get2sicily banner - Cala Rosa, Favignana get2sicily banner - Cala Rosa, Favignana
Search web get2sicily
 
get2sicily.co.uk
unique holidays & villas

THIS PAGE IS NOT TRANSLATED


Welcome to get2sicily
Find out about our villas
Learn more about your unique holiday with us
Discover the culture, beaches, attractions and cuisine of Trapani
The many travel options to reach Trapani from all over Europe
Download our PDFs, buy books  featured on the site etc...
Read the great things our guests have said about us!
Get in touch with us now
A list of links to our partners and useful tourist sites


We are proud to be part of 10:10 - comitted to reducing our carbon footprint by at least 10% in 2010

We now also accept  Paypal payments
We are a Paypal Verified Site

Welcome - Our Villas - Your Holiday - Trapani Region - Travel Options - More Information - Feedback - Contact Us - Links
.

get2sicily Blog

Date

News Item
Date
Header
Story.
05/03/2010
Updated Local Partner Links
After a bit of PR work in early January, we have updated our local links section of the website with some new websites and businesses offering activities and services beneficial to our guests in the Marausa and Trapani areas. Although the Marina is temporarily offline, the rest now have either a website or email link to help you research and plan the days of your holiday much more in advance than before. All of our link partners are local businesses run by local people who are passionate about what they do. More links will be uploaded as the season picks up.
04/03/2010
We are now listed on the BonVon Rental Site
We have added our Villa Anna on BonVon.co.uk, which is a dynamic but ethical rental website, run by a British family. A nifty function is that you can create a short memorable URL for your advertisment page instead of a long alphanumeric one. We went for 'www.bonvon.co.uk/anna'. Click here to see that page at BonVon.
03/03/2010
Guest Documents Now Online!
After a long build up (drum roll please) we have launched our secure online portal for guests to download our famous exclusive 'Post Booking Literature' documents and massive archive of Tourist Board PDF brochures and maps we have accrued over the years. We have also added new scanned clippings from the press about Trapani and the West in our More Information section. All 2010 guests will have access at any time and we will no longer have to send out multiple bulky documents in several emails. Ahhhh.
01/03/2010

RyanairLettings Listings and the Competition
We are receiving massive numbers of visitors and a healthy number of enquiries via RL. Best of all, we are achieving a higher than average conversion rate. Not wanting to ride this wave alone, we have recently built friendly bridges with some of the local 'competition' advertising on RL listings, helping them translate their page into clearer English and promoting a more open spirit of helpful competition whereby we can learn from collective experience. See, we're more than just ethical!

20/02/2010
Overhaul for Villa Anna Page Content and Presentation
We are pleased to announce new photos have been added to the Villa Anna page and the whole set are now presented as a Flash gallery and slideshow. The text and layout plans have been updated to reflect the revised layout inside, particularly with regard to the first floor and we have added a totally new Villa Anna Summary Document that prospective guests can download for free. Villa May will get the same treatment later in the year once rennovation works are complete.
19/02/2010
Villa Anna Exterior Maintenance 80% Completed
The garden walls and exterior of the house are undergoing their 10 year maintenance and will shortly be finished. We've taken the opportunity to introduce 6 additional garden lights and 2 to the roof terrace, meaning you can use the garden and roof into the wee small hours of the summer. The kitchen has now been winterproofed and we have replaced all windows in the ground floor with lovely new wooden units with shutters. We have added more boardgames, DVDs and guidebooks to our library and made some modifications to the main shower to overcome the drainage issue after heavy use. Upstairs we have added additional internal lighting and an extra window to the rooftop bedroom suite and will be re-arranging the furniture soon to make better use of the accommodation. We've also started tweaking Villa May with a view to making it ready for rental later in the year. More news on that soon.
17/02/2010
Villa Anna User Manual Sketches Updated
With the maintenance works well underway, we realised that some of the sketches and pictures our post booking Villa Anna Manual needed updating. This has meant lots of pencil sketching and perspective drawing... and this time the 'boxset background noise' has been supplied by the Lovely Billie Piper and Dashing Christopher Ecclestone in Series 1 of Doctor Who. The sketches are done and now I have to work them and the new pictures of the modified kitchen and bathroom into a revised document. So it looks like Series 2 of Billie & the Blue Box boxset is calling me...
16/02/2010
We sign up to Getaway Earth Villa Rental Site
We have joined Getaway Earth, which bills itself as 'the future of holiday rentals'. They provide a meeting place for holiday home owners and holiday home renters with a twist. Not only can you read about Villa Anna and see photos on their site, but you can also read reviews of local attractions and facilities added by previous visitors. Click here to see our Villa Anna Getaway Earth page.
15/02/2010
RyanairLettings.com Goes Live (and so does our new advert page)
After a short delay (down to Michael O'Leary and Ryanair), Perfect Getaways launched their new RL site on 11th February 2010. After just 4 days, we are pleased to announce our first two bookings via the new portal! See our new advert on RL here.
10/01/2010
New Publicity on Ryanair Lettings & Perfect Getaways
With the demise of the RyanairVillas website, we are pleased to announce that we have signed up to its soon to be launched successor 'RyanairLettings'. The site will be run and managed by UK based 'Perfect Getaways' who will be showcasing our villa on their growing number of sites throughout 2010. The future is bright. The future is Trapani. See our new advert on PG here.
28/12/2009
Goodbye Unnecessary Entry Page!
We've been wondering why we had the old Entry page to the site for several months now, and today, after feedback from some helpful people in the business, we have decided to do away with our old friend the 'click here to enter the site' front page. The index page now points directly at the Welcome page and the language selection options have been transposed onto the yellow header beneath the existing language flags. All internal links have also been changed. Content on the front page has changed also and will be migrated onto the translated sites over the next few days.
09/12/2009
Trapani Region Pages Overhauled
Hot on the heels of improvements to our PDFs we have fully overhauled the cultural and historic heritage pages of the site with revised text and new images. While not as thorough as our post-booking literature, additional destinations have been added - as has a quick-reference symbol guide. Translated versions are in progress, marking a step towards the translation of our off-line PDFs too.
02/12/2009
New Post Booking Documents Drafted
Yay! We've nearly finished overhauling and rewriting our post-booking literature for 2010 (sample1, sample2). Instead of two documents we've expanded the range to include a detailed map guide to the region's beaches; a much more comprehensive tourist itinerary of cultural and historic heritage with pictures and maps; a full colour guide to finding your way to and around the villas and local area; and a essential information pack with a helpful language guide. These documents complement our existing information but will only be available to guests who book and pay a deposit. It is hoped that some translated versions will become available in the early part of 2010, depending on need.
28/11/2009
18 New Flight Routes to Trapani for 2010
Ryanair announce 18 more European routes to Trapani - taking the total to 32! Alitalia also modify schedules into Palermo from Rome. We're taking a booking every week for next year, so don't delay!
17/11/2009
Veranda & Kitchen Extension Plans Taking Shape
After much discussion and deliberation, we've decided on plans to extend Villa Anna in the new year. Click here to see sketches of the proposed changes. If approved by the Council, works will be finished by the end of March ready for the 2010 season.
16/11/2009

New Mobile Web Site Launched
We have launched a brand new mini website for users of handheld mobile internet devices. Designed to make our business accessible to users of the mobile web, the site is in clear English and provides basic information on what we do, where we do it and how visitors can find out more. From paper to screen in two hours, there was no need for a film to accompany the construction work this time - just the music of Lily Allen! Click here to explore the 6 page site.

12/11/2009
Our Last Guests of the 2009 Season Arrive
Our final guests of the year arrive from Malta. The season is over and it's been an incredibly busy year! We've begun taking bookings for next year already and are introducing improved levels of inclusive service for the 2010 season.
05/11/2009
6 Fully Translated European Sites Launched
After manual translation of the French and Italian pages, we used Google to help us translate the remaining sites into basic Swedish, Dutch, German and Maltese. We have also translated our 'How to Book' and prices documents in to these 7 languages. Throughout 2010, the number of translated documents will increase.
07/10/2009
More Positive Feedback from Guests
Our 81st and 82nd guests this year send us positive feedback and let us know that we are getting it right!
03/10/2009
Site Translations Begins...
Framework of pages and navigation for translated sites complete and tested. This time it's a selection of Roger Moore 007 movies that play in the background while the clicking, typing and masterwork is done...
And drags on.... (09/10/2009)
108 of the 130 foreign language pages now translated, link-checked and 'alt-tagged'. Only 30 pages left... There's only so much of Roger Moore's eyebrows one person can take!
24/09/2009
New Website Goes Live
We've done it! Fully rebuilt our website with improved navigation, legibility and content. Unlike the 2006 redesign, this site has been built from scratch. We've thought about what visitors want to read, tested it on a number of people and modified it after feedback. And we've also added a long needed search function! Farewell old site, you served us well...
15/09/2009
We Pledge to (Continue to) Reduce Our Carbon Footprint
We signed up to the 10:10 campaign to reduce our carbon footprint by 10% in 2010. We have been planting trees on our land since 1975 and continue to do so, alongside reducing our CO2 footprint in everything we do. We decide to build this policy into our website redesign for all to see on our new Sustainability page.
13/09/2009
Building of New Website Starts
After many weeks of scribbling on bits of paper and testing different styles of navigation we have finalised our Website Redesign. A fresh new look for 2010 and beyond is agreed with easier navigation, clearer text and a search function on every page. With the basic framework decided upon, we built the new page structure from scratch in one long, very tedious weekend while watching all four Die Hard movies and all three Back to the Future films...
20/07/2009
Some TLC For Our Website
After two months of analysing our web traffic statistics we decide that an overhaul is long overdue (the last one was in 2006). Despite the site being available in 8 languages, we notice that two are never used (Portugese & Spanish) but we are getting a lot of visits from Malta. Overall traffic has increased tenfold as a result of advertising with Ryanair and we consider optimising the existing site, but decide that a fresh start is what is needed. While the existing site is gradually re-orientated away from a static source of information about the villas, towards one that is regularly updated and explains what a holiday in Western Sicily has to offer, we read many HTML web-building manuals.
23/05/2009
Advertising on RyanairVillas
We decide to advertise with RyanairVillas and Euro Villas. Within hours, site traffic shoots through the roof and we are besieged with enquiries and bookings like never before! We revamp our contacts page and introduce a form to make it easier for guests to contact us from within our site. We set up auto replies and email on our mobiles to help us respond to enquiries within two hours. We translate the website into 7 other European languages


© Copyright get2sicily 2010

About Us
- Our Brochure - Sustainability - Feedback - FAQ
We are not responsible for the content
of external websites.