You probably know that ACT Studios started out delivering top quality professional photography of holiday accommodation in the UK. Since 2015 we’ve been working closely with owners of self-catering properties. Including rural holiday cottages, yurts and cabins, seaside apartments, hotels, B&Bs, boats, townhouses and more. Since then, our little company has evolved. Now we can design and build you a beautiful website and offer other marketing solutions too. We’re still a small team who love what we do and have a really good understanding of the UK hospitality industry. Interested what it’s like when you choose ACT Studios to help with your holiday rental marketing? Here’s what Rich and Lo from Malvern Hills Lodge had to say.
Background
So, to put my review into context – we have a little holiday cabin, called Malvern Hills Lodge, that I built on our farm. It historically has been let out by the use of a smaller, but well known booking agent (250 property kinda size). We average 94% occupancy rate throughout the year – so all good! Needless to say, we’ve not been in a rush to have a website built! Didn’t seem any point! Until now.
Just recently our little booking agent was bought up by one of the mega behemoths of the booking agency world. So we are now lumped in with 21,000 other properties! I’m no genius – by any stretch. But we could well foresee that our bookings would quietly bomb on this new platform. Purely down to the fact we are nowhere near as visible as we used to be!
The project
After a phone call to Squirrels Nest Treehouses (who moved away from their agent), I found myself merrily chatting away to Jo from ACT Studios. I think she got the measure of us pretty quickly and It was blatantly obvious she knew way more about websites than I was ever going to … in my life.
On top of that – we needed an operational, bookable and very much live website within 3 weeks. To coincide with an advert we were releasing, in a glossy mag.
Jo felt this was very achievable – so we signed up with ACT.
I’m not gonna lie. Getting all the copy written, pictures sorted, booking system and design choices made was hard work. I used parts of my brain that have not seen much action in a very, very long while! However, Jo was always on hand to guide us. Either by phone calls or just WhatsApp messages.
The results
I’ve no doubt I tested her patience to the core, trying to understand this alien subject. And I’m sure she rolled her eyes more than once at my agricultural humour. But in the end, Jo and the team from ACT Studios have delivered us a great little website. It portrays our property in the light we wish it to be seen in and more importantly allows us to operate independently of a booking agent!
We’re really pleased with it and I hope the guys from ACT Studios are proud of it too. A special mention has to be given to Melissa – I never spoke with her, but she had a large part in piecing it all together and helping refine the website into what we have today.
And yes – the website was completed, with its bespoke branding and fully bookable calendar, in the 3 week timeframe!
Thanks again, all the best, Rich & Lo.
We are definitely proud of your little website too! It’s a great example of what can be achieved in a relatively short timeframe, when you put your mind to it. When we first spoke with Rich and Lo, they already had professional photography and were willing to write their own copy. They were looking for someone to put it all together professionally, in a beautiful website that provided the best user experience. We chatted about the different property management software solutions out there. It’s so important that potential guests can easily check availability and then safely book and pay online (Rich and Lo chose Bookalet). They also had a fantastic social media following, only now instead of linking to a listing site for more information, they have their own website to direct people to.
You can read more reviews over on TrustPilot.