Holiday Flat Website

When business was slow as we were taking off, we did concentrate on trying to get holiday accommodation websites up and running. We saw it as an area of the market that wasn't saturated, but where the websites were needed as people were likely to be booking on the internet.

As it happened, this customer was a result of general advertising, but with a bit of enthusiasm he soon became a customer.

He was advertising his apartment in Portsmouth, overlooking a harbour. The picture in the background of the site was actually taken in Liverpool's Albert Docks and it is from when the Grand Turk visited quite a few years ago (the ship used to film the early episodes of Hornblower). The Grand Turk is now in Whitby, but that is an aside from this site!

The site looked good, showed plenty of pictures and held a really nautical theme, but even with Google Adsense he wasn't able to generate the consistently booked apartment he had hoped for. He had set the apartment up as a really trendy, modern apartment with internet access and other benefits, but the income, of course, had to reflect this. To compete with neighbouring apartments he had to keep the rentals low but be booked all year round - a difficult job for any rental. I think in the end he decided to cut his loses and sold the apartment.