Name of your website?Get2Sicily - Family Villas for Rent in Western Sicily
Your name?
Ciccio Genna
Your Location (city, etc)
London
Please give us a short summary of your website?
We offer a unique holiday experience in one of two family owned holiday villas in Lido di Marausa, Trapani, western Sicily. A 4 bedroom villa with large garden, roof terrace and trees just 250m from the sea, and a 2 bedroom villa in amongst olive groves and vineyards, 350m from the sea. We also provide travel itineraries for our guests in western Sicily, advice on flights to Palermo and Trapani and local attractions.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
The love of the land they call Sicily and our extended family's villas being near the sea in an unexploited part of Sicily where tourism hasnt overtaken everything yet. A proper holiday experience.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
2001. A very basic version of the one we have now, with far fewer bells and whistles. I think it was only about 3Mb in total!
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We wanted something short and snappy, that allowed scope for expansion if more people came to us wanting to rent their villas out for them. We are looking at names for European markets now.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
Much more personal than the bigger sites like thinksicily which charge a fortune. We are a small family business, dedicated to our guests. We are also translating into more European languages soon above and beyond the English, French and Italian we are currently viewable in.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To keep it, to expand. To remain humble and committed to our original dream. Facilitating great holidays in western Sicily.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
At present, it's paying off dividends as bookings and enquiries are flowing in. but, gotta stay ontop of the game.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
CSS overhaul for whole site (I've got to do this myself very soon), full translation to Swedish, Dutch, German, Portugese and Spanish. Maybe the addition of a booking equiry javascripty form thing that allows some degree of automated enquiry sending to my email. I'm also thinking of installing a password section for people who have booked to a secure area where they can download info about the villas, key pick up etc
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes. At present I could.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Early bookings, flight cost to send someone out there.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Trying to outdoo ourselves each new year in terms of level of service, response time, no of guests etc.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Advertising with RyanairVillas.com. Leafleting Universities was our second most successful campaign
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Constant updates and changes! Recently been trying to increase number of inter-site links and url swaps. Paying off slowly.
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?
2001. In perpetuity. It always helps having the site there to refer people to.
What is your website address?
Get2Sicily - Family Villas for Rent in Western Sicily
