Expanding our website and becoming a Guest Favourite on AirBnB

This week we’ve focused on developing our website further. Although we use cottages.com to rent out the Farmhouse (and by default they put our property on AirBnB and Booking.com as well as their other branded websites such as Hoseasons), we’ve found that having our own website enables us to provide information to our guests before they arrive. We’ve also found that some of our guests use our website to enhance their stay when they’re staying.

So this week we’ve added a few extra pages. Firstly we added a new section to our website with all the comments our guests have left in the guest book. Our guests have left us really lovely comments but as the guest book doesn’t go outside the Farmhouse then we wanted to find a different way to share these with future customers.

We’ve also added a new page for “Walks Further Afield” into our “Nearby Places To Visit” section. There are so many different things our guests can do when they stay at Ley Farm Cottages and we wanted to make their time easier by sharing ideas and inspiration rather than them having to search themselves. We already have a number of walks that start from Ley Farm but they all involve walking on lanes which – while quiet – doesn’t suit everyone. So we’ve found other local walks that offer off-road walking and added these to our website.

And finally we’ve added a page covering the games room in the New Barn, so guests can find more details of the facilities available to them. We’ve received positive feedback from our guests who have used it so far, and want to make sure people make the most of it.

This week we received our fifth review on AirBnB. They’re all 5* reviews and so we’ve been awarded a ‘Guest Favourite’ status for the Farmhouse. This is awarded to properties that have outstanding guest ratings and are considered to provide excellent hospitality and meets certain service-related benchmarks – compared to the ‘Superhost’ status which is given to the host for their overall performance (and which we’re not eligible for as we host through Cottages.com). Having the Guest Favourite badge on our listing on AirBnB is supposed to help our property stand out amongst other available properties. It’s a huge achievement for us and so we’re very excited about it!

We narrowly missed out on being included in Cottages.com’s annual Customers’ Choice award as you need to have five reviews with an average rating of 4.75 or above. Unfortunately we only have four reviews so far – even though they’re all 5 stars. Hopefully we’ll get some more reviews from guests who book through Cottages.com this year so we can be considered next year.