Between Booking.com seeming to take over the OTA market by the minute (plus basically forcing us to pay even more commission to stay high in their rankings) and Airbnb bookings having dropped away just as quickly, we are looking to capitalise on the direct marketing opportunity with our own website.
Priorities are something that is easy to create (we spent a lot of time on our previous venture) and integrated ability to accept reservations and payments.
So… OH has been looking at Wix as a solution. Does anyone have recent experience with Wix? We know that they had problems prior to 2016 but apparently have made serious business improvements since.
My stepson built our Wix website, seems OK but he is "reluctant " to give me the relevant codes to edit it, so I have to rely on him to make any changes. If you want to see it, www.sansonneche.com
No, don’t think there is any need, or even if it is possible. Certainly isn’t possible for us as we advertise on quite a few sites, gites de france, chez nous etc and there could be a clashing of bookings. Personally, I think it’s better to have some contact, can possibly screen out scams or maybe someone coming with 6 dogs and 9 children etc.
Upon reflection, I guess that’s because we have very different property profiles. Our guests are mainly for 1 or 2 nights, with very high turnover and they want to book easily and instantly, (often on mobile phones these days!).
We have Booking on instant book and (few requests from) Airbnb upon approval, so no clashes possible there and Wix synchronises with all other platforms - it’s one of the things that’s attracted us to it.
I think we’re going to give it a go, I certainly like the look and just hope the reservations and payments functionality is up to the same standard…
I went down the wix route at first, but it just didn’t do what I wanted. It was also very limited on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Eventually I built my own website with a website course designed for owners: www.collioure.vacations The course was free, you need to pay for hosting, but it worked out less than what I was paying to wix.
It has only been live since the beginning of the summer but has brought in quite a few bookings.
It is possible to ‘automate’ much of the booking process, but you have to pay a fee for those services, so I opted to do it myself. I like having contact with renters, even for short stays.
If you build on Wix google doesn’t rank you from what I was advised which would make it rather pointless. If possible use Wordpress. You may have to pay someone to build it initially but updates are simple and you can achieve google ranking. Hope that helps.
Thanks. Does your info date from pre-2016 when Wix did a major overhaul, particularly of their SEO?
From a bit of research I’ve just done, it appears to have been improved dramatically and Google says Wix is ranked the same as anyone else… also there is plenty you can do on your pages to raise the ranking yourself.
After all our research, we had a super online demonstration by Elloha who offer no-coding website building automatically translated into 7 languages, extensive channel management with all major OTAs, no-commission simple online bookings for clients, integrated free credit/debit card checking by Stripe (Visa subsidiary), card payments for 3% commission, if desired and plenty of other helpful features.
Plus their customer service has been excellent so far. And all for 39€/month with no commitment.
Very pleased with the outcome - website coming soon and hopefully far greater levels of direct bookings and reduced commissions!
Can now relax a bit and wait for arrival of Baby Robins on 16th with one more thing ticked off the To Do list.