Last Updated on July 25, 2014 by admin

Promoting your holiday home to walkers online

In 1988 the Proclaimers confidently claimed they would walk 500 miles and may well be prepared to walk 500 more. Whilst that’s far enough to arrive in Barcelona from our North Devon base and still have a few miles in the tank, many of us have followed them by strapping on our own walking boots opening up opportunities for marketing your holiday home to walkers.

Whether marching on moors or plodding the Peak District, we’re a nation that loves the great outdoors. If you own a holiday cottage with natural resources on your doorstep you’ll want to ensure your guests know all about them from the point they begin looking for their break to the moment they leave.

Here are five online tips for marketing your holiday home to walkers

1. Is there information on your website?

For many people the first step in selecting their holiday accommodation will be online research. The words ‘holiday cottage’ are searched for on Google more than 2,500 times in the UK each month. If you market your own property this will be your biggest shop window; your opportunity to explain why they’d stay with you rather than go elsewhere.

Remember that there are a wide variety of guests that will want to enjoy local walks; some will be looking for more challenging terrain whilst others for a more leisurely stroll with a stop off point for lunch. When highlighting local routes also explain the level of difficulty and always link it back to your target market.

The more content you have surrounding a subject area the more Google will understand what your website is about.  If you’re attempting to attract and promote your holiday cottage to walkers having informative content on this area will be a key determinant of your ranking success.  It will also increase engagement with those visitors looking to get out into the countryside as you’re providing them with information they need in order to support their decisions; you’re ticking their box.

If you’re using a holiday letting marketing and management company let them know about your intention for marketing your holiday home to walkers and provide them with information on walk’s near to your holiday cottage so they’re fully aware of what you think makes your cottage different.

2. Get blogging!

There are many different benefits to blogging for a holiday cottage; it can increase the regularity with which Google crawls your website, the number of key terms you rank for and as a result, the amount of people that visit your site and the level of engagement they have with it.

A great asset of local walks is the views, the photos and the visual.  If you have recent photos from local walks, for example sunrises, sunsets, breathtaking views that go on forever, put them onto your blog. This content doesn’t need to be generated just by you – why not encourage your visitors to share their photos with you?

3. Are you using social media?

Twitter and Facebook provide the ultimate opportunity for sharing photos and experiences. A photo can help you to stand out from that crowed Twitter newsfeed and have been known to regularly attract more re-tweets, spreading your word further.

Facebook also gives the opportunity for your guests to share their walking photos. If you can, encourage them to do so. Social groups are usually bound together by common interests, so their friends and family on Facebook are potential new walking visitors to your holiday cottage.

4. Gaining the right visibility

Effective online marketing is inextricably linked to creating visibility with the people you want to reach. Establish if there are any opportunities for you to feature on websites that would be frequented by walkers. Do they have an accommodation section? Are there opportunities to take part in walking forums and discussion groups to highlight your local routes?

5. The big picture

If you’re looking to attract walkers to your holiday cottage it’s vital that you communicate with them and find them. Blogging and adding content to your site will enable you to rank more and engage with the new website visitors you’re reaching. Social media and other websites will allow you to extend your reach further, building dialogue and discussion.

Boshers are specialist providers of insurance for holiday homes and cottages. For more information on how a specialist insurer can help and support your holiday home business, please give us a call on 01237 429444.