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Holiday Homes Direct is a new travel company that provides a direct service between holiday makers and foreign homeowners.
It enables those wishing to book holiday accommodation abroad to deal directly with a property owner, bypassing the more traditional route of booking a package holiday through a tour operator.
The company was founded by Suzanne Quinn earlier this year. Quinn has worked in the travel industry for the last 15 years and also dabbled in the property market in Ireland and abroad.
Quinn said the holiday market had undergone huge changes in recent years.
More and more people were opting to bypass travel agents and arrange their own holidays over the internet. Her new business venture began when she decided to rent out her own foreign property by setting up a website.
She found that marketing it online was quite costly, and that it was hard to get enough traffic to her website to make the exercise worthwhile.
Quinn calculated that there were plenty of other property owners in the same boat as herself who would be keen to use an online resource to market their rental property.
To date, there are 665 properties listed on the website. Quinn said that a further 35 to 40 properties would be put up on the website in the coming weeks.
The listed properties cover a wide range of destinations, including the CapeVerde islands, Israel and Kenya, as well as a host of popular European destinations.
Quinn said the majority of the properties were in France, Portugal, Spain and Italy. The company is offering free listings on the site in order to raise its profile.
When this introductory offer expires, customers will pay an annual fee of about €90 to display their rental property on the website.
The client can display property details, pictures, location and rental rates, and can also include a 12-month availability calendar.
Sunday Business Post, 12 August 2007
By Emma Kennedy