Friday 22 February 2013

ShortStay-London.com

I began the web site http://www.shortstay-london.com, according to www.whois.com (the registry of web site information) in May 2002.  I had a site before that, so really I started in 2000.   That is reassuring as 'old' is 'good', according to google, which rewards the site with a better ranking as a result.  It means it is well-established and solid.  

If shortstay-london.com had a mission statement, it would be fairly unpretentious, eg "to recommend my apartments and to provide information on prices and availability on a range of other good quality serviced apartments in London".  

"My apartments", that I primarily manage, include those in Canary Riverside and London Bridge.  These are good flats.  Without repeating the whole listings, which are linked to below, the Canary Riverside flats were built and designed to 'American standards', which in 2000 was bigger, better, solid and quite expensive.  The Canary Riverside development is unique on Canary Wharf because it is the one residential complex that is on the riverside and also has the look and feel of the central buildings of the Wharf, with their high class design and high maintenance values.  The riverboat calls on the riverside just down the stairs, where there are several restaurants with attractive views upriver to the City.  The quality comes with convenience, being about 3-4 minutes walk from Westferry DLR, which is 5 minutes from Bank, and 6-7 minutes walk from Canary Wharf tube, which is about 15 minutes from the West End etc on the Jubilee Line.  It is an energising feeling to arrive in the Canary Wharf tube station and there are lots of shops including Waitrose, Tesco etc and lots of clothes and jewelry shops and restaurants, and clubs, catering to the large population of workers and residents.  Canary Riverside suffers a little from the reputation of Canary Wharf as being not in the centre of London, but that is a little bit of a state of mind really when you look at the minutes to travel to various places.  Some people say it is too business like and some don't go for the highly manicured environment.  As I say, I find it energising and convenient, and when you are exhausted in London, that is a bonus.  I would like to let the flats long term with a cleaning service, but I will also take shorter stays.  We think the cleaning service is important to maintain the standard of the flat.  (There is a laundrette on site that we use, that is also convenient...)

Here are the links to the Canary Riverside flats:
http://www.shortstay-london.com/apts.php?ID=198
http://www.shortstay-london.com/apts.php?ID=9

The London Bridge flats are also good.  They are well located for business stays, if you are working in or around the City.  They are good for families, with queensize and 2 single beds, sofabed, and two bathrooms.  And they're good for short stays because you can, as they say, fall out of bed and start walking to many of the main London attractions within 5-10 minutes: Tower Bridge, Tate Modern, South Bank and many more.

Here are the links to the London Bridge flats:
http://www.shortstay-london.com/apts.php?ID=100
http://www.shortstay-london.com/apts.php?ID=6

Interestingly, in ID 6 we have just changed the heating system to 'far infra red' ceiling heaters (made by InfraRAY) giving a 'sun-like' feel to the heat and a better quality of air - less drying etc.

The second part of the proposed 'mission statement' is to provide information on other flats.  I have done a lot of work on researching availability.  Prices are generally set once a year but availability is a constant stream of changing data and it is quite a process to gather this for apartments - there are systems dealing with the more 'fungible' situation of hotel rooms, but apartments tend to be unique, each one different, sometimes grouped (like 6-12 apartments in a building), and the companies or people owning them do not subscribe to a central system of availability.  Still, I like programming and have been able to report on the shortstay-london site availability of many groups of apartments.  At the moment, there is a series of links on the home page: http://www.shortstay-london.com.

Some availability is shown on a calendar, in a static way.  Otherwise, availability is shown in response to a query on specific dates, and then the system can report available or not taking account of minimum stays and the interval before arrival etc, ie it is dynamic, changing availability with the details of the enquiry.  Where it is static, I can update the shortstay-london.com site calendar, where it is dynamic I can only repeat the answer on a specific set of dates.  To merge these methods into one answer to the user is a fairly complex task.

published by john@shortstay-london.com

4 comments:

ioannes said...

This blog is now at the main site: http://www.shortstay-london.com/WP/

ioannes said...

Please refer to http://www.shortstay-london.com/WP/ for more blog postings on serviced short stay apartments in London. Email: john@shortstay-london.com here.

ioannes said...

Link that: My new bog post is here: http://www.shortstay-london.com/WP/. Thanks!

This is the new ShortStay-London site, one of the oldest established holiday rental sites for short term London apartments, from john@shortstay-london.com. See Recent Posts for listings of some of the apartments. We are working on adding better widgets, like better Search etc but making progress! Our focus is on highlighting the best serviced short term London apartments for business or vacations. The original shortstay-london.com site has about 1500 listings and we’re in the process of reviewing and moving them over to this more modern, eg mobile friendly, format.

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