A great prize offering this spring! Win a fantastic stay for you and 3 guests in the charming Rocklands in Newquay!

How does a short break in one of our premier developments sound to banish those winter blues? Rocklands sits in a striking location overlooking the Newquay coastline, with a chic, contemporary feel and a host of fun activities to be enjoyed in this cosmopolitan surfer’s haven. One of our most popular developments, it is ideal for a fun activity break in this fabulous corner of the world.

And you could be enjoying a fantastic short break in one of these fantastic properties courtesy of Blue Chip Holidays! The affiliate who generates the most Rocklands sales will be rewarded with a 3 night stay at this fantastic development!

T’s and C’s:

• The winner will be the affiliate making the most confirmed sales for each property between 21.01.11 and 28.02.11
• The bookings must be for stays arriving between 22.01.11 and 31.12.11 to qualify
• The prize is a short break in selected apartments at Rocklands, and must take place in 2011 (excluding school and public holidays)
• Prize cannot be exchanged for cash.
• The winner must agree to Blue Chip’s standard booking terms and conditions and complete a booking form.
• The winners chosen dates are subject to availability.

Best of luck for this great prize!

This is obviously going to have some implications for you! We’ll be switching to www.bluechipholidays.co.uk as of 9.00am 4th OCTOBER 2010, so any links coming into our site will need to be changed to this domain. As of 9.30 am on this day, a new datafeed with the new correct URL’s will be uploaded to our merchant area on A Win and it is strongly advised you work from this from that point onwards. Any bespoke requirements can be met by this time, so please send me an outline of what you would need and I’ll send that over to you as soon as the new domain goes live.

The change of name obviously brings with it a change of logo, so all current banners will be replace with fresh ones, complete with more relevant images and up to date text, and will showcase some of our new locations, including the Isle of Wight and Wales.

Why change?

We’ve been through an extensive rebranding process, and after hours of meetings, county-wide focus groups and much deliberation; the new name was decided on. The feedback we got was positive on the Blue Chip front-conveying an idea of quality and luxury, but the “vacations”, combined with our current “.com” status, was leading many customers to believe we were not based in the UK, with a decidedly American feel, which was putting off potential customers. It is hoped that the change will result in a more consistent image, which, combined with our new “.co.uk” suffix, will encourage customer confidence and thus increase our conversion rates.

If you want any further information on this, or any advice on the switch, please don’t hesitate to get in touch on 01803 881020 or on MSN: anthonybcv@hotmail.co.uk.

2 great prizes on offer this summer! Win a short break for you and 5 guests in the beautiful At the Beach, Torcross! Or a fantastic stay for you and 3 guests in the charming Rocklands in Newquay!How does a short break in one of our premier developments sound? Well we have not one but two great prizes on offer for you this summer! Nestled in the tranquil village of Torcross, At the Beach sits in the middle of 3 miles of shingle beach where you will also find a cosy pub and cafes. Slapton Ley freshwater Nature Reserve is also close by and is perfect for spotting wildlife and birdwatching. The affluent sailing town of Dartmouth is a short drive away, as is Salcombe, with both offering a choice of fine restaurants, cafes, bars, unique shops and attractions. Rocklands sits in a striking location overlooking the Newquay coastline, with a chic, contemporary feel and a host of fun activities to be enjoyed in this cosmopolitan surfer’s haven. One of our most popular developments, it is ideal for a fun activity break in this fabulous corner of the world.

And you could be enjoying a fantastic short break in one of these fantastic properties courtesy of Blue Chip Vacations! The affiliate who generates the most sales for At the Beach will win a short break there, while the affiliate who generates the most Rocklands sales will be rewarded with a stay at Rocklands!

T’s and C’s:

• The winner will be the affiliate making the most confirmed sales for each property between 25.06.10 and 30.09.10
• The bookings must be for stays arriving between 01.07.10 and 31.12.11 to qualify
• The prize is a short break in selected properties in At the Beach, Torcross or selected apartments at Rocklands, Newquay and must take place between 01.10.09 and 25.03.11 (excluding 23.10.10-29.10.10 and the Christmas and New Year period).
• Prize cannot be exchanged for cash.
• The winner must agree to Blue Chip’s standard booking terms and conditions and complete a booking form.
• The winners chosen dates are subject to availability.

Best of luck for this great prize!

To mark the fantastic 20% off discount this July, Blue Chip Vacations have released a new set of banner creatives!  Everything displayed here can be downloaded from the Blue Chip Vacations Merchant Area on Affiliate Window. Should you require specific sizes, just drop me a line!

Hope this deal works out really well for you, if you want any more info please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

With this in mind, we are launching the very first Blue Chip Vacations Affiliate Survey, something we are aiming to do every year from now on. We’d love you to take 5 minutes to answer the 13 questions and let us know what you like and what you don’t, how you think we could make the experience better for you!

Please be completely honest, even if you’ve signed up and not taken it any further, we’d love to hear what could entice you to get more involved with our programme. We won’t be sharing this information with any third parties, but anything we think may be valuable could be passed on to Affiliate Window.

To take part in the survey, click here.

I really hope you find time to complete this; we will be acting on your feedback!

Look forward to hearing from you.

Anthony

The Zapcats Grand Prix comes to Newquay

Secure a Newquay booking and you could win a fantastic Zapcats holiday experience!

With a great start to 2010 under our belt, Blue Chip Vacations have teamed up with Zapcats Grand Prix to present its affiliates with a fantastic competition offer!

How does a 3 night stay for you and three friends in cosmopolitan surfer’s haven Newquay, as a VIP guest, sound?

Any affiliate sales made for a Newquay property for a 2010 holiday booked between now and 9 April 2010 will automatically be put into a prize draw to win a fantastic holiday experience with Blue Chip Vacations. The lucky winner will enjoy a 3 night stay for themselves and up to 5 guests in the luxurious Pentire Mews. These stunning individually designed apartments are a mere 5 minute walk from Fistral Beach. But that’s not all; we’re throwing in VIP access to the racing teams, a chance to meet the stars of the show; the drivers, and even the chance to be driven around Fistral Bay in a Zapcat! If that wasn’t enough, we’ll even treat you to a meal at the charming Fistral Blu during one of the race days for you and your party, a great spot to enjoy the legendary waves of Fistral Beach. This really is a prize that money can’t buy for one lucky affiliate to enjoy!

Zapcats Racing

What are Zapcats?

The Blue Chip Newquay Zapcats Grand Prix is one of the most hotly anticipated events in the speedboat racing calendar. An adrenaline fuelled boat race around Fistral Bay, this fantastic spectacle will be a real hot ticket this April. Originating in South Africa in the 1980’s, these lightweight inflatable catamarans are propelled by a 50 hp engine and can reach speeds of up to 50mph. Now in its 10th year, the race will be arriving into Fistral Beach, Newquay in late April. And one lucky winner will be a part of it!

How do I qualify?

Any booking for Newquay will be included in the prize draw, regardless of the length of stay or when the stay takes place – so there are lots of opportunities to make sales that qualify you for a place in the draw! To help you promote this, we will shortly be launching a set of new creatives based on the event to spread the word, and why not check out our dedicated Blue Chip Newquay site for more inspiration? In conjunction with this, we are also running a similar competition for all customers who book Newquay breaks, an ideal way to ensure more of your click-throughs convert. For more information on this offer, see the Blue Chip Newquay website. A dedicated landing page for this offer has also been created to aid your promotions.

Competitions terms and conditions:
- The winner will be drawn at random on April 12th 2010
- Each confirmed sale generated between 18.02.10 and 09.04.10 for stays in Newquay will equal one ticket for the draw.
- The prize is a 3 night stay at Pentire Mews for you and up to 5 guests, VIP area access, a meal at Fistral Blu for you and your party, a trip for 1 in a Zapcat at 10am on 23.04.10.
- The prize cannot be exchanged for cash.
- A list of entrants for the draw will be available on request.

We do ask our affiliates to please observe our PPC guidelines when promoting Blue Chip Vacations, please see Affiliate Window for details.

So get driving your Newquay sales to be in with a chance of winning this amazing prize! Remember, the more sales you achieve, the better your chance of heading to Newquay this April, courtesy of Blue Chip Vacations!

Best of luck!

Earn extra commission with Blue Chip Vacations this February

After a record breaking January, Blue Chip Vacations have decided to say thank you to all you affiliates with its latest incentive! If you secure 10 confirmed bookings in February you will automatically go onto the increased commission rate of 6% for the rest of the month. So there couldn’t be a better time to start driving your Blue Chip Vacations’ sales!
With an average booking value of around £700, you could be pocketing £40 per sale you make for us! Now is a fantastic time for sales, with so many of us fancying a sunny summer break in an idyllic South Western retreat. In addition to this, our new website has just launched, offering visitors a more user friendly viewing experience.

Plus, we are running a number of fantastic special offers, including:

The free Coast subscription offer
Any booking for May or October comes complete with a 12 month subscription to the fantastic Coast magazine!
Voucher code: “COAST10”
Deeplink: http://www.bluechipvacations.com/calendar/free-subscription-to-coast-magazine.html

Up to 50% off at the stunning Cary Arms until late March 2010
Prices halved until March 31st at these exclusive luxury seaside cottages.
Deeplink: http://www.bluechipvacations.com/special-offers-on-holiday-cottages-and-apartments/the-cary-arms-from-755pw.htmlas

As well as a host of last minute offers!
Find all the best deals for the next four weeks in our last minute section!
Deeplink: http://www.bluechipvacations.com/lastminute.html!

2010 has been heralded as the year of the staycation so what better time to start boosting your sales!

Also, it is essential that you keep your listings up to date, as the owners of the properties we no longer represent become understandably upset when they still appear on your websites. We try to update the CSV as regularly as possible, with the most recent being uploaded just yesterday. Should you require a list of withdrawn properties from the last year, please do not hesitate to contact us at affiliate@bluechipvacations.com.

Wishing you the best of luck in achieving your 10 sales and a fantastic February for all our affiliates!

Following a comprehensive usability and user experience study by Foolproof, Blue Chip have made some big changes to the look and feel of the main site; as well as improving functionality and navigation for a more user-centric approach.

What does it mean for you?

Well first of all you don’t need to change your links. The new site has been fully tested and all affiliate tracking and click-append to remove the main phone number are working correctly as for the old site. All the changes are aimed at improving customer experience at whatever stage of their holiday planning journey – from fact finding about the area to comparing features of individual properties. The big picture is that this should help in the decision making process and lead ultimately to increased online bookings and improved conversion rates.

The slides below indicate the changes that have been made to the site and the benefits that these changes should have.

The Home Page

Blue Chip Vacations' Home page changes

The changes to the home page are largely cosmetic, with a new cleaner look and feel. In addition we have introduced new ways to search for a property, breaking down by holiday type for those browsers without a particular area in mind.

Search results page

Blue Chip Vacations: Search results page

The search results pages now include a horizontal search box allowing the user to amend their search criteria on the page. It more clearly shows the choices that they have already made and offers further options for refining their search.

We have also introduced a shortlist function to the search results page, allowing users to save their favourite properties while they browse others and to compare their property choices before making a final decision.

Town Landing page

Blue Chip Vacations: Town Landing Page

The changes to the town, area and county pages include a written introduction to that place, large image banners and a brief introduction to Blue Chip. These pages can all be deeplinked to and may provide more appropriate alternative landing pages to the home page for much affiliate traffic. The changes to content and layout of these pages means that they should work out of context of the rest of the site; they do not assume that the visitor has any prior knowledge of either the area or Blue Chip, and so should provide a smoother journey and reduce bounce rates.

Property Page

Blue Chip Vacations: New Property Page

The property pages have undergone perhaps the most radical overhaul. Blue Chip are particularly proud of their property images – all of which are commissioned by professional photographers. To make the most of them, the lead display image is now much larger than previously, and any interaction with the images will generate a full screen lightbox slideshow of all the images.

Other big changes to this page include:

Pricing and Availability tab

Blue Chip Vacations: Property pricing and availability tab

Hopefully this summary of the changes to the Blue Chip Vacations website has been useful and we think you will agree that they will be beneficial to improving conversion rates.

If you have any feedback on the new site or would like to discuss working with Blue Chip in the future, please get in touch at affiliates@bluechipvacations.com or feel free to leave a comment.

I have included a sample here to give you a taste of what the new banners look like, and these and some further sizes can all be downloaded from the Blue Chip Merchant area on Affiliate Window.

If you need any specific sizes, please get in touch to arrange.

Earn an extra £10 on your first sale in February

First Sale Bonus

Are you new to the Blue Chip Affiliate programme?  OR have you signed up but not got around to doing any promotions? Well now is a fantastic time to start working with us and to make your first sale for Blue Chip!

February is always a very busy booking time here at Blue Chip; people are looking ahead to Easter and summer holidays, and average order values stand at over £700.  Standard commission is 5% on every confirmed sale, but throughout February we will be awarding an additional £10 bonus for those affiliates making their first sale for Blue Chip Vacations.

Remember you can’t direct link to Blue Chip from PPC ads on UK search engines, but there are a whole host of other ways to work with Blue Chip.  The datafeed on ShopWindow in upto date and we have just posted some brand new banner creative in a variety of sizes and styles.  If you need a bespoke datafeed, additional images or video creative, or would like to discuss having an exclusive discount then please contact us directly and we should be able to sort something out for you.

So what’s stopping you???