Re:For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies
by pingec on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @03:44PM
(#14447949)
Booking.com is indeed nice, however, the cut they take is quite substantial (in my country it is 18% including taxes) and I believe there is a lot of room for competition. I see bookings from Airbnb being on the rise. What Airbnb charges me is peanuts compared to Booking.com. Perhaps a Hotel might benefit from the marketing but for me that's not the case as most of our customers are climbers who come to climb in Osp and they book whatever is available next weekend. Also what I don't like about Booking.com is that I can either accept cash in person as payment or accept credit cards through them but not both. I absolutely have to accept cash but why do I have to completely give up the safety net of credit cards and being able to charge no-show penalties.
What software do you use to sync Booking.com and Airbnb bookings calendars? I was using http://www.sync.rentals/ but they seem to have reliability issues (or maybe websites don't like them). Anyways I would love not having to write my own tool for this task and it would save me a lot of time.
Business opportunity for someone?
Re:For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies
by chvid on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @03:52PM
(#14448018)
Yes! 15% for marketing, payment and secure booking is not expensive. It is actually very cheap.
And for us consumers services like hotels.com are really a great help, makes bookings fast and constistent. And they are secure; making me not worry about booking a hotel in an unfamiliar country.
Re:For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies
by yabatopia on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @06:54PM
(#14449228)
The 15% seems fair. I'm not that familiar with the travel industry, how much more is that percentage compared to the commissions paid to traditional travel agencies pre-internet age? There were always,or at least very often, middlemen involved in the travel industry. Is the cut that for example Booking.com takes really that much bigger than travel agents used to take in the eighties?
Re:For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies
by gimiluv on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @06:35AM
(#14451477)
Traditional travel agencies take approx. the same amount as a commission and do so off of less competitive rates so the consumer ends up paying more. They don't notice because its usually bundled into the price with airfare.
Re:For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies
by jghn on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @10:27PM
(#14450068)
FWIW I have seen it recommended multiple times, including from hosts, that it is polite to ask a host if they have availability via airbnb even with the instant booking enabled. I agree with you but if that message is as widespread as I've assumed it could explain what you see
Booking.com has been amazing for us. They take 15% but it is completely worth it. We don't have "a name" nor do I have time to invest in the relentless SEO content marketing necessary to differentiate us when people search "hotels in the Luberon" or "Provence hotels." Since we are a very small place (just 3 suites,) it's an unprofitable use of my time to be generating blog content and engage in full-court-press inbound techniques -- so unless you are a chain or happen to be featured by travel writers, good luck being discovered via inbound searches.
We do have a website and a good direct booking system, but we probably get 3 bookings per year directly from our website yet between Booking.com and cross-listing on AirBnB, we are completely booked through most of the season. Our booking software is integrated with Booking.com and AirBnB so we are able to have all of our channels coordinated with a minimum of work. If one considers Booking.com as a lead-generation system, 15% is a huge value. I would easily spend far more if I were marketing directly through ads. Our TripAdvisor page is free -- we haven't paid the yearly €799 fee for an enhanced listing but TripAdvisor still is great for us since we have 4.5 stars.
Guests from Booking.com are far less work than from AirBnB or direct. AirBnB customers seem to still not understand what Instant Booking means -- we get almost daily inquiries of "do you have availability for some date" -- yes, obviously that's why you are able to instant book! AirBnB guests tend to want to have long conversations while Booking.com people just book and show up with a minimum of fuss. We also have a very liberal cancellation policy, unlike many places in the region -- we found that just letting people cancel whenever they want works out fine in the long term because are area is high demand so cancellations don't really cost us anything because we quickly get rebooked during peak season. So everyone is happy. In terms of taxes -- our prices have all of that included.
My point is that sites like Booking.com and AirBnB have made our business -- we essentially incur no marketing costs. So we love Booking.com! It honestly doesn't matter one bit of you book directly with us or via Booking/AirBnB -- our prices take our costs into account so you aren't "hurting" us if you book through a third party. We are just glad to welcome any guests however they find us. The big chains probably get hurt the most by third party booking sites because they are already spending money on marketing and have name recognition, where for ultra-small-timers like us, you probably would never have heard of us without those third party sites.
The short version: third party sites add huge value to our business -- they get to do the hard work of marketing us while we can focus on the guest experience.