Web Based Internet Villa Rental Business For Sale

Business description

Internet villa rental business with a unique and proven approach selling direct to end users on behalf of the villa owners.

A great opportunity for an independent entrepreneur, or entirely suitable as an extension of a traditional holiday company

The Villaowners concept is unique, proven and successful, making profit in a crowded marketplace. The business sells quality villa holidays direct to the customer with no involvement or liability to the site operator. It provides savings to the holidaymakers, cost effective promotion to the property owners, and receives a hassle-free up-front income for itself.

The business has been trialled, developed and fine tuned over the years, and is now primed for major expansion.

The scheme works on a club style basis, where the villa owners belong to a small regional grouping and hence are individually a significant part of the local whole. By limiting membership to just a dozen or so per group it creates an exclusivity for the owners (with a waiting list!), an optimum number of choices for visitors to view (so all villas get looked at, not just flicked through), and also creates the situation where each property is considered an alterative to the others in its locality, hence maximising cross promotion.

All the villas conform to a common high standard (private pools, family friendly, 6+ beds, charging £1,000 to £2,000 per week) making the site a highly focussed source in this most desirable category. This means it avoids the cheap image and clutter of the majority of holiday rental sites that offer a confusing pile of mixed price and various types of accommodation all heaped together.

The speciality stance means owners are willing to pay more to participate - presently £450 per entry, which is roughly double the rate of competitors.

Historically the accumulated subscriptions were spent on advertising the site … predominantly in the Sunday Times and Google … once the scheme is expanded the income potential becomes enormous. There are also the as yet untapped additional income sources of on-site advertising, sponsored links and affiliate programs etc.

Key Strengths:

Established scheme, highly regarded with a quality image.
Very low overheads and minimal maintenance.
Key Opportunities:

In 2008 the business operated successfully on one single club in France, so the next phase is simply to add on further clubs for other small regional areas, and if the purchaser is an existing holiday company to add in their own stock.

The type of villa handled is both the most plentiful and also the most sought after. The potential is to offer marketing space to villa owners in Spain and Portugal, so there is virtually unlimited scope for expansion.

All the current trends in the marketplace favour this style of business:

• Obvious benefits are the mass migration towards DIY internet holiday bookings in conjunction with cheap flights

• There is an increasing oversupply of villas throughout most of the key European holiday destinations as ever more UK buyers think that they are a good investment, only to discover the inevitable difficulty of finding enough rental income to cover the costs. These owners are generally very willing to consider joining a club, especially when it provides all year round promotion for less than the return of a single booking.

• The corresponding reduction in profits for High Street travel companies selling European holidays is causing them to move towards long haul, cruise and activity destinations, hence dumping contracted private villas from their programs, and further increasing the pressure of oversupply. These previously protected owners are even more desperate than the new entrants!

• The increasing tendency for holidaymakers to sue travel firms for any shortcomings in the provision or services received is making it ever more attractive to opt out of being the responsible provider. The Villaowners format is to act merely as the advertiser on behalf of the owner – with the customer having no contractual arrangements with the operator at all.

Financial profile:
The business is being offered for sale on a going concern basis, all financial discussions will take place directly between the vendor and all interested parties under the auspices of Turner Butler.

Property information

Location:

This is an entirely web based business, so can be run from anywhere. With such low operational demands it would also be very suitable for the buyer to run as a home-office enterprise.

Other information

Reasons for selling:

This has been a part-time development for the owner who has realised there are not enough hours in the day to contact potential villa owners due to promotion to an executive position elsewhere