Wells, Somerset -- (SBWire) -- 04/27/2010 -- Established self-catering accommodation website http://www.theholidaycottages.co.uk has seen a 30% increase in month-on-month visitors to the website in the past few weeks.

There are a variety of reasons thought to be attributable to this, the first and foremost being due to the ash cloud that is currently lingering over Europe and the countries within, primarily obstructing UK airspace. Flight after flight has been cancelled, leaving many Brits with plenty of free time and not able to fly abroad so it is thought they have been flocking to snap-up some last minute deals in the UK, and, although the temperatures aren’t quite as soaring as the Caribbean, the UK has seen considerably warmer weather that usual for this time of year.

A further reason for the visitor increase could be late bookings for Easter – some schools have up to 3 weeks off during the Easter period so this could also be a contributing factor to the increase in visitors to the site.

The Holiday Cottages has reported no server downtime or web traffic issues which is good news and indicates site capacity is stable and confirms that the infrastructure in place for handling larger volumes of traffic is able to cope seamlessly with the increased demand.

The Holiday Cottages website offers advertising to self-catering accommodation owners. The site receives over 4 million hits per month and is listed on page 1 of all the major search engines including Google. You can view the site at http://www.theholidaycottages.co.uk