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Trustpilot, our new ally
We’d like to share the news that we’ve started working with Trustpilot, a completely independent online platform where reviews from our verified customers about Only-apartments can be collected. Your guests will still be able to leave their comments about your apartment on our website, just as before (as you know, we send them an email after their stay so that they can give their feedback), and in both cases all comments – positive and negative – will be visible. There are several objectives behind our partnership with Trustpilot: to give confidence to users of our website, to receive useful feedback to help improve our service, and to make our online marketing more effective, as we will be able to use the ratings we receive to improve our SEM (this is called Google Seller Ratings). And this all means being able to give you more...
Travel Inspiration September: 5 Holiday Destinations out of the ordinary
5 Holiday Destinations out of the ordinary
The Best Places to Break-Up
The Best Places to Break-Up
Festival of Lights – Berlin 2013
Are you one of those folks who feels attracted by the magic of the night? Then, I’m sure you´re planning to delight yourself with the wide rage of lighting shows and cultural activities, which will fill with joy the most representative spots of Berlin from 9th to the 20th of October 2013. Yes, I´m talking about the famous Festival of Lights – Berlin 2013. Since its inception in 2004, the Festival of Lights presents the masterpieces by many local and foreign lighting professionals, whose main aim is to blow the minds of the spectators with unique lighting shows in the most important spots of the German capital. Photo: Harald Hoyer During the festival, we will witness not only the most spectacular lighting shows, but also various cultural events that will take place around the theme “Light”, as well as an extensive charity program called the City Stiftung Berlin. During the 2013 version of this event, we expect to enjoy established activities as the Benefizkonzerte des World Doctors Orchestra (The Orchestra of the World Doctors Charity), which is an orchestra composed by doctors who support access to basic health services among the most deprived, the OpenCity, an event in which people are allowed to get into some of the most representative buildings of the city and, of course, the well known Jazz festival in den Ministergärten, at which through music and light, attendees will be able to experience the most artistic face of the city. Many people, private companies, institutions and artists have contributed their bit to make the festival possible. Only with their significant contributions, it is possible to...
Rock-n-Roll Love Stories
Rock-n-Roll Love Stories
Halloween Customs
When one thinks of Halloween, pumpkins, witches, cobwebs and other frightening symbols immediately come to mind. Although the American custom of Halloween has been expanding rapidly in Europe, nothing compares to the energy and excitement of experiencing it on the other side of “the pond”. Photo: drsmith7383 Pumpkin Festival If you travel along the east coast to the state of New Hampshire, more specifically the town of Keene, there’s a very unique Halloween festival: the Pumpkin Festival. As everyone knows, the pumpkin is the symbol of Halloween and many families empty them out, cut eyes and a mouth into them and light them up with a candle to give it a more macabre look, a figure known as a Jack-o´-lantern. In Keene, many of these pumpkins (each more bizarre and terrifying than the other) are joined together to create the largest pumpkin mountain in the world, which has already broken several records Guinness. When the pumpkins are lit, it creates an illuminated castle that is truly spectacular to see in person. Each year, 80,000 people come to Keene, a city whose population is around 20,000 people, to see the festival. Go see it for yourself and, as they say, “Let it shine!” Festival of the Dead A little further north, in the town of Salem, Mass., the Festival of the Dead, a festival commemorating the dead, is celebrated annually. Halloween has a macabre tone, and this festival explores the mysteries of death through events that research the various ways that people honor, celebrate and keep secret contact with the dead. Here you will find psychics and mediums who can...
The 10 friendliest cities in the World
Recently, the travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler revealed the findings of a research intended to discover the most comfortable holiday destination in the world. The results are quite unexpected in some cases, because of the absence of some of the most popular holiday destinations. Florianópolis by Fernando Dall´Acqua Let’s start at the 10th place with the city of Chiang Mai – northern Thailand, a city famous for its amazing landscapes and friendly people. On the 9th and 8th place (With the same points) we find the cities of Kilkenny in Ireland and Ubud in Bali, which two different ends of the world but with a common charming: their people and the dominant green landscapes within their territory. Number 7 is found in Southeast Asia, Mandalay – Burma, the second largest city in the country and a great alternative to its hectic capital city Yangon, its wonderful traditions and breathtaking temples are simply magnificent. At number 6 we have Paro – Bhutan and Margaret River – Australia. These two cities could not be more different from each other as Paro is a city built on the side of a mountain and Margaret River is located at a wonderful beach, perfect for surf lovers. The Top five starts in the United States with Charleston – South Carolina, a student city that has sea and the good vibe of the youth and uniqueness of its landscapes. At position number 4 is Queenstown in New Zealand, which counts with impressive landscapes of snowy mountains looking over the bay. At number 3 there is Thimphu, capital city of Buthan, a small lovely...
How apartments help you save on a city break
Everyone wants to travel more, and one of our raisons d’etre is to help make travelling better value for money so that our customers can do just that. We know that our clients are big fans of online tools to help find the cheapest flights to European cities, but how far will your budget go when you’re there? And how much does staying in an apartment really save you, and how does this work out city by city? Photo: Jeff Belmonte To answer these questions, we decided to spend most of August (or so it felt) researching the costs of 16 weekend essentials – such as dinners out, travelcards, a beer in a bar – all over Europe. We compared the costs of self-catering and eating out for every meal – knowing that it’s essential to hit the local bars and restaurants, we factored in eating out for half the lunches and dinners. As it turns out, the difference means a saving of average €92 over just two days – take a look at the infographic to see how that breaks down. As we all know, the best things in London, Paris or Stockholm – just like in life – are free, so the prices we’ve researched have little to do with how much “value” in terms of experiences and memories we get from a destination. Plus there are always other ways to save money – free wifi, museum entry, etc. But reminding ourselves of how well you can live in Lisbon, Porto or Budapest does make us think “hmmmm” and start researching those flights… What about you? Where did you get most...The Vacation Rental Owner: Before & After
By Matt Landau In my years of operating my own vacation rentals and consulting hundreds of owners/managers on a daily basis, I’ve come to get a pretty good idea of what it takes to succeed in this industry. Take being hospitable for instance: if you aren’t inherently hospitable to your guests or if you don’t learn how to be artificially hospitable to your guests, you will never succeed with vacation rentals. But the anatomy of a successful vacation rental owner goes far beyond bullet-point characteristics. Because many of us never had any experience with tourism or marketing before we got started, the learning curve of today’s property owners more resembles a dynamic, ever-changing scatter chart of ups and downs than it does a smooth upward curve. Being new to the vacation rental industry means a certain level of naivety. With an upsurge in popularity of sites like Only-apartments, HomeAway or AirBnB, many owners tend to forget that they also need to be proactive. It can be easy, if your property is doing well, for instance, to lay back and become complacent about your business. It can be easy to run your rental like a hobby, enjoy the passive income and even perhaps think about acquiring a second or third property without any real business-like acumen. It can be equally just as easy to slip into frustration mode at the lack of inquiries or bookings because a listing site’s lead generation seems to be slow. Many new owners start freaking out when their property isn’t filling up as expected. But there is a very tangible shift that takes place somewhere...
