Report

Best Booking Engines with no money transactions?

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

aleman83 started this discussion 11 years 1 month ago

Hello everybody,

I'm rather new to the whole online booking engine thing. I have signed up to hostelworld now, and I am wondering what other engines you all use. I would like to sign up for another booking engine as well, but what would be most important to me would be that there would not be any money transactions between me and the booking engine to keep thinks as simple as possible.

What engines do you use?
Which is your favorite?
Does it require money transactions between you and them?
Anybody uses Booking.com?

Looking forward to your answers. This forum has been a great help to me!

aleman83

Comments

Report

Rucksack Brian

11 years

Hi Aleman83,

Most hostel operators are working with these booking sites:
Hostelworld
Hostelbookers (same owners as Hostelworld)
HostelsClub
Gomio

All of these sites collect their commission from the guest as a pre-payment or “deposit” and then the guest pays the remaining balance to you upon their arrival.

Many hostels do work with Booking.com, but that may not be an ideal option for you. Their setup requires financial transactions between your hostel and the booking site, because you collect the full amount for each reservation from the guest and then send the 15% commission back to Booking.com.

Other hostels have had some success selling their rooms on AirBnB as well. They collect the full amount from the guest, plus a security deposit. After the guest’s first night, AirBnB transfers the money directly to your bank account. After checkout, if you agree that the guests didn’t cause any damage, then the security deposit is refunded to them automatically too.

Report

aleman83

11 years

Thank you Brian,

That pretty much answers my question. I did sign up with hostelworld and bedandbreakfastworld already. I still have one question though. Which booking engines do advertise your property directly over tripadvisor? I would really like to have the option for people to book right of tripadvisor with the booking engines like hostelworld.

Do you have any experience with that?

Thank you very much!

Report

pcartier

11 years

All,

We are looking at creating such an engine. We already have members making bookings (about 100 bookings a day). Our members are currently paying 10% to 15% booking fees. We would like to avoid this.

One of the issue is that guest would like to make search in a specific city and get availability and rates for properties as a result. Therefore I don't think we could just list properties and send guests to the property website. Of course, we could sync availability and send the guest to the property website for booking.

For the cost, we are looking at different models.

(1) Properties pay us back as an affiliate and we don't take any deposits. But then guests might not show up or cancel without telling anybody if they don't have deposited any money.

(2) We don't ask for any booking fees and pay back our investment another way outside of the booking engine.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Philippe

Report

Rucksack Brian

11 years

Which booking engines do advertise your property directly over tripadvisor? I would really like to have the option for people to book right of tripadvisor with the booking engines like hostelworld.

I know that Hostelworld and Booking.com both partner with TripAdvisor. If a guest enters dates for their stay while looking at your hostel’s TA listing, then one of those sites should appear with prices. The guest will then be taken to that site to make a booking. I’m not sure which of the other booking sites partner with TA.

Report

christ1

10 years

Can you provide more details of your present offer?

Search form

Report 'Best Booking Engines with no money transactions?'?

Report 'Re: Best Booking Engines with no money transactions?'?

Report 'Re: Best Booking Engines with no money transactions?'?

Report 'Re: Best Booking Engines with no money transactions?'?

Report 'Re: Best Booking Engines with no money transactions?'?

Report 'Re: Best Booking Engines with no money transactions?'?

Join the world's largest community of hostel professionals.

Check Your Email