Updown Cottage is a successful holiday let on Gold Hill (famous for the Hovis Bread advertisement) in Shaftesbury, Dorset, owned by Jane and Simon Colston. We speak to Jane about their experiences of holiday letting, guests and finding a reliable cleaner...

Q. Background. When did you buy Updown Cottage and why?

We bought the cottage in July 2006 on a whim and some creative accountancy from Simon, having initially seen it in the Sunday Times property editorial in April. We renovated it over the next 8 months and started letting it as a holiday cottage in about March 2007, hoping that we could cover all costs from the income. I suppose you could therefore say it was bought as an investment with the added bonus of the odd break for us, although never at the expense of taking a booking.

Q. When did you start holiday letting and what were your initial experiences?

During that renovation period we had a website designed, sent an email to everyone we knew offering a discount (although this produced just 1 booking!), uploaded it to every (worthwhile-looking!) free listing site and a few paid ones, got to know as many local businesses as we could and sent it forth! Over the next few months I also emailed as many travel editors as I could and although most of these were undoubtedly sent to the bin, Sally Shalam of The Guardian stayed for 1 night (which amazingly happened to be free as guests were arriving a day later than normal) and her review appeared in the Saturday Guardian on 4.8.07 ls  This is still appearing on Google Analytics! During that first part year (spring - New Year) we booked 177 nights by people finding us on the web - although Gold Hill helps rather a lot!

Q.  Who cleans the property and does the meet and greet?

Our no.1 nightmare has been finding cleaners! We interviewed and trialled 8 lots before finding the first reliable couple. Even though they knew we were inspecting their work and had explained exactly what was needed and the standard we were aiming at, we found loos that hadn't been touched, no hoovering, a van driver sent to make beds (he plainly had never touched one before!), a girl who sprayed oven cleaner on to the wooden work surfaces and a company who sent 1 tiny lady to work alone despite promising us the same team of 2 each week. Thank goodness at the time we were flexible enough to visit every week - not easy from Herts to Dorset but essential.

We are now on our 3rd set of brilliant housekeepers. Our standards are that nothing should be less than perfect which is difficult but we've never had a complaint from guests. Our present lady is lovely and will always go the extra mile to help out where she can. The secret I think is never to use a company but individuals who feel as much for the house as you do.

The other essential is to have personal relationships with every trade (and back-ups!) so that you can call on a plumber, boiler repair man, etc at a moment's notice. Last week we had a wedding party - bride, parents, etc arriving on the Friday evening. On Thursday our painter popped in as the cottage was free, to check round for any marks and rang me when he realised how cold it was and that the boiler wasn't on. We sent the plumber in the next day who diagnosed the problem but couldn't fix it so we managed to find a Glow Worm engineer who carried spare PCB boards on his van and repaired it by 7pm that night. Simon dealt with a very stressed mother of the bride as I welcomed 300 people to a charity concert that Simon was simultaneously rehearsing for and performing in at 8pm in Herts! I've never seen him so stressed! I think the guests were grateful - they said they had a wonderful time but didn't thank us for heroic efforts, broke 2 plates, a glass, the piano stool and left a carton of cranberry juice upturned in the fridge, oh and a charger that they asked to be posted back with no offer to pay for anything...... we never keep any of the deposit anyway as good will is worth so much more than a few pounds but some apology would have been nice but I suppose they thought 3 hours of chilliness was a hassle they shouldn't have had - who knows!

We don't provide a meet and greet service unless specifically requested - it never has been but Harriet has offered on occasions. We feel that part of the joy of a self catering cottage is absolute privacy, not having to make polite conversation and the small fantasy that this is actually your cottage for the length of your stay. Access is by a highly technical device buried in the door mechanism which recognises a mobile phone number when it is called (non-chargeable) and releases the latch. You have to be fairly techy to deal with this from the owners' point of view but Simon is!

It means that people can arrive whenever they like and we don't lose sets of keys although there are then a set inside which people can choose to use for the remainder of their stay. Once or twice we have had foreign guests without mobiles and we either leave keys for them (hidden!) or ask a lovely neighbour to meet them.

Q. The property has been awarded the highest possible grading – Five Star Gold – what did you have to do to achieve this?

I still can't decide whether the hassle and cost of the 5* Gold is worth it - I think it is if only to attract attention from the media (I live in hope!) but certainly we have to jump through ridiculous hoops to achieve it. We initially applied as Country Living wanted to feature us in a holiday cottage supplement but needed us to be part of Visit Britain.

Apologies if I'm stepping on toes here but VB / Quality in Tourism is run by people with no concept of style, taste, intelligence or imagination - the absolute antithesis of Alastair Sawday. They inspected us and apart from demanding, amongst other things, a plate drainer (on wooden work surfaces with a dishwasher in place), loo rolls holders (apparently for disabled guests) rather than loo rolls in baskets - (as a hospital physio, the first thing my patients asked for before I left them 'in peace' was to be handed the loo roll as they couldn't reach the holder!!) but also rated us as 2* as the hand-built oak king-size bed in the Attic room was designed to be surrounded by an oak 'deck' on 2 sides. To achieve any more than 2 stars they require access to both sides of a double bed. We took the argument to the very top - a complete waste of everyone's time and money - which culminated in a very senior gentleman telling me how horrfied he'd be to arrive at a property and have to climb over his wife to get into bed...........

We were finally rated as a 5* Gold cottage but for only 5 guests (the king-size is actually rated as a single!) and this decreased further last year as 1 particularly obnoxious inspector arrived with a tape measure and realised that one of the antique sleigh beds measures 3' on the outside but only 2'6" on the inside so we are now for 4 guests + a child. They tried to get us to change all our brochures and website but we refused and as no-one ever looks at the VB site anyway, our guests seem quite happy with their sleeping spaces!

Q. What do you do to promote Updown Cottage?

Initially we tried a couple of magazine ads (at some expense) but these achieved absolutely nothing. We now list on Holiday-Rentals, Sawdays, ShaftesburyDorset, LastMinute-Cottages and all sorts of others that we pay smaller amounts or nothing for. The vast majority come via our own website but it's often impossible to say whether they've come to that from elsewhere - Analytics is useful but it's not possible to be accurate with each guest. We also send a brochure and letter to each new enquirer if we have an address and a card at Christmas - it's not as green as relying on the internet but essential for people to have a reminder in their hands. We also send out a very occasional email newsletter with late availability.

Q. Do you use social media such as TripAdvisor or Facebook to promote Updown Cottage?

I use both Facebook and Twitter and most of the time feel as though I'm just talking to local people or other accommodation providers but hope for a trickle effect. We had a definite late booking in August via Twitter and have had a couple of bookings from guests who stayed at Peel Castle (of Grand Designs fame) and picked up our brochure there - I 'met' Karen & Francis on Twitter!

Q. Bookings Patterns. Have you noticed any trends in when bookings are made, such as last-minute requests, customers asking for discounts etc.

May and June book up first and usually Christmas and New Year. Summer varies. People vary too! Sometimes they ask for a discount a long way ahead just to try it on - (I don't give it!) and sometimes they ask for discounts on already cheap winter rates. Occasionally people make comments about 'putting rates up in summer' without realising that in fact we put rates down in winter! The cottage couldn't run at winter rates! It's impossible to explain to people the value of what they are actually getting as most people simply have a budget.

Psychology is interesting - people will quite happily pay £50 pppn for a second rate hotel or B&B but will feel that £30 pppn (if 6 people take the cottage for a week) is too much at peak season rates, without thinking about the fact that they have an entire house, views, baby grand piano, Wifi and more than home comforts (better than mine anyway!). Having said that the people who have stayed write the most wonderful comments ranging from 'better than any boutique hotel we've stayed in' to poems to 'inspired by love and a spirit of generosity' - that's the motivation for me!

Q. How do you deal with damages left by guests?

We accept that breakages happen and don't deduct any deposit for these, but started taking a £100 housekeeping deposit after a year or so, which is refunded by BACS after their stay, to deter people from 'removing' items! It seems to work!

Q. And finally, what do you think the outlook is for 2012 and what will be the key booking influences (Staycations, Olympics, Economy)?

At the moment I think the Economy is the main factor affecting bookings as last January and February were well booked by this time. Although of course the media are actually repsonsible for spreading doom and gloom as people in work are potentially better off - low mortgage rates and we haven't adjusted our rates for 3 years despite our costs rising considerably. The Olympics haven't produced any bookings yet although I'm hoping that the spread from Weymouth may reach us eventually.

May and June are always our safest months - perfect weather, lower rates and a lovely lady from Austria who runs garden tours and has used Updown as a base for the last 2 years. One mystery to me is why the media and tourist boards don't do more to push the amazing value of out of season breaks - it's so frustrating when they push the obvious times when we're probably booked up anyway!

You can find out more about Updown Cottage on their website, on Twitter and Facebook.