‘This is wild!’ I heard one exhibitor say around noon on Sunday, and I was in full agreement.

I’ve been going to the Spring Cottage Life Show in Toronto for over 8 years, initially as a visitor, and for the past few years as an exhibitor. This Show gets better every year, and when the organisers release the visitor figures, I wouldn’t be surprised to find this past weekend saw record attendees.

The Cottage Life Show has become so much more than an exhibition – it’s a real event that keeps visitors occupied for hours. This year, I loved the Dock Dogs – sponsored by Bark & Fitz – a competition to find the dog who could leap the furthest off the dock into the water. It was great fun and sure attracted the crowds.

Sadly, I couldn’t take part in the Dock Party since our booth was so busy, but it seemed to be a popular meeting venue. There were plenty of people taking some time out to fantasise about the possibility that summer is really on the way.

I was delighted to see so many people I knew, many of whom came along to my presentations in the Cottage Seminar area, I’d like to thank those of you who attended. And, of course, our booth was packed most of the weekend with owners who already rent out or are thinking about it, and plenty of people looking for a rental property.

One of the great benefits of being an exhibitor is that we get to meet so many other cottage product and service suppliers over the weekend. Over the rest of this week I’m going to feature a few of them – those that stood out and made me go back more than once to their booth. These are:

• a great way of tackling the mice at the cottage
• sandblasted cottage signs
• a hand carved signpost to hang your sign from
• ways of financing your cottage purchase and managing your money
• Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre
• amazing hand crafted coffee and side tables
• Boater Exam – a reminder that you’ll need to do this before next year

Watch out for my daily reviews all week.

I’ve found a new blog and want to share this one with you. John Foxworthy, who writes brilliantly by the way, owns and manages over 30 homes and condos in Tuscon, Arizona (now we know where to go to escape our lovely Ontario winters). His web site Go Furnished is a new one and aims to compete with some of the big rental boys. Like any new site it needs properties so he’s looking for new listings. There’s nothing in Ontario at the moment – until I start uploading some of mine – and it’s a very professional looking site. This one may be well worth the time it takes to put on your listing. Since it’s free, I’d give it a try. I’ll feedback on how it works for me.

I read a few of the posts on the blog and John’s viewpoint is very similar to mine. Read the one called Green Shag Carpet – Renter Must Rake Daily. I loved it!

Photo by Bradleyolin

I like cottage names. A good name is evocative, inspiring or downright cute, and looks so much better on a sign than a house number or the surname of the owners. Great names are inspired by an array of sources – trees, animals, locations and views, literature and legends – and can be generated quite easily. Here’s a few ideas:

Trees: Cedar Point, Whispering Pines, The Willows, Woodland Retreat, Tamarack Lodge, Cherry Hollow

Animals and Birds: Osprey Cottage, Squirrel’s Leap, Heron’s Nest, Beaver Creek Cottage, The Bear’s Lair, Loon’s Landing,  Moosewood

Locations & Views: Sunset Hideaway, Lakewood Vista, Beechwood Island, Discovery Villa, Blue Sky Cottage, Farview Cottage, Riverbank Retreat

The sandblasted Osprey Cottage sign was designed by Jude Lean at Riverbend Signs.

What’s your cottage name?

It’s that time of year for vacation home owners when the first flutterings of panic can set in. Maybe you’ve got a week or two booked; perhaps you’ve had lots of enquiries but few conversions so far; maybe you are already fully booked, in which case read no further!  If the first two describe your situation, here’s a few tips to boost your booking rate and get the ball rolling.

Use some free listing sites. Try craigslist, or kijiji. Cottages in Canada give you a three month free trial. I just found a new one called Tiny Surfer. This might be worth five minutes of your time to drop in a quick ad.

Update your photos. In a crowded market, enticing photos sell, so do a review of the images you are using. Are your kitchen images showing cluttered surfaces? Do the bedrooms look attractive? Do your photos show off the best aspects of your property?

Review your listings and update the features and facilities list. Vacationers criteria can change so show your most attractive features at the top of the listing. If you’ve installed hi-speed internet, make it prominent; if you have upgraded your entertainment system, describe it; if you accept pets, make sure that pet loving renters can see that you do.

Talk to your friends and find out if their places of work have intranets. These are great places to advertise or have a review of your property posted. Government organisations and large companies often have extremely active and informative communication networks, and once you get a positive review posted, you could find a significant increase in enquiries.

Contact your previous renters and offer them a reward if they refer a friend. A discount on their next booking usually works quite well. We offer our loyal guests a considerable reduction on an out of season weekend for referrals, and this has worked really well.

With a lot of properties seeking a limited amount of rental guests in the off season, owners need to be creative to capture the market. It’s not sufficient to put up a couple of listings and hope for the best. 

I’d love to hear your creative ideas to boost your cottage rental bookings. Just leave a comment and and share your thoughts.

The cottage show season is just about upon us again, and I’m busy planning my booth and the seminars I will be giving at The Cottage Life Show. It’s a fun time because they are all such great events so if you haven’t ventured to one of these, make a date this year to attend. Get a taste of summer at one of these:

Cottagefest – Markham – February 15 – 17 2008

Cottagefest is the first Show of the season and the Markham location makes it easily accessible from all Toronto areas as well as the Kawartha region. Although not as large as Cottage Life, there are a good mix of cottage related vendors and suppliers which makes it a worthwhile destination over the Family Day long weekend. 

I’ll be there and have quite a few complimentary tickets to give away. Add a comment on this post if you would like me to send you some.

The Cottage Life Show – International Centre, Toronto – March 28 – 30 2008

Undoubtedly the largest show of its kind in Canada, The Cottage Life Show holds a place in the heart of anyone with an interest in life in cottage country, owners or otherwise. There is something for everyone at this Show from wildlife lovers to foodies; boating enthusiasts to weekend do-it-yourselfers. I’ll be giving seminars at the show on Marketing your Cottage Profitably, and 10 Ways to Add Value to your Cottage Rental, so come along and say hello. I’d love to meet my blog readers.

Ottawa Cottage Show – Landsdowne Park, Ottawa – April 11 – 13 2008

For eastern Ontario cottage lovers, the Ottawa Cottage and Big Backyard Show provides a great showcase for suppliers of everything cottage-related. I like this show because spring is always in the air and there’s a real feel that summer is on the way!

I’ll be bringing more information on all these shows as it comes available and hope to meet you at one of them.

Listing your cottage rental on a couple of good sites should bring you a good amount of enquiries for the high season. However, to market effectively and achieve out of season occupancy, you’ll need to go beyond the basics. So, here’s a review of some of the books and blogs that helped me to boost my rental income last year.

When I started to review the books I’d read, and the blogs that I’ve subscribed to this past year, I wanted to evaluate what had the most impact and share that with you. In my review I’ve looked at how valuable the information has been to my primary goal, which is to improve the profile of cottage rentals, and to help owners increase their effectiveness in marketing their vacation homes.

Life Hacker – 88 tech tricks to turbocharge your day

This was one of my favourite books of 2007 and although there’s some techie stuff I didn’t quite understand, most of the tips and tricks were explained simply and clearly and were easy to use.

Just applying three of these ‘hacks’ have made a huge difference in the way I manage my workload. The most effective was found in Chapter 6 – Control your Email. Even with just one cottage to manage, the amount of enquiries and email messages can clog up your inbox and the tips here are so useful to organise them all. Since every enquiry is an opportunity to create a new rental client, having an effective way of filing them is invaluable. Chapter 9 – Mastering the Web – has many time saving ideas for making your web use simpler and faster, and helping you find competitors.

Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies

I’m a great fan of the ‘for Dummies’ series, and this one is a great read if you are new to blogging and want to use the medium to make an impact. If you’ve read some of my earlier posts on blogging you’ll know I believe that this is a great marketing tool for vacation home owners to promote their property as well as events and attractions in the area.

There are opportunities to make additional income in a variety of ways and Chapter 14 of the book – Making Money with a Blog – gives some ideas. The only drawback with the book is the 2005 publication date which means some of the content is already out of date. For example, in the section on setting up a blog, there is no mention of Wordpress, which is arguably the best free blog platform. This aside, there is still much to learn from the book.

Ebooks

I like to download ebooks. It’s that need for instant gratification I guess – I want it now! That said, there’s so much good stuff that is only available in this format anyway. Here’s my favourite downloads from 2007:

Zen to Done: I’m one of life’s procrastinators and have read many books on time management, or at least I’ve bought them only to put them in the ‘get around to reading it one day’ category. The difference with Zen to Done is that I read it from start to finish then went back to it and read it more slowly. In my view, it’s by far the best I’ve bought, with simple, useable ideas that can be applied straight away. It has been particularly helpful with how I organise the marketing ideas I have for the cottage and the blog. It’s very reasonably priced too!

Make your Words Sell: Ken Evoy writes some great books as well as being the brains behind Site Build It. Make your Words Sell uncovers the secrets to copywriting and getting people to buy from your site. For cottage owners this means using words to describe the property and location, that wows visitors to your web site and converts enquiries to bookings. When there are so many properties for rent, owners must find the edge to beat the competition and using persuasive language could be the key.

Killer Flagship Content: Chris Garrett’s free ebook is a great primer on creating good content for a blog or web site. If you plan on creating or revamping your web presence download this free pdf book.

Blogs

I read lots of blogs, and subscribe to feeds so that I can check daily to see what’s new. It’s simple to do. Signing up for a feed reader such as Blog Lines or Google Reader means that new posts to your favourite blog are sent to your reader and you can peruse them at your leisure. I use iGoogle to customise my home page so that the latest posts on my favourite blogs are listed when it opens up.

 Zen Habits:Author of Zen to Done, Leo Babauta, has a neat blog where he posts articles on time management, lifestyle issues. Often thought provoking and always of use in some way, this blog is one of my first visits in the morning.

Penny Caldwell’s blog touches on anything and everything cottage related. Penny is editor of Cottage Life magazine  and her posts are often personal commentaries on life at her own cottage, and make great reading.

Cottage Daily is written by Julie Nelson, a BC based author and she posts on every aspect of cottage living. Her own experiences of cottage life in BC, Ontario, and at her brother’s cottage in Saskatchewan bring a very personal touch to her cottage knowledge.

Chris Garrett on New Media brings me up to date with anything new in the internet marketing field. His posts often include useful links to other blogs or ebooks – I’ll be touching on this later this week.

Copy Blogger has some great tools for those of you looking for hints and tips on good writing for your vacation rental web
site or blog. I’ll be covering more of what Brian Clark has to offer in a post later this week.

In this week’s link list I’m thinking about Christmas gifts, with Julie Nelson’s cottage toys suggestions, cottage signs, wood carvings, children’s books and a neat way of saying goodbye to the cottage mouse.

Take a look at The Carving Gallery. A contributer to the Cottage Life Forum mentioned it this morning. I’d never heard of it but it looks great, so it may be worth stopping by next time you’re traveling up Hwy 35 near Minden.

If you frequent the Cottage Shows in Ottawa and Toronto, you may well have seen Jude Lean’s booth showcasing her work at Riverbend Signs. These sandblasted cottage signs are just lovely and quite reasonably priced given she will design a sign to your specifications. She is making one for me at the moment for Osprey Cottage, and I can’t wait for it to arrive. I’ll post the photo when it’s in place.

Oust a Mouse is one of the busiest booths I’ve ever seen at a Cottage Show. Wherever they go, there is a crowd of people eager to purchase the neat product. Just pop the poison of choice into the lockable box and secure it to a deck or outside wall. To top it all, Neil and Jennifer, who make and market the products with the help of family and friends, are such lovely people; I was delighted to hear that Home Hardware is stocking the Oust-a-Mouse box.

Julie Nelson is a BC cottage owner who writes a daily post on all-things related to cottaging on Cottage Daily. From delightful recipes to reviews on cottage toys, there is something for everyone on this blog.

And…for a great educational stocking filler for children – Larraine Roulston’s wonderful books, ‘Pee Wee and the Magical Compost Heap’, ‘Pee Wee’s Great Adventure’ and ‘Pee Wee’s Family in a Nutshell’ are all about composting. Larraine is an environmental journalist and educator, and writes beautifully for kids. Order the books from Castle Compost.