The Holiday Property Coach

The Holiday Property Coach Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from The Holiday Property Coach, Coach, Court House Farm, Dursley.

The Holiday Property Coach | Strategic Growth for Women in Short-Term Rentals - Helping ambitious women in the short-term rental industry scale smarter, grow stronger, and create a business and life they love.

You manage 40 properties, you're fully booked through summer, and your phone hasn't stopped ringing.On paper, it looks l...
22/09/2026

You manage 40 properties, you're fully booked through summer, and your phone hasn't stopped ringing.

On paper, it looks like a thriving business.

A buyer would see something very different.

Revenue tells you how busy you are. Systems tell you what you're worth.

I learned this over the years I spent building, and eventually selling, a 175-property business.

When it came time to sell, nobody asked how many bookings I'd taken. They asked whether the business ran without me in it.

That is a very different question.

A business that needs you to function isn't an asset. It's a dependency.

I call it the Founder Dependency Trap. The value of the whole thing sits locked inside you, rather than inside the structure you've built around it.

You'll recognise it if any of these feel familiar:

You've had your best revenue year ever, but every booking still runs through you personally.

You take a week off and spend it answering guest messages from the beach.

The moment you imagine stepping away, you realise nothing would run without you making the calls.

That's a job with your name on it, and it isn't what a buyer wants.

The metrics that feel like success (a full calendar, a busy phone, a growing property count) are often the ones that suppress your sale price. They tell a buyer how much of the operation lives in your head.

This is fixable. It starts with quietly, deliberately, taking yourself out of the centre of everything.

So here is the question worth sitting with this summer.

If you stepped away for a month, would your business notice? 👇

Last week I released one more place for our Women in STR Leadership retreat in Marbella, 11 - 15 Nov.While I was in Madr...
21/09/2026

Last week I released one more place for our Women in STR Leadership retreat in Marbella, 11 - 15 Nov.

While I was in Madrid at GuestyVal, someone snapped it up.

But this time it wasn't a woman operator booking the place for herself.

It was a male CEO booking it for a member of his management team.

Not because she asked.

Because he sees her potential, and he wants to invest in her leadership development.

That made my STR heart sing.

Over 18 years I scaled to 175 properties, and one thing I learned is that you don't scale on your own effort forever. You scale on the strength of the people around you.

A business that depends entirely on the founder is a fragile one.

A business full of leaders who can think, decide, and grow is a valuable one.

This CEO understands that.

He knows investing in his team's leadership isn't a nice-to-have.

It's the thing that lets a business grow beyond him.

We talk a lot about women lifting other women in this industry, and rightly so.

But it's worth saying clearly that the male allies who back the women on their teams, who spend real money on their development, who make room for them to grow, are part of this too.

That's the kind of leadership that actually scales a business.

If you're building something you want to grow, who on your team are you investing in to lead it with you? 👇

Do you worry that your competitors are watching what you do and copying your business services?This has been a conversat...
21/09/2026

Do you worry that your competitors are watching what you do and copying your business services?

This has been a conversation I have had with clients over the last few years with an even more competitive STR market and squeezed margins , the pressure is on to attract customers.

When you work in the same space as many “similar” STR operators, people will notice your successful initiatives.

Some may even try to replicate them.

But they cannot replicate your secret sauce.

They don’t have your experience.

They haven’t built your relationships.

They don’t have your reputation, visibility or market trust.

And, most importantly, they cannot be you.

When you truly understand your market and build a trusted brand with a clear message, the right customers are naturally attracted to you.

Whether they discover you through an AI search, a recommendation or a referral, they should immediately feel:

“This business understands what I need. I’ve landed in the right place.”

That confidence comes from clearly communicating the transformational value you deliver not simply competing on price.

Because customers who only compare on price are rarely the customers you want.

“Never buy bad business” has always been one of my number-one rules.

Work with customers whose values and goals align with yours.

Build a clear partnership plan, with agreed responsibilities, expectations and deliverables from the outset.

That is how you stand out from your competition:

ATTRACT the right customers.

ALIGN your values, goals and expectations.

DELIVER the transformation you promised.

Your competitors might copy an initiative.

But they can never copy the experience, trust and value behind your brand.

Are you confident in your secret sauce or are you still looking over your shoulder at the competition?

21/09/2026

My take aways from attending GuestyVal in Madrid

Do you worry that your competitors are watching what you do and copying your business services?This has been a conversat...
18/09/2026

Do you worry that your competitors are watching what you do and copying your business services?

This has been a conversation I have had with clients over the last few years with an even more competitive STR market and squeezed margins , the pressure is on to attract customers.

When you work in the same space as many “similar” STR operators, people will notice your successful initiatives.

Some may even try to replicate them.

But they cannot replicate your secret sauce.

They don’t have your experience.

They haven’t built your relationships.

They don’t have your reputation, visibility or market trust.

And, most importantly, they cannot be you.

When you truly understand your market and build a trusted brand with a clear message, the right customers are naturally attracted to you.

Whether they discover you through an AI search, a recommendation or a referral, they should immediately feel:

“This business understands what I need. I’ve landed in the right place.”

That confidence comes from clearly communicating the transformational value you deliver not simply competing on price.

Because customers who only compare on price are rarely the customers you want.

“Never buy bad business” has always been one of my number-one rules.

Work with customers whose values and goals align with yours.

Build a clear partnership plan, with agreed responsibilities, expectations and deliverables from the outset.

That is how you stand out from your competition:

ATTRACT the right customers.

ALIGN your values, goals and expectations.

DELIVER the transformation you promised.

Your competitors might copy an initiative.

But they can never copy the experience, trust and value behind your brand.

Are you confident in your secret sauce or are you still looking over your shoulder at the competition?

You can imitate a style. But you can't copy the years of work that built the brand behind it.Following my recent post ab...
14/09/2026

You can imitate a style. But you can't copy the years of work that built the brand behind it.

Following my recent post about protecting your brand in a world of AI and online fraud, there's another side to brand protection.

What happens when another business in your space starts to look remarkably similar to yours?

Because your brand isn't just a logo or a set of colours.

It's your reputation.

Your relationships.

Your experience.

Your story.

And, most importantly, the trust you've earned.

A great example is Skol Apartments Marbella.

When another local business began using branding that felt very similar, Daniela Derin and Vincenzo didn't abandon what they'd spent years building.

They made their brand even more recognisable.

They increased their visibility, put themselves at the heart of their marketing, and strengthened the human connection behind the business.

And that's an important lesson.

In an AI world where content and visuals can be replicated in seconds, YOU are one part of your brand that cannot be copied.

So protect your identity. Document your brand history. Tell your story. Show your face. Communicate what makes you different.

And if someone starts looking a little too similar?

Don't make your brand smaller. Make it stronger.

Your brand is an asset. Treat it like one.

Have you ever experienced another business adopting branding that felt uncomfortably close to yours? 👇

A guest messaged an owner I know last week to confirm the deposit before she paid it.Good instinct. The listing wasn't t...
12/09/2026

A guest messaged an owner I know last week to confirm the deposit before she paid it.

Good instinct. The listing wasn't theirs.

Someone had lifted the property photos, copied the description almost word for word, and built a fake listing to collect deposits from guests who thought they were booking the real thing.

The guest nearly paid. The owner never saw a penny of it. And their name was attached to a scam they had nothing to do with.

This happens more than most operators realise.

Here's how it works. Fraudsters scrape your best images, your website copy, even your branding, and rebuild it on a fake listing or a cloned site. To a guest scrolling quickly, it looks legitimate. Same photos. Same words. Same feel.

They take the deposit. The guest arrives to a property that was never available, or a door that never opens.

Two things get stolen at once. The revenue from a booking that should have been yours. And the trust in a brand you spent years building.

You can't stop someone screenshotting a photo. But you can make yourself harder to copy and quicker to catch it.

A few things worth doing:

Watermark your images with your brand, subtly but clearly.

Run a Google reverse image search on your own photos every so often, and see where they turn up.

Set up alerts for your business name and property names.

Report fake listings to the platform and the domain host the moment you find one.

Tell guests where the only legitimate place to book actually is.

None of this is glamorous. It's housekeeping. But it protects the two things that are hardest to rebuild once they're gone.

Trust takes years to build and literally seconds to damage - don't let someone do that to your STR brand.

You can copy a colour palette. You can imitate a style. But you can’t copy the years of work that built the brand behind...
10/09/2026

You can copy a colour palette. You can imitate a style. But you can’t copy the years of work that built the brand behind it.

Following on from my recent post about protecting your brand identity in a world of AI, online fraud and increasingly sophisticated scams, I’ve been thinking about another side of brand protection.

What happens when someone starts using branding that looks remarkably similar to yours?
Not necessarily a fake website.

Not necessarily someone pretending to be you.

But a business operating in the same space, using a very similar combination of colours, typography and visual style.

It can be uncomfortable to raise, particularly when you’ve spent years building your own identity.

Because your brand is not just a logo.

It’s the trust you’ve built.
The reputation you’ve earned.
The relationships you’ve developed.
The money you’ve invested.
The content you’ve created.
The experience your clients associate with your business.

And when another business starts to look very similar, there is a genuine concern that potential clients may become confused about who they are engaging with, or assume there is a connection between the two businesses.

In a world where AI makes it easier than ever to replicate content, imagery and visual identities, brand recognition and trust are becoming even more valuable.

That doesn’t mean every similarity is deliberate. Colours and design styles are not automatically exclusive to one business, and sometimes people simply don’t realise how close their branding has become to someone else’s.

But I do think we should be having more conversations about originality, professional courtesy and respecting the work that goes into building a business.

A great example of this is Skol Apartments Marbella.

Daniela Derin and Vincenzo have spent many years building the Skol Apartments Marbella brand.

They have invested time, energy and creativity into developing its reputation and creating a strong connection with their guests and the wider market.

When another local company in Marbella began using a brand identity that felt very similar, they didn’t sit back and allow their market position to be diluted.

Instead, they pushed harder on visibility.
They made the people behind the brand more visible.

They showed up more consistently. They put their faces at the centre of their marketing and made it clear who had built the business, developed the reputation and created the experience associated with Skol Apartments Marbella.

Now, their faces appear across much of the content they promote. There is no doubt that Daniela and Vincenzo are the real people behind the brand and that they are the people guests associate with Skol Apartments Marbella.

They didn’t try to hide from the challenge.

They strengthened the human connection behind the brand.

That is an important lesson.

Your visual identity matters, but so does your visibility as the person behind the business.

When people know who you are, what you stand for and the work you have put into building your reputation, it becomes much harder for someone else to replicate the trust you have earned.
Daniela and Vincenzo have kindly permitted me to share their experience as an example.

If you find yourself in a similar position, my advice would be to:

• Keep dated evidence of your branding and how it has evolved.
• Check what elements of your brand you have actually protected.
• Look at the overall identity, rather than just one colour or font.
• Consider whether there is any genuine risk of customer confusion.
• Make the people behind your brand more visible.
• Continue communicating your history, experience and point of difference.
• Have a calm, private conversation before making public accusations.
• Seek specialist IP advice if you believe your rights are being infringed.

And perhaps most importantly, don’t feel you have to abandon the brand you’ve spent years building simply because someone else has adopted a similar look.

Make your brand stronger. Make your story clearer.

Make the people behind it more visible.
Your brand is an asset. Treat it like one.

For those of you building and scaling short-term rental businesses, this is another reminder that brand protection should be part of your wider business strategy, not something you only think about when a problem appears.

When did you last check whether your brand was being used somewhere without your permission?Most STR operators I talk to...
10/09/2026

When did you last check whether your brand was being used somewhere without your permission?

Most STR operators I talk to have never looked.

They assume brand theft happens to bigger businesses. It doesn't. Copied listings, stolen photos, cloned social accounts and imitated names happen at every size, and often to the operators doing the best work.

So here's a brand audit you can run today. It takes an afternoon.

Start with the theft and fraud side.

Reverse image search your best property photos. Drop them into Google Images and see where else they turn up. You'll sometimes find your own villas advertised by someone who has never set foot in them.

Watermark the images you publish going forward. A discreet mark in the corner is enough to make your photos harder to steal and easier to prove.

Set up alerts for your business name and property names. A simple Google Alert tells you when your brand appears somewhere new.

Monitor the platforms directly. Search your name on the OTAs and on social. Look for cloned accounts and duplicate listings.

Know the reporting route before you need it. Every OTA and social platform has one. Find it now so you're not scrambling later.

Now the identity side, which most people skip entirely.

Look into trademarking your business name and logo. It's less expensive than owners assume, and it's the difference between asking someone to stop and being able to make them.

Document your brand assets in one place. Logo files, fonts, colours, photography, tone. If it lives only in your head or your designer's inbox, you don't really own it.

Be the visible face of your business. When people can see the person behind the brand, imitations look exactly like what they are.

I ran 175 properties over 25+ years in Cyprus and the UK. The brand was one of the most valuable things I sold, and it was valuable because it was protected.

You don't build a brand worth stealing by accident. You build it on purpose, and then you defend it.

When did you last audit yours? 👇

I've written the full checklist up on the blog, link in the comments.

You can copy a colour palette. You can imitate a style. But you can’t copy the years of work that built the brand behind...
10/09/2026

You can copy a colour palette. You can imitate a style. But you can’t copy the years of work that built the brand behind it.

Following my recent post about protecting your brand in a world of AI and online fraud, there’s another side to brand protection…

What happens when another business in your space starts to look remarkably similar to yours?

Because your brand isn’t just a logo or a set of colours.

It’s your reputation.
Your relationships.
Your experience.
Your story.
And, most importantly, the trust you’ve earned.

A great example is Skol Apartments Marbella.

When another local business began using branding that felt very similar, Daniela Derin and Vincenzo didn’t abandon what they’d spent years building.

They made their brand even more recognisable.

They increased their visibility, put themselves at the heart of their marketing and strengthened the human connection behind the business.

And that’s an important lesson.

In an AI world where content and visuals can be replicated in seconds, YOU are one part of your brand that cannot be copied.

So protect your identity. Document your brand history. Tell your story. Show your face. Communicate what makes you different.

And if someone starts looking a little too similar?

Don’t make your brand smaller. Make it stronger.

Your brand is an asset. Treat it like one.

Have you ever experienced another business adopting branding that felt uncomfortably close to yours?

DirectBookings

Address

Court House Farm
Dursley
GL11

Telephone

+441453542645

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Holiday Property Coach posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category