It’s like blast from the past week here on the Loquax Blog. Firstly we were back writing about automated competition entry services and now we’re going to be back about win a house competitions. Remember them? They were all the rage a few years ago when people thought that they could sell their homes in raffles. Admittedly one or two of them worked including the most famous of them – Oldborough Retreat. The success of Oldborough Retreat’s competition sparked plenty of similar competitions, although many fell foul of The Gambling Commission and were shut down. Others just failed miserably and hardly any actually reached a point where the houses were given out as prizes. Over time the Win A House craze faded away in nothingness.
Win A Hotel In A Raffle
According to The Mirror Gordon and Blossom Hoyles, who have appeared on Four In A Bed, are giving away their hotel in a raffle. The Hotel Continental in Harwich is thought to be worth £1million and it could be yours for the princely sum of just £1000! Despite the story being covered in The Daily Mail as well there’s no website available as yet. In fact The Daily Mail report that the fine details are being ironed out. This makes us think that The Hoyles are doing this as a publicity stunt in order to see if a buyer is out there. According to reports The Hoyles opted for the raffle route as it could take two years to sell the hotel by conventional means. We suspect it would take considerably longer to find enough people willing to purchase £1000 tickets for a Win A Hotel competition though. A lot of the Win a House giveaways struggled and they had tickets valued at between £1 and £50!
A Barmy Idea
Basically it’s a barmy idea that in our view will end up costing The Hoyles more time and stress than actually just looking to sell normally. A little bit of research into Win A House giveaways should give them all the information they need to realise it’s an insane folly. Still a bit of pre-sale publicity in The Nationals might help unearth a buyer. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one – let’s see if we’re right or wrong on the outcome.