For clients who would rather stay in an apartment or private house than a hotel, niche operator Aussie Homes offers a range of properties across Australia.
General manager and founder of Aussie Homes Steve Aucutt said: “Not everyone wants to stay in the sanitised environment of a hotel for three weeks – we offer a home away from home. If you are staying in a nice apartment, you don’t need to go out every night, you can sit around the pool, have a barbecue and settle into the lifestyle more than if you were in a hotel. And it can even work out cheaper than a hotel.”
The company has properties to suit all budgets and tastes. A one-bedroom studio flat in Byron Bay in New South Wales costs around £250 a week, while a four-bedroom beachfront apartment on Holloway Beach, Cairns, with its own pool and spa costs £800 a week.
Most properties are second homes that are used by the owner for just six weeks’ holiday and are rented out the rest of the year. Clients are families or empty nesters visiting relatives who are living in Australia.
“If the whole family is going Down Under to see a relative, instead of cramming eight people into a house built for only four, the visitors can have their own place,” said Aucutt.
For the Olympics this September, Aussie Homes still has 50 properties left in Sydney. Prices range from £650 a week for a two-bedroomed apartment, to a penthouse suite overlooking Darling Harbour that costs around £6,000 a week.
“You could watch the water sports events from the bedroom window,” said Aucutt.
The company does not plan to expand into the package market.
“We made a conscious decision not to sell flights as we don’t want to compete with agents. As we concentrate solely on accommodation, they can sell flights and ground arrangements. When we started out last May, we did 70% of business in direct sales, but now the split is 50/50 trade and direct. The more business we can do with agents, the better,” said Aucutt.
Although Aucutt is keen to work with the multiples, their strict racking policy has held back sales.
“We’ve not had as much business from multiples as we would have hoped. To date, Australian specialists have been the best source of business. The Australian Tourist Commission has also been a good source of referrals. If the general public ring them, they put them in touch with us,” he said.
Aucutt set up the company last May after seeing the success of similar operators offering product in Europe and Florida.
“There’s always been a market for European villas and apartments and we’ve seen operators doing a similar thing in Florida.
“Having lived and worked in Australia, I took off last spring with a suitcase and travelled around contacting letting agencies across the country. Until we set up, there was no-one co-ordinating a cross-country operation – the market was fragmented, there were only local agents,” he said.
The goal is to be the number one supplier.
Aucutt said: “Australia is a growing market in the UK. At the moment, there is no-one else who offers a similar service. I’d like to see our company established as the number one provider of this type of accommodation in the UK. We feel the bigger guys like Travel 2 and Austravel will catch on in a couple of years as they will feel the need to offer something similar in their brochures.”
Aussie Homes has embraced the Web as a marketing tool.
“More and more people have got Internet access. We need the site as we are getting enquiries in from around the world – even from the domestic Australian market – at different times of day and night,” said Aucutt.
He added: “Our brochure is just a reprint of our Web site. It was more cost-effective to spend the money on designing a Web site than to first design a brochure and then put it on the Web. The beauty of our target market is that people already know where they want to go, so we’ve no need to send them out a 30-page brochure.”
The site – www.aussie-home.com – carries pictures of each property with a price per week next to it. By filling in an enquiry form on-line, agents can check availability.
Aussie homes
Founded: May 1999.
General manager: Steve Aucutt.
Address: Paxton Lodge, London Road, Coventry, CV1 2JT.
Product: accommodation ranges from one-bedroom apartments to luxury penthouses in Australia. Around 150 properties in total.
Web site: www.aussie-home.com.
E-mail:sales@aussie-home.com.Reservations number: 01293 251125
Number of staff: three.
Commission: from 10%.
Trade sales/direct sales split: 50/50.