Leaving an agency and managing your own business: Part 1 – Your options

If you’ve handed your holiday accommodation over to an agency to market it for you, how’s that going? We have seen more and more owners joining online conversations saying that they’ve had enough. It’s typically down to two reasons:

1. The agency isn’t getting them enough bookings, so they aren’t making the money. Or
2. They aren’t satisfied with the agency’s service or support.

If your holiday letting agency isn’t delivering, and you’re stuck in a contract with them – this is can be crushing. You can end up so frustrated, believing that you can’t do a thing about it.

But there are two options to make things better:

Option 1: You try to find a better agency and hope for a better experience with more bookings. Or

Option 2: You market and manage your holiday accommodation yourself.

Let’s consider the revenues, costs and efforts for each option.

Option 1 – With an agency

If we look at an aim of achieving 37 weeks of bookings per year (approx. 70% occupancy), here’s an estimate of the potential figures achieved via an agency:

We don’t need to tell you what it’s like with an agency because you’re reading this. But they should be:

• marketing your accommodation and ensuring standards are achieved
• managing enquiries and taking bookings
• dealing with any guest communications, cancellations and refunds.

Option 2 – Marketing and managing your holiday accommodation yourself

To market and manage your holiday accommodation yourself, there are just four things we think you need.

1. Photographs

These are very important. It’s what makes your property stand out in a search, drawing people in to find out more details. You can take them yourself, or get a professional to help. The images a skilled professional will deliver should help you attract more quality bookings, at the right price – and they should last for years.

Nb. If you leave a holiday letting agency, you cannot use the images of your property if the agency commissioned them. They will hold you to copyright – even if they weren’t taken by a professional photographer.

2. Website

You will need a credible website that potential guests will trust. This provides a safe and secure platform where you can provide the answers to all the questions people might have, giving them the confidence to click ‘Book now’. You can build yourself an inexpensive website; use a free template or find a professional to help get it just right for you. Again, you get what you pay for.

Add a link to your website from your social media pages as well as your listings on membership sites like Premier Cottages, Farm Stay, ToWander and CoolStays so that guests can book direct.

3. Property Management Software (PMS)

PMS in simple terms is a very clever booking calendar that actually covers pretty much all of the tasks you need to automate the smooth running of your business.

It will provide you with an availability calendar and booking pages to add to your website and integrates with different payment providers. Making it easy for people to book and pay safely online.

You set your own prices, start dates, durations, Ts & Cs, cancellation and refund policies and house rules. So you’re in control.

Processes are automated. So you can set emails to automatically send when the final payment is due, or with arrival instructions a few days before the start date etc.

If you have cleaners, they can also have a login so they can schedule changeovers (they can get alerts when a booking comes in too).

Most PMSs have an in-built channel mananger so (if you want to) you can put your property on the big booking sites like Airbnb or Booking.com yourself without running the risk of getting double bookings. Availablity and (depending on the software you choose) prices and information updates automatically across the different channels.

This list on Capterra shows a list of PMS providers out there.

4. Memberships

These are great – they typically pull together likeminded people and promote your holiday accommodation for an annual membership fee only. No commission. Bookings usually go via your own website too.

They can also help you with lots of guidance, expert advice and even create friendly communities of owners sharing information. You can of course choose to participate as much or as little as you like.

Examples include Premier Cottages, Farm Stay, ToWander UK etc

5. Support

Did you know there are 76 separate pieces of legislation that apply to self-catering?  Going it alone can be scary, as you don’t have the safety net of the agency to help you navigate the changing market. This is especially true when there are major changes happening in the regulatory environment (like the new Fire Regulations that come into effect on 01 October 2023, or the current dizzying changes around registration and licensing (in England and Scotland respectively).  It’s well worth joining a Trade Association such as PASC UK (Professional Association of Self Caterers, for England and Wales) or ASSC (Association of Scotland’s Self Caterers), who lobby Government on behalf of the sector, and provide information and updates to help you keep on top of the changes.  You can also refer to the VisitBritain Pink Book, which contains sections on every area of legislation that affects the sector.  This is available online for free (scroll down past the “Buy the Pink Book” to get to the “Read the Pink Book Online” section).

The costs of doing it yourself

Based on one property (whether that sleeps two people or twelve), here’s an estimate of the entry costs when you manage and market your own holiday accommodation.

Cost comparison summary

It’s worth pointing out that all of the costs of running a holiday accommodation business aren’t discussed here: mortgages, change-overs, bills, maintenance etc. These costs will apply whether you use a holiday letting agency or run everything yourself.

Yes, the figures above are estimates. PMS providers prices vary (we’ve based these on Bookalet) as do the annual membership fees of different organisations (the above is based on ToWander UK). So you might want to do a bit more research to find the numbers true to you. But using our figures as an example, the savings you could make by marketing and managing your holiday accommodation yourself are substantial.

Even after taking into account that you may have to buy your way out of the contract with your current holiday letting agency, the numbers speak for themselves:

Once you have set yourself up to run your business yourself, achieving 70% occupany is possible when you put in some leg work. If you have a medium-size property, over the course of 5 years if you switch to managing your own business you could save a staggering £51,380. All by putting a few things in place so that guests are able to book direct.

Ready to find out more?

In the next chapter, we hear from owners who have done just that.

Read Part 2: An owner’s experience of managing and marketing their own business >>>