Partners

The Whitby Guide Booking Engine is a brand new way for accommodation owners to get ‘heads on beds' in their business. We reckon we're the closest thing to a successful association website Whitby is ever likely to get.

Our site users are demanding an easy to use, mobile friendly booking facility. This change will help us to better serve our online community and to maximise bookings from visits to The Whitby Guide website.

The Whitby Guide has been running for nine years now. We've seen a lot of changes in the industry and we've weathered the storm. Global Online Travel Agents (OTAs), Air BnB and relentless Google updates have made for a few interesting challenges to running a local, community travel website.

We've been listening to feedback from owners and discussed the possibility of creating an association website for many years. Thanks to advances in technology that is now a possibility.

We're not an association website. We're a private business. We're in business, just like you. But, here's the thing…

A successful website is more than simply buying a domain and listing a selection of properties. It takes years of hard work, a lot of expensive expertise and huge bundles of cash to set up, market and run a successful travel website. Take it from us – it's been a hell of a journey.

For the last few years we've run the guide at our own expense (we lost 50% of our advertisers thanks to booking.com etc). Thanks to Tom's expertise, hard work and straight out passion for Whitby we've managed to keep the site ranked high in search engines, created a powerful email database and nurtured thousands of fans across social media. Ask a local website designer for a quote for that kind of work – it'll make your eyes water.

We feel that 10% is a fair price to pay for professional marketing services. Plus, you only pay when a booking is made and fulfilled so you've nothing to lose.

To provide the best service that we can to your business and to make our site competitive, we need to invest in the site; content is expensive, we spend thousands each year on editorial and photography, we invest heavily in SEO (search engine optimisation), and we manage and grow our email database and our social media communities. This takes time, money and expertise.

We are experts in Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and will be running regular campaigns on Google Adwords, Bing & Facebook to ensure we get the maximum exposure for your business.

We'll also give 1% to a local cause because we're committed to the long term well being of the town. Imagine Whitby without the lifeboat? Or St Catherines?

If there's anything left after that, Tom and I might earn a few quid.

We charge a single flat fee of 10% commission on bookings through our booking engine. So, a typical B&B could save several thousand pounds each year by using our service. Our fee is a whopping 33% less than other OTAs.

Once you join The Whitby Guide booking engine we take care of everything. Your availability is plugged directly into our Free To Book account. This means that the price on your website is the price on The Whitby Guide, including special offers, so guests can book rooms at the best rates available. This means that you'll be more price competitive than those business still using other OTA, so you'll get more bookings.

If you have issued promo codes via your Free To Book account these can be used independently of The Whitby Guide, and do not appear in our account, so you could use promo codes directly for guests using your own account.

No. There is no set up fee and there is no VAT to pay. We think this makes our service exceptional value for money.

Yes, you can. Simply sign up for Free To Book here (it's free). This takes just a few minutes and once you're live we can include you on The Whitby Guide booking engine.

The Whitby Guide currently receives around 300,000 visitors each year, and it’s continuing to grow. Each year, we are seeing a 50% increase in organic website traffic from Google. We estimate around 10% of your bookings could come from the booking engine this year. We know that our users book holidays via our advertising and banner links but we don't know exactly how many (because right now we don't see the conversion stats – that will change when we launch the booking engine and we'll be able to improve our metrics significantly). We're confident that as we grow the site and invest in content we'll increase that figure.

We invoice you the month after the booking. For example, if you take a booking in November, we'll invoice you in December. Simple.

No. We take care of everything, so you can focus on running a great hospitality business.

All we would ask is that as many businesses as possible supports our website. We want to provide guests with the best choice available, so if you're wondering whether to join or not, please do. Your support makes a massive difference and will help us to make the website the best it can be.

The Whitby Guide receives around 300,000 visitors each year from organic traffic. What that means is that the content we've spent the past nine years creating is seen by holiday makers planning their stay in Whitby about a 1,000 times each day. That's a lot of potential bookings for your business.

We're on the first page for ‘Whitby bed and breakfasts’ along with a huge number of related ‘Whitby Accommodation’ searches. This means that we're getting the right people through to our booking engine. We're also on the first page for the highly prized search term, ‘Whitby'. I know what you're thinking, ‘how on earth did you do that, I thought only big companies could get on the first page?' Like we said, we're experts!

But it’s not just search engines that provide our traffic, The Whitby Guide is a growing community of Whitby lovers.

We're big on social media. Our communities on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are in the multiple tens of thousands and our fans and followers are a highly engaged bunch so all our content is seen by a very receptive audience.

Yes, there's more. We have a list of more than 5,000 holiday makers that come to Whitby each and every year, so when we send out an email with special offers, new content and fun facts about Whitby, you can be certain that these guys make a booking.

Finally, our target is to double traffic to the site in the next 12 months. That means lots of new content and investment in the site, such as the booking engine, so that The Whitby Guide really is the first port of call for anyone looking to book a stay in Whitby.

Yes, as a member of The Whitby Guide booking engine you'll have the chance to send out last minute offers and availability to our fantastic email database. You'll have access to our social media channels so that you can fill last minute cancellations. Best of all, you'll get all this at the best possible price.

We're a very targeted website and we have a very loyal following. We provide something that bigger sites can't – high quality, local content. Our users love what we do and keep coming back to us time and again to book their stay in Whitby.

Support for us is support for independent, Whitby businesses. It's good for the local economy and its good for the community. By Whitby, for Whitby.

Yes. We are an independent business run by a local Whitby family and are committed to investing in the town. Each year we'll give 1% of the value of bookings made via our booking engine to a local good cause or charity.

We'll have a vote each year to decide where the money goes. If you have a suggestion for this year, please email tom@thewhitbyguide.co.uk with the subject marked MY VOTE FOR WHITBY

We're Tom Paylor and James Thomas. We're internet marketing experts with a passion for Whitby. We've been in the game for the past 15 years and running The Whitby Guide for the last nine. Tom is from a local Whitby family and he set up the guide to celebrate everything that's great about the town he loves. The site has been a huge asset to the town, providing visitors with everything they need to make the most of their stay.