Hi My name is Neil Scott, My wife and I have lived here for 18 years and I am now retired but my wife is still working as a Nursery Teacher in a local international school. We moved here after the rush in London and decided we had had enough of the city life and wanted something more quiet. We live in a beautiful area in the foothills of the Sitges vineyards and its famous Malavisa wine. We love the weather here, we have of 300 days of sunshine due to the local mountain range. Were here for you.
thanks for the comments yes , its to show people we do decorate and take care of the apartment.
It is lovely here, Sitges is about 10 kms from us and the drive is fantastic up to the valley where we live as you drive through all the grape vines or pine forests, only takes 10 minutes.
Sitges is good all year round really, it has a micro climate, in the winter months we make a discount depending on how many days people want, in the summer we are always booked up but if you see an empoty week and its near the summer time get in touch as we do discount late bookers just to fill the weeks.
At the moment it is coldish here in the morning about 5 degrees, but will rise to 18 today and we have blue skies for 300 days a year!
Just take a look on our facebook site for uptodate ***
Many thanks Neil
thank for you kind comments, its a little difficult to tell from our dashboard which picture you are talking about, is it possibly the one with the plastic sheeting on things and decoration tools,, if it is its just to show that we do decorate on a regular basis as some people leave it several years we try and paint every year.
if its not this could you either post the picture for me or give me a description of the picture or if you can see a file name let me know what one and i can track it down . Were you also looking at the booking.com pictures or one of the other sites?
We do live in a very nice valley which is quiet and only has a few houses in it. We always get booked up fully by about May time through to October, always starts late with us and for some reason most of our clients are now purely European countries, dont know why... Many thanks for writing. Neil
For me I have my apartment with 3 agencies plus Booking.com, Airbnb and Homeaway, Its a nightmare to run it all and the multi calendar never works properly. I absolutely detest the Booking.com system to be honest, Its set up for hotels or where you have a lot of rooms to rent like a guest house. It does not allow me to write my own description to sell myself, it uses algorithms to represent you, totally wrong, for me it said I had a restaurant and bar in the hotel and a front reception desk, rubbish, I said we had bars nearby with restaurants and that we are able to let guests stay 24/7. I have complained and complained but they wont remove the false remarks, I feel they are not doing a good job at representing my property and saying it has some things when it doesn't. I just don't understand why you can not write your own property description. I find the whole site to be dreadful for managing your booking and it is overbearing and difficult to navigate, they don't use the 3 click method to get you where you want. Anyway rant over,
What I do is I print off a paper calendar that shows a month to a page and every booking goes in that. as well as online. I have also downloaded another browser for my computer and every agency and help system we use is on the menu bar as tabs with all passwords saved and built in, you just click the tab and youre away. This browser is only ever used for the apartment so all the information is only a click away either on the menu bar or as a separate bookmark folder like Museums, Theaters, Beaches and so on. I find this a much better way to deal with the apartment and if guests want more information I can send them our Interactive Map or they can print from their devices straight to our laser printer for tickets etc. It works really well. The only problem I find is when i get a booking I have to go to every site and block out the dates as the calendar syncing just does not work at all well and I can not trust it. So that is how I use the extranet and it is IMHO the only safe way is a paper backup at all times and a seperate browser for your building, house, apartment or whatever, all computers are capable of using as many browser as you can download. Its very easy to set up and I would recommend Mozilla Firefox or Safari as Firefox works very well with their Email client called Thunderbird which I use in place of Apple mail which is dreadful. Always back up your Data, I have seen so many hard drive crashes, if you have Apple use iCloud if you have Windows use Microsofts options and keep yourself safe with a paper copy of your calendar showing when and where your bookings are from and how much, you can not beat the real pen and paper as your master copy guys and gals!!
As soon as I have a booking their details go into my iPhone and I Identify which company the client has booked through the dates of the holiday and how much they have paid and if any further installments are coming, this information and more is collected by a small app i wrote for myself which helps me keep track of the finances as well, when the guest arrives I use a scanning app here in spain as we have to collect a tourism tax and that keeps track of that and reminds me to file the 3 month tax return. the phone number is shown with the clients name and where they are from, ie which booking co so if they call i know straight away. I have to admit we rarely ever get phone calls from clients, most just book direct and my auto messages are all set up to give the information that most guests want and after they go an automatic thank you goes out with a special picture we have had done of the area in which we live and they can use it as a wallpaper of their phones or tablets or whatever,because of where we live is so special and so well known i commissioned a piece of illustrator artwork in a modernistic style of the main skyline of the village. It seems to go down well with people as we get thank you emails.
this is one way and this is how we do it, it means the guests always know whats on and what to do and where to go, we find this is a valuable tool and as we now have a small intel Nuc computer directly linked to the large LCD wall display TV the clients can use this on the TV while sitting on the sofa to help plan their day.
We call it a Google Interactive Map, basically its a pin map of where we live, it shows us and all the things around where we live , you can zoom in and out and you can add or delete pins add information et etc and you can get driving directions to the place just by clicking and printing or download it to your phone. We also have a GPS that this map is on and we lend this to clients who have not got smartphone or a GPS so that they know where things are and can always find there way back to us if they get lost which does tend to happen a lot when you are in a strange country and driving on the other side of the road, the GPS also warns the driver if they drift over to the wrong side of the road. We find this is a really good asset, its so simple to create, the maintenance of it takes time as places close and new ones open but well thats just part of the experience. Here is the link, feel free to play, you can zoom in and out as we include areas of up to one days drive from the house. http://goo.gl/maps/xC7QY Have a look and play around and if you live or go on holiday to the Sitges area feel free to use, if you are a host in this area I am more than happy for you to add to the map just contact me.
If you have good internet consider the Ring doorbell entry system which is very good but one way, we also have a Intel Nuc computer tiny thing running win 10 connected to the hd tv and wireless keyboard and mouse and always on and we can skype or facetime or whatever from our house to the apartment downstairs, I have a tiny webcam built into the top of the tv which i did myself and it really works well, i can ring them and vice versa from anywhere in the world or 20 steps away!!! Our google interactive map works wonders, people click on a link and it takes them somewhere with photos etc, Also I have done hyperlapses from the airports and to other interesting places for them to either download from our website, facebook or watch on the tv in the apartment, because I am tech savvy and I'm a photographer and videographer I can provide a lot of content electronically but nothing is as good as a nice dry hand shake, if you have damp hands dry them out using 99% alcohol just before you meet them, luckily i dont have that problem but there is nothing worse than a damp handshake. Also on the webcam for those who are concerned about privacy i stuck a little shutter door on the TV so that they dont have to show video and i have built in a privacy system that they can flick a switch which cuts the system out from phoning etc....we also make it clear to them in the welcome manual in case they are worried all they need to do is flick the switch off. Finally if you have a pool clean it every day and make that water sparkle.
thanks for the comments yes , its to show people we do decorate and take care of the apartment. It is lovely here, Sitges is about 10 kms from us and the drive is fantastic up to the valley where we live as you drive through all the grape vines or pine forests, only takes 10 minutes. Sitges is good all year round really, it has a micro climate, in the winter months we make a discount depending on how many days people want, in the summer we are always booked up but if you see an empoty week and its near the summer time get in touch as we do discount late bookers just to fill the weeks. At the moment it is coldish here in the morning about 5 degrees, but will rise to 18 today and we have blue skies for 300 days a year! Just take a look on our facebook site for uptodate *** Many thanks Neil
thank for you kind comments, its a little difficult to tell from our dashboard which picture you are talking about, is it possibly the one with the plastic sheeting on things and decoration tools,, if it is its just to show that we do decorate on a regular basis as some people leave it several years we try and paint every year. if its not this could you either post the picture for me or give me a description of the picture or if you can see a file name let me know what one and i can track it down . Were you also looking at the booking.com pictures or one of the other sites? We do live in a very nice valley which is quiet and only has a few houses in it. We always get booked up fully by about May time through to October, always starts late with us and for some reason most of our clients are now purely European countries, dont know why... Many thanks for writing. Neil
here you are
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/manage-your-space/19233947/details
https://www.booking.com/hotel/es/sitges-villa-apartment-olivella.html?lang=xu
https://www.homeaway.co.uk/p8062902?uni_id=3395911
Please. What is channel manager??
Re other comment I am aware of that thankyou I just do not like the entire site that’s all.
For me I have my apartment with 3 agencies plus Booking.com, Airbnb and Homeaway, Its a nightmare to run it all and the multi calendar never works properly. I absolutely detest the Booking.com system to be honest, Its set up for hotels or where you have a lot of rooms to rent like a guest house. It does not allow me to write my own description to sell myself, it uses algorithms to represent you, totally wrong, for me it said I had a restaurant and bar in the hotel and a front reception desk, rubbish, I said we had bars nearby with restaurants and that we are able to let guests stay 24/7. I have complained and complained but they wont remove the false remarks, I feel they are not doing a good job at representing my property and saying it has some things when it doesn't. I just don't understand why you can not write your own property description. I find the whole site to be dreadful for managing your booking and it is overbearing and difficult to navigate, they don't use the 3 click method to get you where you want. Anyway rant over,
What I do is I print off a paper calendar that shows a month to a page and every booking goes in that. as well as online. I have also downloaded another browser for my computer and every agency and help system we use is on the menu bar as tabs with all passwords saved and built in, you just click the tab and youre away. This browser is only ever used for the apartment so all the information is only a click away either on the menu bar or as a separate bookmark folder like Museums, Theaters, Beaches and so on. I find this a much better way to deal with the apartment and if guests want more information I can send them our Interactive Map or they can print from their devices straight to our laser printer for tickets etc. It works really well. The only problem I find is when i get a booking I have to go to every site and block out the dates as the calendar syncing just does not work at all well and I can not trust it. So that is how I use the extranet and it is IMHO the only safe way is a paper backup at all times and a seperate browser for your building, house, apartment or whatever, all computers are capable of using as many browser as you can download. Its very easy to set up and I would recommend Mozilla Firefox or Safari as Firefox works very well with their Email client called Thunderbird which I use in place of Apple mail which is dreadful. Always back up your Data, I have seen so many hard drive crashes, if you have Apple use iCloud if you have Windows use Microsofts options and keep yourself safe with a paper copy of your calendar showing when and where your bookings are from and how much, you can not beat the real pen and paper as your master copy guys and gals!!
As soon as I have a booking their details go into my iPhone and I Identify which company the client has booked through the dates of the holiday and how much they have paid and if any further installments are coming, this information and more is collected by a small app i wrote for myself which helps me keep track of the finances as well, when the guest arrives I use a scanning app here in spain as we have to collect a tourism tax and that keeps track of that and reminds me to file the 3 month tax return. the phone number is shown with the clients name and where they are from, ie which booking co so if they call i know straight away. I have to admit we rarely ever get phone calls from clients, most just book direct and my auto messages are all set up to give the information that most guests want and after they go an automatic thank you goes out with a special picture we have had done of the area in which we live and they can use it as a wallpaper of their phones or tablets or whatever,because of where we live is so special and so well known i commissioned a piece of illustrator artwork in a modernistic style of the main skyline of the village. It seems to go down well with people as we get thank you emails.
this is one way and this is how we do it, it means the guests always know whats on and what to do and where to go, we find this is a valuable tool and as we now have a small intel Nuc computer directly linked to the large LCD wall display TV the clients can use this on the TV while sitting on the sofa to help plan their day.
We call it a Google Interactive Map, basically its a pin map of where we live, it shows us and all the things around where we live , you can zoom in and out and you can add or delete pins add information et etc and you can get driving directions to the place just by clicking and printing or download it to your phone. We also have a GPS that this map is on and we lend this to clients who have not got smartphone or a GPS so that they know where things are and can always find there way back to us if they get lost which does tend to happen a lot when you are in a strange country and driving on the other side of the road, the GPS also warns the driver if they drift over to the wrong side of the road. We find this is a really good asset, its so simple to create, the maintenance of it takes time as places close and new ones open but well thats just part of the experience. Here is the link, feel free to play, you can zoom in and out as we include areas of up to one days drive from the house. http://goo.gl/maps/xC7QY Have a look and play around and if you live or go on holiday to the Sitges area feel free to use, if you are a host in this area I am more than happy for you to add to the map just contact me.
If you have good internet consider the Ring doorbell entry system which is very good but one way, we also have a Intel Nuc computer tiny thing running win 10 connected to the hd tv and wireless keyboard and mouse and always on and we can skype or facetime or whatever from our house to the apartment downstairs, I have a tiny webcam built into the top of the tv which i did myself and it really works well, i can ring them and vice versa from anywhere in the world or 20 steps away!!! Our google interactive map works wonders, people click on a link and it takes them somewhere with photos etc, Also I have done hyperlapses from the airports and to other interesting places for them to either download from our website, facebook or watch on the tv in the apartment, because I am tech savvy and I'm a photographer and videographer I can provide a lot of content electronically but nothing is as good as a nice dry hand shake, if you have damp hands dry them out using 99% alcohol just before you meet them, luckily i dont have that problem but there is nothing worse than a damp handshake. Also on the webcam for those who are concerned about privacy i stuck a little shutter door on the TV so that they dont have to show video and i have built in a privacy system that they can flick a switch which cuts the system out from phoning etc....we also make it clear to them in the welcome manual in case they are worried all they need to do is flick the switch off. Finally if you have a pool clean it every day and make that water sparkle.