Profile

Claiming to be the UK’s leading online holiday property site specialising in direct from the owner rentals – though despite their name, are advertising properties from management companies.

They total 37,000 listings and are owned by the Home Away group based in the US that also owns H-R, HL, vrbo and Homelidays amongst others

Size and Traffic

Substantially lower traffic than the other two big UK sites of HL and H-R (in the 3 months to Nov 2010) and this is reflected in their pricing. They have a high Bounce Rate (33%) but it’s still lower than H-R and HA (Bounce Rate is the number of visits that immediately leave the site without going further).All websites have an element of Bounce (this site has a 23% rate) but by internet standards 33% is mid to high. It means NETT traffic (ie: excluding Bounced Traffic) they improve slightly in their traffic comparisons with HL and H-R, with the vast majority Europe based, especially from the UK.

Average Pages viewed by Visitors is high at around 7 – visitors are staying on the OD site longer and looking at more information than they do on their competitor sites.

Traffic and size can be a reasonable measure of how well your advert is expected to do. The simple calculation (total adverts divided by total traffic) gives OD a good measure for Average Traffic Per Property, comparing favourably to their competitors at around 9. Only a small % of traffic comes from the US, so if you’re looking for US audience you’ll need alternatives.

Pricing

They are straight forward and clear in their pricing policy but you’ll need to buy some extras to reach the standard benchmark I set of 12 photos. Their ads are full page (rather than display alongside others) and may explain the good Time On Site numbers they have. Ads cost £159 for 8 photos, SMS, a link to your website, Calendar. ALl ads are rotated automatically for ranking (so theoretically you get to the top every 4 weeks or so). They have options for Special Offers and Featured Listings, and, like with H-R, you can upgrade through them to Abritel and Fe-Do Direkt for the same prices (£139).

Based on my benchmark to compare all sites (12 photos and 4 weeks of featured listings) OD will actually cost £247 (compared to £337 and £299 for H-R and HL respectively).

Visit them here