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I hope this is OK to ask on here.
Some of you might have picked up from other threads that myself and my girlfriend have set up a small MTB holiday business in Norway. We've just launched the website and are ready to take bookings however we're not 100% sure what to do about which day of the week we make as change over day. Hopefully it is OK to use this forum to get the opinion of a large group of riders.
Currently we've written that we'll run the holidays Sat-Sat simply because that is the norm however it seems that there are a lot more flights running on Fridays (and a couple of other weekdays) into Bergen, especially from UK airports (London, Manchester and Aberdeen).
So my question to you all is, do you assume all package holidays will be Sat-Sat and plan accordingly? Or is it something you would be flexible on and would consider if it was a weekday change over, say Wed-Wed or Fri-Fri?
The obvious negative being if it is a weekday change over it probably means 6 days off work instead of 5, discuss.
I think it needs to be at the weekend. Sat sat is usually best as you can minimise the time off work but personally I wouldn't be put off by Fri Fri or sun sun. They also give options for a long weekend either by writing of a few of the nights or doing a last minute deal.
I've always assumed it would be based around the most appropriate/frequent flight day, which would be fine with me.
Ideally, you would want a day when you can drop people and ideally pick the next lot up a short time later.
As you say, I think that Saturday probably works best for the majority of people because it means less holiday days being used. Personally I'd be quite happy with friday but I am self employed.
Friday to Friday and rides start the Saturday and end the Thursday...leaves plenty time to drop off/collect and get everyone settled. Does mean a day less riding though.
I'd suggest doing it by most popular flight times to begin with as they also tend to be a bit cheaper, so people get a bargain - not always but I'm ignorantly guessing demand for flights to Norway isn't massive.
Saturday to Saturday probably works for most customers though.
It looks cool what you are doing and good luck! I really liked the Cathrovision visit, it all came across really well.
From experience, you’ll get people wanting other changeover days so you just need to be as flexible as possible. Saturdays or sundays are most popular but you will get plenty of enquirers for long weekends so factor that in. Choose either Sat or Sun, based on flights, put that on your web. Then try to be as flexible as you can. People will often fly in a day early to be prepared and just in case there are problems with their bike arriving. In the first few years you won’t be fully booked so you will have plenty of time to work out what your clients want and you won’t have to worry about stacking week on week.
That’s what I reckon anyway!
Saturday to Saturday or Sunday to Sunday will exclude almost no-one. Any weekday combo will exclude more people, teachers are one group that springs to mind.
I'd expect change over day to be a Saturday or Sunday, but dint mind which so long as the flights back aren't silly late.
When do most flights arrive at your local airport?
I'd just stick with the advice to be flexible at first. Flights are going to be the main driver (esp with Norway being quite expensive).
Some people are bound to want to see a bit of Bergen, so maybe try and find a few hotels to recommend with bike storage and in a good location for both city and transfer to your place - that way they can do weekday flight and Saturday changeover.
Must admit I've also been browsing you website / Airbnb etc but think it might be Czech for 2019 and Norway another year. Looking at location we drove past your door in 2010!
Fri flights to Bergen will be oil commuters and suitably priced?
Fri flights to Bergen will be oil commuters and suitably priced?
Only if they're doing overtime Shirley....
On a more helpful note, I think it depends thoroughly on:
*Where your target market is.
*What percentage of your trade is weekends versus weeks.
If you're relying on 'wegians and expect lots of weekend bookings then consider Friday.
If not then definitely Saturday.
Being self employed, minimising days off work is a bonus to me and I like long weekend trips. Fly Thursday, return Monday. With potential for late flight Monday and get last day stuff in that day. Or something similar (Fri to Tue, or maybe slightly longer, Thu and return Tue).
I've only done that skiing but often worked well, however it was never possible with a package, only directly booking hotels.
I'd be interested in the same MTB, but I should think the market will be fairly small.
Last day bonus with late flight also depends a bit on finding luggage storage after check out and a shower (or stinking the plane up 😀 ). Bit more tricky too if MTB and potentially going to get muddy.
Having a more fixed changeover like Sat I should think makes it much easier to organise and for shuttling back and forth to airport.
Being self employed, minimising days off work is a bonus to me
What on earth has that got to do with being self employed?
Any weekday combo will exclude more people, teachers are one group that springs to mind
Teachers will only be available during school holidays. IME school holidays do not necessarily begin on a Monday. There are some people who would be disadvantaged by not being a classic sat-sat BUT I suspect not that many in the typical MTB foreign guided trip demographic. Certainly if flights don’t work for Sat-Sat it’s still going to disadvantage them but mean they need to stay an extra, expensive night having flown in on the Fri.
If your planning can cope then not restricting to week long sat-sat trips is a selling point (especially when you have no reputation, people may be a little unsure what they are biting off and Norway may be an “unknown” on top), so if you offered fri-fri; fri-mon; mon-fri; type options...
I think it needs to be whatever I want. If you as a supplier can't adjust your dates to that, then i'll book with someone else. Sure i get that may not be appropriate for you, but that's just how it has to be. With families, jobs, flights etc, sometimes the days you'd like it to be for changeover don't work for the potential clients. If you can't accomodate that, you lost the vooking.
Weeks. That's only true up until a point.... there will come a time when he can stipulate changeover days, or at least certainly in high season.
Each fri to Fri booking he takes kaiboshes a potential sat to Sat booking. Once he gets to the stage where he has a good chance of filling peak season with standard bookings then he'd be misguidedto take non standard ones during that period.
Having said which, he ain't at that stage yet. Be interested in what the other providers do. I'm guessing Verbier and Whiterooms do standard weeks... anyone know
I'm assuming Basque does a variety, but that is pure guesswork. Would like to be put right.
Could flight prices be a factor? Depending on the route
I was looking at sleazy jet the other day for a long weekend with the missus the ideal would have been to fly on a Thursday (unfortunately we couldn't) but being able to do mid-week flights can often halve the cost of flying (and offset bike transport costs a bit?).
As a cheapskate I'd look for money saving options like that...
I suppose the other thing is, does it have to be full weeks? Could five days work? Having the odd 'off' day between parties might allow you time to get straightened out and make changeovers a bit less fraught perhaps...
To answer. We do Saturday to Saturday nominally. I try to be flexible as much as possible if people want a Sunday to Sunday due to flights. Some trips just won’t work like that though due to the logistics of a point to point trip.
Long weekends in high season are hard. I’d love to do it but really it means giving up two full weeks for a long weekend. Less of a problem if you aren’t fully booked but we are all the time during the season, give or take.
Unfortunately as Weeksy says, sometimes not being fully flexible means that you loose bookings. You quickly learn that you can’t take every booking. We turn away about 20-25% of bookings for various reasons i.e. because we can’t be flexible, I don’t think the group levels would work out or just because we are full. It hurts but if you chase every booking you can end up tying yourself in knots and making a mess. Also, ultimately if you can’t be efficient in how you run things It’s not going to work. I’d love to do long weekends and have a couple of days off a week in the season but the numbers wouldn’t add up like that!
Anus, like I said unless you are very lucky (or unlucky) you won’t be full for a few years. That gives you plenty of time to work this out and tweak to make it work. Don’t worry about getting these details sorted just now, it will all make sense as you go along. Keep sight of what you want your business to be and tweak things to get it there. Don’t worry too much about what others do.
I wouldn’t be put off by Friday-Friday... but what you could do is for people who can only make it over on the Saturday (I.e. have Saturday-Saturday flights booked) is give them the opportunity of 6 days on the bike then a night out in Bergen (partner with a hotel that can stash bikes and offer it as a top up option?). A few beers would for me be a great way to round off the week.
I guess one of the factors must be the distance, time it takes to transfer. If an hour you can build in flexibility, if 3 hours, less so.
Next up will be the main sell, are you going for a week long holiday as 80% of your business?
If so Saturday to Saturday for your own sanity.
As mentioned though, you are new, Norway is an unknown quantity, personally I'd be far more likely to book a shorter trip of discovery right now than risk a full week.
As such Poly's suggestion above of a Monday to Friday, Friday to Monday works a treat.
That way you commit to 2 airport runs a week but cover both the above and any week long bookings, they just come on a Friday or Monday.
Change your user name, a teenage user name doesn't suit someone setting out on an adult endeavor and yes, it would make me think twice about booking with you.
I'd probably advertise that you are flexible to begin with, then as time goes you get a sense of it and narrow it down to which is most popular.
wouldn't bother me either way mind, would just take an extra day if needed.
Ultimately I wouldn't think you would really have to narrow it down, if you had an online calendar where people could see what's available through the year and book it, it'll probably take care of itself.
If flights are Fridays, go with this.. it also means that if you don't fill a particular week you gain then flexibility of picking up 'local' weekend bookings to fill some bed nights. If you choose Saturday this option is off the table.
We started off (2005/6)able to run a single specific change over day as international flights for our UK target market were all same day.. once zoom went bust and other airlines came in it turned into a 4day a week potential arrival and we ended up having to play booking tetris. To try and encourage guests onto fri/sat arrivals we charged a "non-standard" arrival fee but had to remain flexible. It generally worked out with the larger property but not quite so well with smaller homes.
Good luck!
Well thank you all, a lot of useful replied there and some things to think about.
Of course we've looked at a lot of other companies in Europe and what they do, Basque MTB being one of them! So a nice surprise to hear from you Doug. And then BearBack it sounds like you are also in the business although i've not come across your site, googling seems to show you're in Whistler? Which may be why. Is that you guys?
I think through the conversation here you guys have come across the pros and cons that we had though about having a non-standard/inconsistent change over day. We would like to be as flexible as possible but if you start with Sat-Sat and then one week do a Fri-Fri it would mean loosing out on 2 weeks bookings at some point just to revert back to the Sat-Sat. Unless of course we offered some shorter trips in those catch-up weeks.
We also want to be as flexible as possible because as you say Doug we won't be getting so many bookings in this first couple of years. But then the thought was if we did a non-standard change over day one week we immediately take up 2 weeks of potential booking options for other people booking. Making less options available to a probably already limited number of people wanting to book with us if you get what I mean.
It seems like we just need to be flexible for now and accommodate as many requests as possible even if it means having weeks where we are not full or some half weeks with no guests. But as someone mentioned and as we found out doing some test weeks this last summer, it is tiring trying to do everything yourself and you certainly appreciate some days off.
I'm off to make a page and price for a long-weekend tips on the website! Cheers for the help.
P.s. Doug, we'll have to come visit you sometime and see how the pro's do it 😉
Having looked at flights to Bergen from Edinburgh sat-sat is inexpensive but for our group 5 bikes need to be discussed with loganair before booking.
The only issue we have is timings for transfers.
If it is transfers at your end then I guess I can't help.
But transfers at this end is no problem, you just tell us when and we come get you! 🙂
Change your user name, a teenage user name doesn’t suit someone setting out on an adult endeavor and yes, it would make me think twice about booking with you.
Nobody else picking up on this??
To be flexible you need to get a group of drivers able to do pick-ups ala Switchbacks. You may/will need guides to support you in achieving this.
This year we flew from Glasgow on an early morning flight for the Malaga experience. Less than an hour transfer, built bikes up and had a few hours riding. Same on our 5th day, early out on the bikes, packed up and ready for our late afternoon flight. We have also flown(Sept)from Newcastle for the Bubion experience, longer transfer(2.5hrs)but well worth it. Mike has riders coming and going all the time....
The key is your transfer time. If it is 2 hours or more you'll have problems with flexibility.
If not try to be as flexible as possible. Don't reject enquiries if possible as that one person enquiry could turn out to be a future group booking.
And, yes, change your user name.