Business case studies
Cornwall Holiday Cottages
Cornwall Holiday Cottages Ltd started trading in 2004. Based in Feock near Truro, the company offers rentals in 30 high quality cottages, all 4 or 5 star and many with Gold Awards. The business is run by Delia Mills with support from her family.
Broadband-led innovation
Delia says: "In 2004 when we bought our first holiday cottage, our timing was good as we were able to set up our company on the internet from day one. I remember receiving email confirmation of our first online booking on a Blackberry when we were meeting with guests who had just arrived to stay in one of our cottages. 'Fantastic!' we thought; technology is enabling us to gain new business while we are spending valuable face time with our guests. Superfast broadband in the office will allow us to continue evolving our use of technology so that when its use is ubiquitous and fast mobile broadband (4G) is available, we will be ready to provide the next generation of web services to our guests and cottage owners."
Delia worked for IBM before starting a family and investing in rental property. At IBM she was involved in the implementation of first generation office automation, such as email, word processing and spreadsheets. As it was new technology to most of her customers, Delia learned the importance of making technology useful and relevant. When she could take away dull routine tasks and allow customers to spend more time communicating and being more productive the technology was well received. This experience has informed the way Cornwall Holiday Cottages' use of technology has evolved. Delia says: "We find that the speed and ease of use of our website influences how guests feel about booking with us. Exploitation of superfast broadband will be a real benefit.
"Over 80% of our bookings are online and 95% of our guests pay online. We set up our website to look after the cottages we own, but as we were asked to take on other owners’ cottages we have extended the technology to support their needs. We allow our owners and property managers to go online and find out all about their bookings, such as who is coming in when, any special needs and to be able to reconcile the number of staying guests with cleaning costs. Online self-service has proved a real benefit to our holiday cottage owners, many who live upcountry and have very busy lives. Now that we have superfast broadband, it is faster for us to maintain and update the website allowing more time to focus on our guests and cottage owners."
Enhancing the online experience
Cornwall Holiday Cottages started using superfast broadband as soon as it became available in Feock.
Delia says: "If you don't have superfast broadband, you will never know what it can do for you! As we develop our software in-house, we are able to experiment and evolve as technology changes. For example, we recognised a few years ago that with our customers moving from dial-up to broadband we would be able to promote our lovely cottages with larger images. I went on a formal photography course, bought a great camera and upgraded all our cottages to have lots of large pictures. Our guests loved the improvement and the increase in bookings was immediate. With superfast, it is now considerably faster to upload photos to our website and it will be feasible for us to make use of video in future too."
New ways of working
Since connecting to superfast, Cornwall Holiday Cottages has implemented new ways of working to support smartphone and tablet users such as the iPad. To help promote year-round sales, they have produced a winter brochure and made it available as an online e-brochure so their guests can have access to their literature even if they did not receive a physical mailing.
Delia says: "With superfast, we will be able to evolve in ways that will be really useful to our guests, owners and property managers. Use of new telephony and video technology becomes viable, especially when it is being used as part of social media campaigns. Access to cloud computing applications will be possible, a simple example being the ease with which we can back up our data, which is clearly critical to us.
"We are really delighted to have superfast in Cornwall, being a small business should not and does not mean having to be in the technology slow lane."
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