Facebook success delivers £180k in bookings for Keswick holiday cottage business

A holiday cottage letting firm based in Keswick, Cumbria, has generated over £180k in bookings through its Facebook page.

The founder of Sally’s Cottages, Sally Fielding, who used a mix of social media and online marketing to attract a six-figure fanbase on social networking site Facebook, has credited much of her business’ success to the availability of high-speed broadband.

Sally commented: “If we didn’t have the superfast connection we wouldn’t really have much of a business – it is absolutely critical. It’s reassuring knowing that you’ve got that reliability.

“When pretty much everything you do is online like our business you can’t afford to have the dead time when no one can get online because the internet has gone down. If we were to lose our broadband connection – we would be stuffed.”

She continued: “In the future we’re looking to move into video and having Google map style views inside the properties – to make the site more interactive.

“It’s the natural next step and something we can do with all the extra bandwidth we have now.”

Sally first signed up for superfast broadband when it came to Keswick in June 2014 as part of the Connecting Cumbria programme. Now, the area has 12 fibre cabinets providing connectivity to over 3,600 businesses and homes.

David Southward, the cabinet member responsible for economic development with Cumbria County Council, said: “Tourism is the lifeblood of the Lake District and, as the example of Sally’s Cottages shows, high-speed broadband is helping those businesses in tourism find a real competitive edge in this growing digital world.”

The North West regional director for telecoms giant BT, Mike Blackburn, explained that Cumbria is much more dependent on tourism than other parts of the UK.

High-speed broadband, he said, helps the sector’s businesses remain competitive, adding: “In 2014 visitors brought in £2.44bn to the region’s economy and the number of people in tourism jobs is around 20% of the county’s total employment.

“Together with our commercial programme, the Openreach fibre broadband network already reaches nearly 220k homes and businesses in Cumbria - and our army of engineers is rolling the network out even further.”