The idea originally stemmed on one of those balmy hot nights in France when our directors, 3 brothers Chris, Pete and Stephen Harrison, were enjoying a meal and some wine back in 1997. Chris has rental properties in France (for 15 years), and wanted to extend his letting season by reaching a wider market without incurring expensive advertising costs. Pete had internet experience and the web seemed the perfect medium to solve Chris's problem - Stephen was good at pouring wine - so, after another glass or two - FranceDirect was born!

www.francedirect.co.uk was launched in 1998, with it's first 25 properties mostly from similar owners looking for a good deal - and we now have over 1500 properties throughout France.

Back in 1998 there were few websites available and advertising costs were still too high for many property owners. The philosophy for FranceDirect was always to keep costs at a minimum.

We also had a concern that the new website companies all relied on the search engines or just 'pot-luck' - so the chances of holiday-makers actually finding the website on the internet was extremely low. Very few of the internet companies seemed to be spending money on advertising their websites in the UK national press. FranceDirect however was committed to developing its reputation based upon good quality advertising rather than relying upon the search engines.

It is a question that all property owners should ask of any internet company they are thinking of advertising with - 'how much do you spend on advertising your website and where?'

At Francedirect we publish our advertising schedule on the website - so you can see our adverts in the UK weekend press, including the Mail on Sunday, Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times, and the Guardian on Saturdays - very few of our competitors do this. We also offer one of the only sites where the availability is maintained to ensure you are not being pestered by inquiries for weeks already booked and get the inquiries you want.

As a result Francedirect gets over 40,000 hits a month on the website. However we believe this is quite an old fashioned way of measuring success. We now prefer to measure our success on the actual numbers of inquiries that you will receive for your available weeks - and we now average approx 35 inquiries per property - a superb record (and don't forget this is an average across all our 1500 properties)

In 2001 we purchased the domain name www.francedirect.com and re-launched the website with an improved design, better search capacities and even more properties.

Using contacts within the industry we were able to invite Tour Operators and other suppliers to advertise on the site. This makes the website more useful as prospective clients can now book their holiday home, their ferry, travel insurance and car hire if needed. At some of the lowest rates available.

In January 2003, FranceDirect launched its first magazine, offering owner another cost effective way of advertising there property (Click here). We hope that this will be a regular way of hitting even more holiday makers.

We hope you join Francedirect and remain with us as we develop and grow. Good luck with your bookings, and please don't hesitate to contact us at owners@francedirect.com