We are now well into the final month of the year, but before the full-on frivolities of the festive season take over, now seems the perfect time to catch your breath and reflect on how your business has fared during 2014. So, how was it for you? And, how do you stack up against other owners and property managers who use SuperControl?
We thought it might be useful to delve into our stats bank and pull out a few key figures to allow you to compare and contrast – and, perhaps, influence your future marketing plans!
Total bookings
At the time of going to press, bookings totalling £315.7m had been managed by SuperControl in 2014. This is a huge increase on last year’s total bookings of £237.7m.
Hot spots
The majority of the properties we manage bookings for are in the UK and Ireland (78.9%). However, an overwhelming 96.1% of holidays booked through SuperControl in 2014 thus far were for properties in the UK and Ireland. France and Portugal were the second and third favourite destinations, respectively. These figures are on trend with the bookings taken last year, with properties in the UK, France and Portugal taking the top-3 spots in 2013. However, properties in the UK and Ireland have seen a slight rise in popularity as only 94.7% of bookings in 2013 were for holidays there. Meanwhile, bookings for French properties were down by 0.4%, while Portuguese properties saw bookings dip by 0.3%.
Customers
If we focus on the bookings for the UK and Ireland in 2014, a huge majority (92.3%) of them were staycations. Of the remaining bookings, the highest proportion of bookers were from Germany (1.3%), closely followed by the US (1.2%) and Australia (0.9%).
For those of you who wish to target more visitors from overseas, SuperControl’s developers are currently busy updating our systems so that customers will soon be able to automatically translate their SuperControl pages into different languages. This service will be up and running in the new year. Watch this space for more updates.
Party size
Looking in more detail at party size, couples made the most bookings this year (34%). And, 29.8% of bookings were for family groups that included at least one child or infant.
Length of stay
Of the bookings by family groups, just over half (50.6%) were for a week. The next most popular lengths of stay by this group were three nights and four nights (18.4% and 11.7% of bookings, respectively). Meanwhile, 58.2% of couples booked for short breaks of less than a week; 34.3% booked for a week; and just 7.5% booked for more than 7 nights.
As the chart on the left shows, more than half of all bookings placed through SuperControl this year were for less than 7 nights. A total of 37% of bookings were for a week, and just 8% were for bookings of more than a week.
Repeat bookers
Interestingly, 25% of all the bookings taken through SuperControl this year were repeat bookings. This is a significant portion of total bookings and clearly demonstrates the importance of maintaining good relationships with guests before, during and after their holiday. SuperControl has a host of tools (automated emails, voucher codes etc) that can help you tailor your marketing directly to previous guests to encourage them to book again.
Highs and lows
The figures quoted throughout this blog for 2014 are for bookings placed up to the end of November. The bookings managed by SuperControl in December so far account for just 1.6% of this year’s total booking numbers. Traditionally, December is a slow month for bookings (4.6% of the bookings in 2013 and 4.1% of the bookings in 2012), so this low figure isn’t exactly surprising. And, don’t let it get you down! January is typically the busiest month for bookings by far. So, brace yourselves – and make sure you’re prepared.
As Premier Cottages chairman Alistair Handyside said:
“Everything has to be spot on for the first of January. If you’re not prepared for this busy time in January, it’s difficult to catch up. Your work to fill availability becomes much harder.”
Good luck!
