The main challenges facing a gîte
More and more gîtes are successfully going digital, even if they are coming to the issues of online sales and multi-channel distribution later than hotels and guest houses. When they belong to a network (such as Gîtes de France or Clévacances, in France, for example), the latter have mainly delegated their marketing to their network for a number of years; for the rest, they manage their bookings directly with the customer, by telephone. Their approach to digital often starts from scratch: no website, no booking engine, no multi-channel system... In this case, support is essential.
While the age pyramid of gîte owners tends towards an older average, we need to distinguish between those who operate as guest houses (see the dedicated case study) and those who purely rent out their gîtes, i.e. rent out the entire property (or, more rarely, one of the properties in the same hamlet belonging to the same owner).
In these cases, we recommend that you essentially follow our recommendations for guest houses, but that you take into account the comments below.
Elements of language
Digitalising your offer is a major challenge, because consumer habits have changed at breakneck speed: customers are calling less and less, and they want to know immediately if the gîte is available and at what price... In this environment, it's often difficult to make the right technological choices to react and adapt. That's where we can help...
In addition, like hoteliers, you have to face up to the emergence of new competitors on collaborative platforms such as AirBnB: it is therefore important to show by all means why it is preferable to book in a gîte (with a recognised quality label) rather than in an anonymous flat,
finally, it's important to exist on your own and to set up your own website: we can help you in this area too, to make the right choices, to test inexpensive solutions, to help you gradually gain independence in these areas...
Main issues
selling in parallel with your network: current connectivity does not allow a gîte to equip itself with elloha and use it as its main planning tool, i.e. to enter its basic prices and availabilities and send them up to its central booking office. This implies - if it accepts this constraint - that the gîte will continue to entrust its planning to its booking centre, but that it will agree with the centre on a method to enable it to sell itself directly and in parallel:
the head office has the gîte's inventory,
the gîte publishes the same inventory on its elloha account, website, OTAs and marketplace,
when either party sells a given period, it immediately informs the other party so that it can withdraw that period from the sale
this process can be semi-automated using elloha's iCal function
Advantages offered by elloha
on the "basic" package offered by the network
on the "optional" packages