Name of your website?Rent a luxurious villa with pool and sea views in Sardinia Italy
Your name?
Colette Brady
Your Location (city, etc)
Cagliari
Luxurious Villa with pool for rent in beautiful unspoilt location near beach and marina
We want to share the beauty of this unique and unspoilt island. Unlike most of the Mediterranean, the beaches here are pristine and the water crystal clear. Tourism is low key and the locals are very friendly.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We wanted to take control of our own destiny. We bought a new yacht and sailed off to the Mediterranean in 2006. When we arrived in Sardinia we fell in love with it's beauty and its people and decided to stay. Now we are land-based in winter and rent our lovely villa and charter our Moody S38 sailing yacht during the summer months
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Martin had a Blues/Rock band in UK called the BJ Ferrets and they had a website. Then we had our sailing Blog whilst we were travelling along the coasts of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Italy. This is our first more professional website and we had great fun deciding what we wanted to put in by thinking what we would want to see if we were renting a villa in an unknown place.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We wanted something that did 'exactly what it says on the tin', so decided on sardegnabeachvilla.com. English speakers know the island as Sardinia but that name was taken and for people who live here it is Sardegna. We live 200 meters from our local beach but with some of the best beaches in Sardegna only a few minutes drive away at Nora, Chia and Teuredda the beach is a major selling point....but our corner of Sardinia has so much more to offer with Roman ruins, stunning mountain and coastline scenery and great towns and cities such as Pula and Cagliari within a 35 minute drive.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
The personal touch. We wanted our browsers to be able to view the entire villa and outside areas plus have a slideshow of many local attractions and sites so they know what they are getting when they book a holiday with us. Most websites offer a couple of poor images and you have no idea if there is a building site just out of shot. Up to now though everyone has been pleasantly surprised that it is even nicer than they thought when they actually get here!
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
We intend to keep the site for the forseable future. We never take for granted that we live in such a beautiful place and really enjoy being able to share it with others who are looking for something more beautiful than the concrete jungle that much of the Med has become.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
This is our first full season as we only finished renovating the house last July so had limited bookings. So far we have had quite a number of enquiries and 6 bookings between June and August so it's not too bad for January. I think the swimming pool helps as there are few villas for rent in this area which have a pool.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We have a large cantina in the basement which at the moment is a music studio and storgage area. We will be putting a door between the two room s and a dart board up in the next week or two, and will be buying a divan so it will become more of a games room. We would like to put a bathroom and kitchen area in as well so we could let it separately or use it ourselves if necessary or just cater for larger parties.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Our 'product' is limited to our villa and yacht charter. Rather than large volume it's all about offering a quality of service.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
In preparing the villa for rental and developing the pool and garden areas the budget has unsurprisingly risen more than we expected. In addition our money was in UK and we are spending Euros so the value of our money has fallen by over 30% since we started the project. We wanted to get to a situation where we are generating income in the same currency as we spend it which is where we are now.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Developing the property in another country with all the bureacracy involved and in a new language was not always easy. Making friends and getting local advice helped smooth the problems and we are very happy with the results and with our new life here.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
We have sent it out to many friends and family and asked them to circulate it to people who may be interested in their address book. We entered all the sensible key words to help people find us and now we are starting to search for holiday websites and blogs and discussing relevant topics to get our area and villa more widely known. So far internet key word searches are doing quite well but we are just starting to try and publicize the site more widely through directory sites.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
We have to update information more often than I thought. We can only change slideshow images, availability and prices and need our web manager to make other changes in text. It's our first full year and we are developing the villa so it's not surprising we need to make lots of amendments.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
We started in July 2008 but have only just finished putting in the swimming pool so have had to continually update photographs. We have to wait until March to lay the new lawn at the back so it will need consistent re-newing. We expect to still have the website until we 'retire' which will be in 12 years.
Is your website simply a business?
Of course we need to generate an income but having escaped the 'rat race' ourselves and discovered this beautiful place we do have a missionary zeal to share it with others. We can't understand why it is only now beginning to be discovered by those outside of Italy.
What is your website address?
Rent a luxurious villa with pool and sea views in Sardinia Italy
