Niche property portal Watersidepropertysales.com.au yesterday announced it had expanded into holiday accommodation. Managing Director, Vic Del Vecchio:
Keeping true to our NICHE vision www.watersidepropertysales.com.au has expanded its site to include holiday accommodation and tourism activities ON or NEAR the water. We have long believed that holiday accommodation owners and Tourist operators, particularly the small owner/operator, do not have a low cost alternative to the major sites that enables them to be connected directly to the person wanting their service. This is what differentiates us from the majors: cost and personalized service.
The company has acquired www.watersideholidays.com.au and is now displaying content provided by the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) under license. Some 20,000 accommodation listings around a waterside location and tourist related activities together with area information and special events are currently being displayed on the site. www.watersideholidays.com.au will benefit immediately from the traffic to their sister site www.watersidepropertysales.com.au
He added,
In addition to holidays, the site is looking to provide classified marine ad section for the sale and purchase of consumer goods for use on or around the waterways of Australia, such as boats, jet skis, surfboard, fishing gear et.
This sounds like a natural fit for Watersidepropertysales as holiday and marine activities compliment the waterside property sales business. With Australian’s love for waterways, this will continue to be a growing industry which we’re already seeing spill over into the real estate industry through the likes of Ray White Marine.
About Waterside Property Sales and Waterside Holidays
Australia’s Real Estate and Holiday site for listing waterfront homes, beach-front houses, water-view properties and all types of coastal real estate and holidays, land, businesses and homes for sale, rent or lease.
10 Comments
Aaron Belsham
The new watersidepropertysales.com.au website is a big step forwards, they’ve added a number of innovations, such as a WYSIWYG uploader, (listing gets created live as you add to the listing). There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, and it’s definitely worth signing up to take a look at the my waterside tools.
Of course, I’m quite likely a little biased, being the lead developer on the project!
The holidays part of the site is massive, there’s literally 20k listings that are categorised that are on or near the water, really great if you’re a water lover (like my partner & I; we’ve just started using the my waterside tools to save our favourite holiday properties for a holiday later on in the year when it’s cold down here in Tassie and Queensland will be looking pretty inviting!).
A new feature we just added tonight, is a “All Others” option, where you can view listings that didn’t quite meet the criteria set my the automated categorising algorithm, but come from agents near the water so are likely pretty close to your lifestyle. If you’re interested in holidays, with the “All Others” checked you’ll see some 30K holiday listings now, that’s more than plenty of choice…
vic Del Vecchio
Hey Ryan,
Thanks for posting our press release. The journey for us has been exciting and rewarding all at the same time. We have an unwavering belief in the power of niche markets and “waterside” is the first. We also believe in lateral integration across niche sites to leverage off the visitors interest in the various markets that make up the selected niche.
Very early in our strategic deliberations we purchased the domain name of yourpropertychoices. The idea is to progressively set up further niche sites for other various categories of properties.viz rural, eco homes, seniors, low cost, urban living etc and use the domain name as the hub for these niches. As we move forward tweaking and adding to our lateral extensions we have noticed many niche area being established such as Mannish’s business site and a rural site. Whilst the last thing we need is to establish into someone else patch, it makes sense for us to discuss an arrangement with some of these niche sites for our mutual benefit.
I think it was on Mannish’s business site that Glenn Batten suggested the power of an association of niche sites for traffic purposes. I would certainly like to progress this further and invite any niche site owners to contact me via email [email protected] .
In relation to Aaron Belsham’s comment above, it has been our great pleasure to work with a developer that quickly clicks onto our vision and thought processes to produce a quality functional, fast and clear site. Thanks mate.
Glenn Batten
You know I want 10c a click for that idea Vic ?? 🙂
You could also use such an association with advertisers as well to provide a network of sites when a single portal might not be big enough for them the larger exposure of the network might be…
vic Del Vecchio
Good one Glenn, will a bottle of Chivas Regal do – if successful ? 🙂
I have been inundated with email enquiries since posting above- Not.
But will persist as the idea is one that we have been putting on the back burner for a while.( that is the idea of a hub and spoke structure) The setting up of an association of like minded web site owners in niches where each one runs their own site and has an interest in a centralized web page (hub) to leverage off each others traffic and building up traffic in its own right.My instincts are working overtime.
We actually have a choice of several domain names for the HUB- your real estate choice, your real estate choices, your property choice etc… anyone would do the trick. The web page establishment cost would be a pittance, most portal guys have good SEO understanding so provide egos don’t get in the way would be good.
Niches need not be soley niches for property types but could include agents who have a geographic area niche.
Glenn Batten
I think waiting for someone to come across the comment in an old post might be a bit hopeful… identify a few potentials and reach out I say…
vic Del Vecchio
Glenn,
I take your point on that and if I had something to sell that is exactly what I’d do. At this stage it is only an idea.
Having said that, I know that business2 has a huge subscriber base who come in regularly, not only to read and comment on new articles but to look at the thread on the right hand side to see who is posting a comment on back articles and what they are saying. I would guess that niche owners/managers like Ben, Nick, Mannish, Bill etc would have already seen the comment. If they were interested in the concept they would have emailed or called.
If and when we decide to go it alone I would make a point of ringing/contacting these guys.
vic Del Vecchio
Well, we’re off to a flying start with the Holiday section.
Northern Rivers Tourism Association (NSW) has partnered with us to offer a joint package to all members and this has been launched officially today. In June, all Queensland tourist and accommodation owners will also get a special upgrade package as will real estate agents who manage holiday listings.
Agents now have the opportunity to list their managed holiday accommodation, on or near the water, on our niche portal.
At 23,000 visitors per month (AW stats) and google page rank of 3, we haven’t done too badly in our niche since launch mid 2010 🙂
Glenn Rogers
Well done Vic congrats.
vic Del Vecchio
Thanks Glenn 🙂
vic Del Vecchio
Shortly we’ll be going to the Chinese market with translated text for our holiday listings. Watch this space.