Region handling

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.