Owners of hotels, guest house, vacation rental properties should do their own website. Here is how.

This could be the start of a lot of fun. It could be the start of a lot of mistakes. Be warned, this could be so much fun you can become addicted to it.

I was, and still am. It has become a hobby now.

You can have two websites to sell your propery, you know that? Your main site can still be run by your webmaster, while the site you use to sell your off-season bookings can be a different site. And you can run this one by yourself.

Your webmaster will not get upset this way. You will still get bookings from your main site while you experiment with your new one.

Sites you do yourself cost you next to nothing.

Here is the owners problem
They don’t want to upset the specialist. These advisers maintain the site and do the updates and earn money from the owner. But it is awkward, time-consuming and costly working with them, compared to instantly doing it for yourself.

Sometimes owners are uncertain of their own computer skills, it sounds fearsomely difficult. It isn’t, but they need convincing.

You can link from your own site to your main site. This is useful because you'll then only need one page for availability and your prices.You don't want to do the boring bits, do you?

You must not use the same content for each site. Google will not like it. Not a bit. A bit of the same copy is ok, but not whole pages. You can always link from your new site to the existing one if you want.

An example
When we started out in our little vacation rental cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland, everyone said we should sell abolut 24 weeks in the year. After all, in the school holidays and vacation times, there are not enough properties to satisfy all the demand. Those weeks sell out early.

Actually, we sold 44 weeks in the first year. All of it was done on the website which we designed and did ourselves. I don't know how to use code, and with to-days software packages no one needs to.

If you can cut and paste you can do it.
If you take a bit of time, the simpler software is very user friendly. Not the free stuff - that will not give you the features you need, so don't use that. But you don't need to grind you way through the industry standard for professionals, Dreamweaver.

I'd hate using that - it is like Photoshop, and I've never really got to grips with that either. I don't know code, never learnt it and don't need. it

There are good software packages about but I use Serif Webplus9 for all my websites, and the software is brilliant. Very very easy to use. You can do all you wish with it. Have a look at our site; this software did it from scratch. www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk.

They’ve upgraded WebPlus to 10 now, and it can be bought from their site. Very good technical support, they don’t mind how long they spend with you, and answer quickly. The best online tech support I’ve come across. Webplus10 has features I don’t need that’s all. (I've got no connection at all with them, in case you are wondering.) http://www.serif.com/webplus/webplus10/index.asp

If you want to get a series of short articles on how to prepare your vacation rental website then here is a blog I do for Scottish vacation rental owners. http://holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com

Good luck with your new site, and get those off season breaks booked through the web.

Sometimes it can be useful to set up a specialised blog site to link to your new site. This can contain your guest comments. We always ask them to e-mail us with what they did, and ask their permission to publish. They always give it. http://holidaysscotland.blogspot.com