Mainland Britain’s most remote hotel, Garvault House, is situated on an UNESCO new world heritage site in the vast highlands of Scotland.
This exceptional property, as seen on Channel 4’s series ‘The World’s Most Secret Hotels’, has been owned by Adrian and Eva for the past seven years.
The Grass is Greener on the Other Side
Having been freetobook users since 2018, last year they began receiving calls from another booking software provider. Little Hotelier’s impressive sales team were insistent that they would be a better fit for Garvault House, and were very convincing with the many benefits they promised. Adrian and Eva were won over, but on reflection, Eva said, “Well, the guy who did the marketing was definitely a good salesman. Promised a lot of things, but only half of them could be kept in the end.”
Sadly, it’s a story we hear too often: flashy sales teams that swoop in promising the world without the real support that users actually need. Adrian and Eva gave Little Hotelier a go, but it began to dawn on them that they had made a mistake, “It grew slowly. There were quite a few issues with Little Hotelier, hidden costs were one of them. And there were a few other things, not so big, but adding up over time.”
Returning to freetobook
Throughout their brief time with Little Hotelier, Eva had kept a keen eye on freetobook’s innovations and launches, still tuning in for webinars to see freetobook’s developments, “There’s constantly an effort to make things better. A lot of work has been done in the one year we were with Little Hotelier.” Referring to the launch of freetobook’s new bloom booking pages and webinars on features such as Messaging, “It’s great that there is always a development, there is always something new coming out.” This confirmed her realisation, “I thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to change.” So, they swiftly made the decision to return to freetobook.
When asked to compare freetobook to Little Hotelier, Eva shared, “Little Hotelier is worldwide, a big thing. Freetobook is a more personal, smaller thing. I think for what we need, the personal one is probably the better one.
Little Hotelier has a lot of possibilities to do statistics, but this is something the big companies need. Little Hotelier is more suited for corporate places, I think. And when somebody calls to book, it is easier with freetobook than it was with Little Hotelier – it’s faster.”
Looking Ahead
Looking ahead, when asked what they’re looking forward to for Garvault House, Eva shared, “We have started to do art classes, and I’m very happy that they go well. It’s just ideal if you want to detox from all electronics and do something else.
With freetobook, I still need to set up Stripe and the automatic Messaging, so I’m looking forward to the day when that’s done and I can say, “Okay, now we have what we want to have.””
