That was quick.
One year ago this week we permanently moved to Monte-Bougainvillea. We spent 6 months working like mad, moving in, renovating and decorating to be ready to open on the 1st of April 2018.
Now the 2018 season is about to end and we did not see it go by.
We had lots of great guests and visitors throughout. The feedback is heartwarming and motivating. We are at 9.4 out of 10 on Booking.com with many giving us perfect scores and we have similar feedback from TripAdvisor, AirBnB and Google where we see mainly 4 and 5 stars scores.
As I write we are 19 bookings short of 100. Achieving this milestone still within the year would be nice. But being where we are today considering we opened in April is already a good achievement. Bookings really started coming in June/July. Here is what it looks like in terms of occupancy:
You might wonder about November, we are closed. And this is good news. New doors, windows, heating and air conditioning are being installed during this time. And that is good because as you can also see we are starting to get bookings in December too!
But even more interesting is who booked. We had a total 198 guests from 13 different nationalities at Monte-Bougainvillea so far. Here is where they come from and how they book:
Of our 198 guests a bit over 25% are friends and people we know, who all book either directly or via our web site. This highlights how Booking.dom is clearly our biggest source of bookings in 2018. Between the 3 top positions we already have 90% of the pie. All of this sort of makes sense. We are not really an AirBnB type property and we do not view our Facebook page as a booking channel even if we are very happy some do. TripAdvisor I would bet is being used the same way we use it: for the 'advisors'. We look up the comments and scores then usually book directly. Obviously we are not alone doing this and so it is no surprise that we do not get many bookings from them. The catch 22 is that to have visible comments from 'advisors' you need to be listed on TripAdvisor, so although it does not bring direct business, it is still important to be there so people can look us up.
And how did we do? Not bad.
Our business season runs 33 weeks. That is to say that our core season goes from April to end of October. So the objective is to cover the vast majority of our yearly costs and liabilities with the revenues generated during this time frame. During this, our first such time frame, we had bookings for just about half our capacity:
These bookings generated enough revenue to cover over 80% of our yearly costs.
We seem to have a good chance of making it :-) We are now up and running and we will have a lot of time to prepare an even better 2019. Only a small increase in bookings is required for us to make a modest living. We don't really need much more. The comfort of this home is about not needing much more than a good bottle between good people spending time at the speed of life. And raking a bit of leaves once and a while ;-)
As I mentioned earlier, we have new doors and windows fitted to all apartments during November. This will be a great enhancement to quality and comfort. Anyone who came will agree I am sure. Heating is unexpectedly welcome during winter months, even here in the Algarve and the air conditioning in summer will be a definite plus.
And since we have amassed a treasure trove of pictures We thought it would also be a good time to renovate the main window into Monte-Bougainvillea: our Web Site www.monte-bougainvillea.com.
Our web site has been updated with fresh pictures all taken in 2018. Along the way we have simplified the design and structure and we hope to better cater to both fixed and mobile devices.
So, if you have seen our site before then this is a good time to visit again. We would love to hear about our thoughts on the improvements. And if you have not visited our site yet, then this is a perfect time to do so.
In any case please remember, the best way to like is to share.
Hope to see you soon,
Sylvie & jc
Villa Monte-Bougainvillea
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