Visits
In February 2009 we had 92,000 visitors (10% increase from last year); on average, a visitor to Holiday Velvet sees 6.75 pages and spends 4.45 minutes on the site.

Enquiries
We generated 37,400 enquiries in the past 6 months (Sept 08 to March 09)

Traffic Sources
74% of our traffic comes from search engines (google being the top one by far); 16% is direct traffic, i.e. people who know our web address and type in directly; the remaining 10% comes from referring websites, i.e. people clicking on a link to us from another website. Our top 2 referrers (out of 1455 last month) are Facebook and Twitter in this order.

Keywords
We were found for 39,000 set of keywords In February 2009.

Content
There are 62,000 pages on our website.

Newsletter
We send out a monthly newsletter to our users filled with special deals given to us by our owners. Last month (feb 09) 11,484 valid emails were sent. 11% of those clicked on a link in the newsletter. There were 2 people who unsubscribed.

Anymore stats you’d like from us? If we have them we will give them out, just ask us below.

PS: a big thanks to Paul, our head of SEO, who helped make all of this happen.

TIP 1: Collect rainwater
To water your potted plants with (plus green plants inside your rental will act as natural air filters).

TIP 2: Provide guests with a shopping trolley
So they won’t bring tons of plastic bags back.

TIP 3: If you have the space buy 5 bins (if you don’t invest in an ecopod)
1 bin for plastic, 1 for cans, 1 for paper, 1 for bottles and 1 for rubbish. Label them clearly (with large icons for example) so your guests have no excuses to make mistakes. Leave instructions on where to leave the bags once they are full.

TIP 4: Leave chlorine-free toilet paper & biodegradable rubbish bags
And if your local supermarket doesn’t have these demand that they do!

TIP 5: Provide green info
Compile a list of shops that sell local produce; give a metro-map and bus timetables to your guests

In this property we:
* Reduce, Re-use, Recycle – the three Rs for green living
* keep potted plants to naturally filter the air
* collect rainwater to water the plants with
* use energy efficient light-bulbs
* clean with biodegradable cleaning products
* provide chlorine-free toilet paper & biodegradable rubbish bags on your arrival
*…

What our guests can do to help keeping this rental eco-friendly:
* divide waste in the 5 appropriate bins
* use the provided shopping trolley so you don’t bring plastic bags back
* only use the dishwasher (on economy program) and the washing machine (at 40 degrees) on full load
* refer to our list of shops to buy wonderful local produce 
* please use public transport, we provide maps and timetables
*…

Do you have more ideas? Please post them below.

As I understand there are 3 major concerns about the way Holiday Velvet carries its business:

1) the renewal price is too high (I have good news, read on!)

2) some destinations are not listed (you’ll find our reasons are valid)

3) we only update our destinations once a year (good news again!)

THE RENEWAL PRICE IS GOING DOWN
The renewal cost is going down to 100 Euros for 1 property, 120 Euros for 2 properties and 150 Euros for 10. The downside is that new members will now have to pay to join, no more free memberships.

This is valid as of Monday the 2nd of March 2009.

HOW DO WE PICK OUR FEATURED DESTINATIONS
I read in the Lay my Hat post that some people are really quite disappointed not to be able to register because their area isn’t featured. They are also confused as to why we add certain areas over others. The short answer is this:

we rather have certain owners disappointed not to be able to join than having owners disappointed because they don’t get any enquiries from us.

We plan our marketing carefully and build a plan on how many visitors we can bring to an area over a period of time. It’s not cost effective at this stage for our business to market those areas where we have few properties.

We are most successful with google, we rank page 1 for A LOT of keywords – our aim is to get found for all the destinations we represent but it requires a lot of work AND a lot of owners subscribing. You see we will never rank for a destination where only 1 owner has subscribed. The more pages we have that are related to the keyword we are targeting the more likely we are to rank.

Our current 180 destinations receive a lot visits and over 60% of our owners renew with us (we hope this will go up to 100% when the cost goes down!) – we really want to make it work for your destination but we won’t try unless we have a good chance to.

FREQUENT UPDATE OF OUR DESTINATIONS LIST
We have practically finished the tools that allow us to update our list of destinations more frequently – so do email us with your property details or leave a comment below. We will then see whether:

- we can find other owners in your destination
- judge how much work would be involved in ranking higher than the competition

So I guess my answer is: yes, we do want your business and when we get it, we won’t be wasting your time

All the best and thanks for discussing us.

Scammers use free rental portals to advertise “too-good-to-be-true” property deals. Since this New York story we are checking the credentials of every registration we get: unless we are satisfied with the outcome the property doesn’t get published on our website. We are now confident to have eradicated fraud on Holiday Velvet. This doesn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t trust owners that advertise on free websites – 99.9% of our owners have always been professionals. They take up free offers on portals like ours to test whether the website can help with their marketing.

This article gives true examples of the technics these unscrupulous people employ to scam holiday makers and we hope that by reading it you will never fall into their trap.

THE 4 GOLDEN RULES

To check the legitimacy of a holiday rental owner before making a payment we advise you to do ALL of the following:

RULE 1. SPEAK TO THE OWNER ON THE TELEPHONE
* Ask to speak with the person who sent you an email – most scammers used different names on different websites. When you call ask for the person who sent you the email and if you notice an hesitation on the receiver’s part this may be an indication that they are not who they say they are

* Ask in-depth questions about the property (“how far is it from…?”, “what kind of equipment does the kitchen have?”, etc..) – we had a scammer on the phone who hung up after the third question, realising that he was going to get found out.

* Does the person speak good English? – if you have enquired for a top luxurious property in the middle of Manhattan for example, the owner must be someone who speaks good English.

* If you keep on getting an answering machine: ask for the owner to call you back and say you won’t book until you speak to him. Then do the tests above.

RULE 2. ASK FOR REFERENCES FROM PREVIOUS CLIENTS
* If the owner gives you email addresses to contact ask these past clients whether you can speak to them on the phone – scammers have multiple email addresses that they sell to you as references and answer themselves.

RULE 3. TAKE OUT TRAVEL INSURANCE
* Should you get scammed – and we truly hope you won’t – take an extra precaution and find out whether your travel insurance will cover your holiday rental cost.

RULE 4. NEVER ACCEPT TO PAY BY MONEY WIRING TRANSFER
* Western Union payments are untraceable and the preferred method of payment of scammers. A serious owner should have multiple payment options. Your preferred payment option should always be credit card – whether you pay through Paypal or else. With credit card you can easily do reverse charges and are covered by insurance.

* Trouble is most rental owners don’t have credit card facilities (although it is so easy to set up a Paypal account, we don’t know why they don’t) so they will ask you for bank transfers

* Bank transfers: make sure the name of the account is correct by calling the bank prior to paying. Explain to the bank that you don’t know this person personally and they you are worried about making a payment – if they could please confirm that the name you have matches the account number you have. If they say “no it doesn’t match” don’t make the payment.

A HELPFUL TEST

Scammers don’t write original copy, they take it from other adverts. They also steal images from other adverts and put it all together to create that “perfect place” at an unbelievable price and always available. Test whether the advert is original:

- copy a short chunk of the advert text
- paste it in your Google browser adding double quotes on each end, for example “a unique product with 5 bedrooms with king size beds”
- click on the results… (if no result comes up try another sentence). Do the rental adverts you see have different pictures? Is the contact the same?

EXAMPLE EMAILS BY SCAMMERS

Most of the time scammers use a template email that they send to everyone – they don’t even take the time to change it according to your requirements. When they do write something themselves the English is poor.

Example 1
“Thanks very much for contacting me, the apartment is situated in Knightsbridge,  on 27 Montpelier Street, LONDON, SW7, GB and is available for your desired dates 19/07/2008 to 22/07/2008. The rent for your  stay is £360 (@ £120 per night)  but to secure the place 50% of the rent will be required plus a refundable security deposit of £300, so all you need pay to secure the place is £480 . I’d also like to know where exactly you’ll be coming from? and for how long will you need the place, I have also attached more pictures of the place with this message ,hope you like them. [...] Let me know about your interest so i can send you a booking/ payment form so you can fill and send it back to me to secure the place.. Thanks and i hope to hear back from you soon, Jeff Krause” (email used: dougholms@googlemail.com , property name used: Central London apt)

» Why does “Jeff” quote a price for the stay and then further on asks “how long will you need the place”? Just doesn’t make any sense. “Let me know about your interest” is something the scammer obviously wrote himself.

Example 2
Also in this example the “owner of a luxury apartment in Chicago” tries to write the email himself – the result is laughable:

“Thanks very much for contacting me, the apartment is situated in Chicago south Loop, 605 S Wabash Ave. Chicago, IL,  60605 and its very much available for your desired dates 29/11/2008 to 03/12/2008, 4-nights and the rent for your stay is $800 (@ $200 per night), You`ll need to Book down the Apartment for your dates, Remember its Important before someone else do…. To secure the Apartment 50% of the rent will be required ($400) plus a refundable security deposit of $600, so all you need pay to book down the Apartment for your Lovely dates is $1000..”

Example 3
In this next template the scammer’s leaves in “yes pets are allowed” but at no time did the person who enquired ask about pets.

“Hi, The apt is a 4 bedroom apt with 4 bathrooms too, fully furnitured and well serviced. daily rate is $140 or you interested in monthly rates. Parking is available I have attached pictures, please note that reservation is on a first come first serve basis. The apt is located on 120 East Houston Street, zip code is 10002, New York. Yes pets are allowed. The dates you required are presently free. Cheers, Anna Polly (email used: anna.polly007@gmail.com)”

Example 4
If you don’t send a response back to the scammer you might get something like this:

“Hello, we have not heard you,if you still interested do let us known as we holding for you… Thanks, Alex Kingsman (alexkingsman4@aol.com)”

YOU GOT SCAMMED – WHAT TO DO NOW

Call your local police - no point calling the police of New York if your rental is in New York, they can’t help. If you were given bank account details by the scammer ask your local police to please get in touch with the bank so procedures can be put in place to shut the account.

Make your travel insurance work - the police report will probably help you get your money back

If you made a bank transfer - call your bank and try and reverse the payment immediately. If the money hasn’t left you may be able to stop it.

Report the scammer to us - please list the scammer’s name, email and phone in the comment box below.

Names and Emails of Known Scammers
Roy: royapartments@googlemail.com
Sean White: seanrentals@gmail.com
Alex Kingsman or Alex King: alexkingsman4@aol.com
Gary Gilford or Timothy: garygilford@gmail.com
Mandy Groove: mgroove40@googlemail.com
Rick F. Peterson: email unknown
Anna Polly: anna.polly007@gmail.com
Jeff Krause: dougholms@googlemail.com
Harper Smith: zhigge_2000@yahoo.com
Rick Freeman: nyawayfromhome@aol.com
Christain Bulley: christain.bulley@yahoo.co.uk
Gabby Tarreh (Hallmack Comfort Rentals): gabby_tarreh@yahoo.com
Natasha Morgan: natashamorg12@gmail.com
Lori J Bateman: home2rent11@aol.com
Barnett Robin: brob.rental@gmail.com
Gail Farrel: gail.farrel@gmail.com
Elvis Paton: elvispaton.rentals@live.com

Telephone Numbers of Known Scammers:
+1 416-666-1746
+1 6468739656
+447045710866
+447024027475
+(44) 20 8144 4619
+447024024641
+1 668739656
00420774090738
+1 206-309-0047
6468639624
206-666-2325
585-615-3873
206-339-8121

Another website listing fraudulent listings and scammers emails:
http://blog.rentalseal.com/

(photo credit: banky177)

Is bad publicity good publicity? A while back, when Holiday Velvet wasn’t yet 2 years old, a forum conversation started about us on “Lay my Hat“. This forum allows vacation rental owners to discuss tips and news about the industry. I highly recommended it: as you will read below, the partakers are extremely witty. 

The post about us didn’t start off very well and ended even worse. Firstly we were labelled “total incompetents”, “spammers”, “excruciating use of English”… I read this and I thought “well this might be tough to hear but I can fix all those issues“. At least two owners said that they were happy to give us a try because they had found us high up in Google. 

Trouble is the conversation then turned into a joke about our brand name. I can laugh about these comments now but I must admit that at the time I felt like crying:

“the rental listing name sounds either rude or like toilet roll to me”

 ”It sounds like a tame soft porno term to me”

So overnight our brand was associated with toilet paper? As you can imagine it was a bit of blow. When you work so hard on growing a business and you get the likes of “sue dyer” “giddy goat” and  “loopy lou” destroying it, you may for a second – and I did – feel like giving it all up. Of course, we didn’t give it up **sigh of relief**.

Today I’m happy to report that 30% of the people who commented on this thread are now – or were at one point – advertisers on Holiday Velvet. I cannot tell you how many referrals we got from this post (there is no hyperlinked URL to us) but even if only 1% of the people who viewed the thread decided to give us a try then we should have gotten 33 registrations from it – to this date.

So is bad publicity good publicity? Well in my experience if it is a benign as this then absolutely! Anyone else wants to comment on our brand name? Bring it on!

So nothing on travel? How disappointing! The article divides the top 100 into world affairs, celebrities, style and words sections to name but a few. Next week we’ll see the contributors pick on film, art, theater, pop and more. I mean I highly recommend the article: Did you know that Paris Hilton runs a blog on myspace? Or that seeing a Dutchman running away from his camera is most entertaining?

Seriously now, I can recommend the snippet “How to search the Internet for blogs“. If like me you are tired of technorati (whose list of authoritative travel blogs is completely flawed) and are looking for good alternatives, the article recommends Blogpulse and the new Google blog search.

In case the Times journalists are reading this article I thought I’ll let them in on some top travel blogs out there.

• Traveling Mamas
• Holiday Pad
• Grid Skipper
• World Hum
• Hotel Chatter
• Vagabondig
• Telegraph’s Travel Blog
• Intelligent Travel
• Travel Raider
• Everything Everywhere
• Unearthing Asia

If you know of a popular travel blog tell us about it using the comment box below.