the keys to company which provides full cottage management including advertising, payment processing, cleaning, security, etc. Usually such companies are managing only certain areas, like Muskoka or Bruce Peninsula. You can also book your own usage of the cottage, but you can have some limitations. The downside of such option is that it costs a lot of money. It starts from 18% and goes up to 30%. In some extreme cases (like Intrawest resort) it can eat up to 50% of your rental income, but it is rather exception than the rule.
Now it is your turn to decide!
Truly yours,
Max Trenton from FindCottage.ca
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