Worked example
Worked example: four cottages on three listing sites, and the own site that earns the repeat bookings
A worked example, labelled as one: no holiday-let client is published here yet. The business is a composite of the cottage sites we audited for the holiday lets page on this site; the plan is what we would do; the results are expectations, marked as such.
The starting point: four cottages in one valley, listed on three sites that each take a share of every booking, a website with the same cottage descriptions copied from the listings and a calendar that is never current, and guests who come back year after year through the listing site because the owner never gave them another way.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 6 October 2026
4
cottages, four separate searches
3
listing sites taking a share
0
pages on the own site that differ from the listings
1
route for repeat guests to book direct
The pages per cottage, and why the listing text cannot be reused
The same description on four sites is a copy on three of them
One page per cottage, written again
The listing sites hold the copied description with more authority than the owner\u2019s site ever will. Each cottage page is rewritten for the one question the listing cannot answer: what the week is actually like there, from the owner who knows.
The calendar, live
A calendar that is current, synced with the listings, with the direct rate. A guest who finds a stale calendar books through the listing and never comes back to the site.
The valley page
Where the cottages are, what there is to do in each month, the pub, the walks, the drive from the station. The search is the place, and the listing sites write about the place badly.
The repeat-guest route
A card in each cottage with the site and a direct-booking code, and an email after the stay. The repeat guest is the one booking the listing site charges for twice.
The dogs, the cot, the hot tub
Each amenity on the page in its own line, because \u201cdog friendly cottage [valley]\u201d is the search and the listing sites bury it in a filter.
The listings kept
For the first-time guest, the listings earn their share. The site exists for the second visit and the direct search, which is where the margin is.
What we would expect, labelled as expectation
The repeat guests first, the place searches over a season
The repeat-guest route works from the first email, because those guests already want to come back and only need the way. The valley page and the amenity lines show in Search Console over a season for the place and amenity searches, which the listing sites answer poorly. The measure is bookings by source, direct against listing, and the share of repeat guests booking direct, which the owner can count from the first season.
Your property, the same way
The free audit runs these measurements before we quote
Search Console, the coverage sweep, the booking-link check and a page-by-page crawl are free to repeat on any hotel's site. We run them before quoting, and you get the numbers whether or not you hire us.
How to read this page
- The property is a composite; no hotel, B&B, inn or holiday let is named, described or implied.
- The plan is the one we would run, in the order we would run it. Figures about the property are illustrative.
- Every reference figure is from a real account elsewhere and is marked where it appears; results are expectations, labelled as such.
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