Choosing your dates with Rallly

If you’re coming to Ty Cwch as a group, agreeing dates is often the hardest part. Rallly is a free website that lets everyone vote on a few dates you suggest. Nobody needs to sign up or download an app, and there are no adverts. Setting up a poll takes about five minutes.

Before you start

Only put dates in the poll that are free, otherwise the group might pick a weekend that’s already booked.

• Check availability first on our booking page.
• Minimum stays are 2 nights at weekends, 4 nights midweek and 7 nights for a week.
• Check in from 4pm, check out by 10am.
• We close over winter and reopen at the end of February.
• Decide what you’re booking. The whole building sleeps 12. Each of the three Cabins sleeps 4 and can be booked on its own.

Setting up the poll

Rallly lets people vote on single days, not date ranges. The simplest way round this is to use the day you’d arrive as each option, and say in the description how long you’d stay.

1. Go to rallly.co/new. You don’t need an account.
2. Give the poll a title, for example “Ty Cwch: which weekend?”. You can add Ty Cwch, Cwmtydu as the location.
3. In the description, explain the dates. For example: “Each date is the Friday we’d arrive. We’d stay 2 nights and leave on the Sunday. Please vote by 30 January.”
4. Choose all-day dates rather than time slots, then click each arrival date you want to offer. Three to six options is plenty.
5. Rallly asks voters for their email address by default. If your group would rather not give it, turn this off in the poll settings.
6. Create the poll. Bookmark the page so you can get back to it. If you sign up for a free account later, your poll is kept.

Sharing it and voting

Copy the invite link Rallly gives you and send it to the group, by WhatsApp, text or email.

When someone opens the link, they:

1. Type their name.
2. Tap Yes, If need be or No for each date.
3. Save their votes. They can add a comment too.

It works on a phone, and nobody has to sign up. If several families are coming, ask one person from each family to vote. That way the totals show which dates suit the most households, not just the biggest family.

Picking the dates and booking

Rallly shows which date suits the most people.

1. Check our booking page again before you book. Dates can go while your group is voting.
2. Book online, or contact Nigel if you have questions.
3. Once your booking is confirmed, go back to the poll and finalise the winning date. Rallly then emails everyone a calendar invite.

Booking before you finalise means nobody gets a calendar invite for dates that turn out to be gone.

Useful to know

• Set a deadline in the description. Without one, polls tend to drift.
• Keep the options short. Six dates is about as many as people will look at properly.
• Without an account you can only run one poll at a time. That’s enough for planning one trip.
• Polls are deleted 30 days after the last date in them if nobody uses them, so it won’t hang around.
• Help with Rallly itself is at rallly.co.