We have rented property in the past from owners-direct, usually picked up on background info etc from the Italy forums.

Outside Italy, the biggest rental market for Italian properties is Germany and Switzerland. If you have a web site then I would say thats its important to have a german language translation. In my opinion, however, its better to link up with an Italian agent. Commissions may be around 15% but a good agent will take care of handovers, cleaning etc. We rent out our house in July and August. In eight years using a local agent we have only ever had two vacant weeks and this was really down to a misunderstanding. In all that time we have never rented to anyone from the UK (and in fact have seen few enquires). Its been mostly Italians who tend to book in January and February but the continentals also tend to book fairly early as well. If you are focussing solely on the UK market, I think you could be really missing out. Especially with the current £-€  exchange rate which makes Italy much more expensive for anyone based in the UK compared to two years ago.

Owners direct seem to be our best source of guests. Interesting that less than 50% are from the UK, Dutch, German, Austrian, Danish, this year, which is actually fun for us. A part of letting our apartment is actually meeting people from other countries, who have all been charming and for us put us to shame with their perfect English. The latest are going home tomorrow, dont want to leave Italy, but are looking forward to cooler nights. As am I.!

A

Another site that seems to be used on the continent is www.homelidays.com

Its also worth noting that German and Swiss schools have a two week half term break. I think its the last week in September, first week in October this year but not absolutely sure. We see a lot of Swiss in Sardinia at that time.

Hi John and Toni,

There is a really useful discussion forum here on Lay My Hat - we exchange tips and links as there are many free listings also, some of which are good and some a total waste of your time filling in all your details!

We find Holiday Rentals very good and like Angie, have had people stay this year from Demark, Sweeden, Germany and Holland as well as the UK.

As far as advertising in magazines go, I gentrally think that it is very expensive, although your ad would have a longer life than one of the daily papers, which may get thrown away after one day.

I will PM you!

Good luck

Sarah and Mark

I contacted the advertising dept earlier this year and they provided me with some very good statistics regarding reader types etc for the magazine, they may well have some web statistics too?

Many thanks to all those who have replied so far. Some interesting comments have been put forward and we will be exploring them further. Thank you!

Hi John and Toni.

Actually, a friend of mine decided to put an advert on the Italy website some months ago. She needed to sell her house in Italy, because she wanted to buy a bigger one (now that family has grown). I am not sure whether she already managed to sold it, but I remember her telling that she's had quite good feedback from her advert on the Italy mag website. Enquiries from UK and USA if I well remember. Sounds good...