Member Article

Cumbrian firm rolls out £250,000 website upgrade

A Cumbrian holiday cottage letting agency has invested £250,000 in new online systems to help it stay ahead of the competition.

Sally’s Cottages, based in Keswick, has been rolling out the changes after 18 months of development work aimed at enhancing the excellent service it already offers to cottage owners and visitors.

Much of the upgrade has been behind the scenes, which means the majority of visitors to the company’s website won’t immediately notice a difference, but benefits include faster cottage searches and a simplified booking process.

In addition, the work has resulted in cottage owners gaining access to a much improved area of their own, with the ability to manage their bookings even better. 

Sally Fielding, who started the company 15 years ago and has achieved local and national recognition for growth and customer service, said the upgrade was about future-proofing the business’s systems for the next wave of internet development.

She said: “Our first system was built 10 years ago when we had 30 cottages. It still works well with the 450-plus cottages we have now but it was time to build a new one to make sure we remain at the forefront of cutting edge for another 10 years and beyond.

“There is so much more you can do online now. I envisage a time when all you’ll need to do is ask Siri or Alexa to book a cottage in the Lake District for you, and obviously we’ll want Siri to book with us!”

The work has reunited much of the old team from the original build, with staff from Carlisle-based HySoft and Hydrant playing crucial roles, along with a number of additional people.

Mum-of-three Sally added: “We were the first agency in Cumbria to take online bookings and we are now the Lake District’s largest independent holiday cottage agency. Last year we took bookings to the value of £7.8million.

“I believe our strong local element helps us to steal a march on our rivals. We have the highest occupancy levels in Cumbria and we’re taking these steps to make sure we stay in that position for years to come.

“We also continue to expand and are recruiting more local people. I believe in creating real opportunities, and in helping create the next generation of superb Cumbrian leaders. I’m proud to be Cumbrian and I care about making a positive impact on the local economy and community.”

So far this year Sally’s Cottages has partnered with Keswick Film Festival and Go Ape! Whinlatter, as well as sponsoring Keswick Museum’s “Herstory” exhibition celebrating women of Cumbria. In addition, the company has supported the project to restore the flood-hit footpath between Keswick and Threlkeld, giving donations worth more than £500, and over the next three years is sponsoring the Keswick Under-14s Football Team.

Sally now lives in the South Lakes and plans to expand the business in that area, including opening an office in Windermere or Ambleside.

FACTFILE

• In 2009, Sally’s Cottages took 3,354 bookings with the previous system in its first year. In 2017, this figure was 20,069
• Bookings worth £962,000 were taken in the first year of the online system. The figure for the past 12 months is now £7.8million worth of bookings
• In 2009, just Sally Fielding and husband Rob were involved in the business. A new system allowed them to employ staff and they now have a full-time equivalent of 21 people. Recent appointments have seen a 40 per cent increase in employment on the same period last year
• Sally designed the company’s original website herself. A new website was designed at the same time that the new system was introduced in 2009
• Figures for 2011 – two years after the previous system was launched – show that 147,259 people used the Sally’s Cottages website and it received about two million page views that year. In 2017, a total of 963,183 people used the site, with more than 11 million page views.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sally's Cottages .