10 years
I liked the edits there matt ;) and it's a nice summary of what you said earlier haha
Booking.com - why aren't people upset about them?
Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories
Everyone is all worked up about Hostelworld but how come I don't see people pushing back on booking.com. We signed up with them this past fall and they are really awful to work with...they insist on writing the content - which i'm convinced is being written by college interns - you can't get all the room designations right - they insist on listing one of our dorms as an 'quad room' which makes it sound like someone is booking entire room for $35 - and they are bullies, bullies, bullies on billing.
Now, they just enacted, in the USA at least, a new 'option' whereby a guest can make a last minute booking without a credit card. This 'option' automatically opted everyone IN. Supposedly they notified us on the back end...yeah... I found it but in the Contact Us section - who looks there for a message FROM booking.com? ...oh, and they only posted it for one of our cities, not all three - yet all three cities were opted in.
We only found out about this new feature because, yeah - a guest no showed and there was no credit card number on file.
They charge a minimum of 15% , don't take down reviews and are really high on their horse so to speak trying to tell us how to run our business..and you can't make a billing mistake at all - no money back if you are overcharged... why don't i see complaints about them?
BTW...in hostelworld's defense, yeah they raised the price for the first time in 10 years to 12%, but they raised the hotels to 15%....perhaps they should have communicated that to the hostels.
- Comments
10 years
Matt, why do you feel you are forced to co-operate with them? Are there no other OTA that bring in that much business?
10 years
I liked the edits there matt Wink and it's a nice summary of what you said earlier haha
Big Brother is watching you :) :)
Matt, why do you feel you are forced to co-operate with them? Are there no other OTA that bring in that much business?
My city is choking point with many times more accommodations than we actually have customers for.
HostelWorld and HostelBookers send me only 5 % of their original number of bookings and booking.com has filled the gap.
I do not know any other OTA that could help me.
Does anyone have any idea how to get customers without help of booking.com ?
10 years
Firstly do you absorb the commission or add it on.
Adding it on say 85 euro direct 100 euro through booking.com at least brings you in the same overall and makes you more attractive to direct bookings.
If you feel that adding the full commission will lose you too much at least make it some way more expensive.
Really have a look through your website as you might be losing customers.
Make sure it is mobile friendly and also check your google analytics to see where people are coming from and also where you lose them on your website if they don't book.
Analyse your booking.com guests.
Maybe say booking.com gives you 50% french guests but your website only 10%. Maybe you need to translate your website in to french then.
Also things like booking policy. Booking.com policy no deposit and 1 day default cancellation can be very attractive.
Make your direct cancellation policy more attractive than theirs.
10 years
I am extremely angry with booking.com. As a hostel owner I have recently (1 year ago) succumbed to the booking.com bandwagon (they have market control and left me with no choice) and since then have been ignored, bullied and treated so appalingly I feel compelled to write something.
Firstly, when errors are made on their part they are not acknowledged, there is no attempt to resolve the situation and the blame put on the hostel/hotel owner for not doing things the way they require. They are telling us how to run our business and we are accepting it like pawns under a dictator.
Secondly, whenever I need to make changes to my property info I need to contact my account manager who is never available or never answers her phone. She doesn't have a direct number or mobile and when I call customer services they tell me that they cannot connect me so in 1 year of being with booking.com I have spoken to her twice.
Thirdly, my property has a very high customer rating but is on the 5th and final page of "recommended properties" list because I don't want to give my availabilty for 14 months in advance due to the 90% cancellation rate when booked more than 3 months in adavance. But probably the most important reason for my anger is the manner in how they have treated me. I am constantly spoken to in a condescending tone, told how I have to do things their way because they know best and am never provided a solution or common sense approach to a problem usualy caused by their rigidness.
Sorry for this outburst, I probably could have said it in less words even though there are more things I have to say. I would like to boycott them, if anyone would be willing to join me?? Send them a big thank you for coming and see how they treat us when we abandon them in droves.
10 years
I appreciate the anger.
I initially also gave in to joining booking.com and in the first year it was ok. High cancellations but not so many as to get to me, probably around 20%. I now know I hadn't been on there long enough to get any long term bookings which are invariably the ones cancelled. The worst thing by far in year one was learning how inept they were and how they tried to bully you into putting things right they had gotten wrong.
I was really naive as at the end of my first year I had about a third of my capacity forward booked for year two through Booking.com. Then the realisation as one by one they were cancelled and I actually ended up with empty rooms in my peak season and my takings fell. I started to experiment and reduce allocations to booking.com and found my bookings went up through my own website and other OTA's (and cash upfront, no cancellations!. All my capacity had been taken up with bookings from booking.com that were going to be cancelled so people couldn't book direct or through other OTA's. I put a business listing on Tripadvisor and got a few other sites pointing at my website, and that did work, got more calls and more direct bookings and so I reduced my booking.com allocations even more. Despite booking.com bully boy tactics I also started to offer discounts and freebies on website bookings. Eventually booking.com were accounting for only about 15% of my bookings that actually happened. But they were also responsible for a similar amount of lost income due to last minute cancellations. So bit the bullet and pulled out virtually all of my allocations and just used them for advertising.
This year pulled out altogether after establishing the Tripadvisor and other fixed price arrangements. I feel in control now and actually haven't lost anything. I feel better too.
My commission and advertising costs are now down to about 7%. So make more money. Just had to plan my exit and take a couple of years to do it.
Like David above I had a 9.8 rating on booking.com but was second last on the page for my area. Quality plays no part in their rankings. You buy the high positions by offering them 20%, 30% commission.
But to me they were an illusion, they gave me loads of bookings that were subsequently cancelled and so prevented other bookings by making me look full. An advisor from the English Tourism organisation said you have to have at least 5 or 6 sources or you can become a victim, she is right.
10 years
Thanks for the great feedback. it's appreciated. I will definitely have to ponder this to see what I can influence our company owner to try.
I've a question for you...are you on a pay per click deal with Trip Advisor? They approached us and I could reconcile the cost with the potential business and am curious how successful you have found it. For one of our hostels they wanted $8000 alone for the business listing and then the pay per click on top of that. I'd like to list with them, but $8K is a lotta money...
10 years
David P.
I feel ya! I have to work with 3 different reps and it's quite a challenge. If I make a change in wording at one hostel it can go fine and then another rep will fight me on it. I just had a 8 email and one phone call go around about some necessary wording in the 'fine print' section and I finally had to threaten pulling the listing and giving it to Expedia.
I won't get into the details but this last issue was a guest booking we would not accept due to our stay limitations and they tried to slice and dice it 20 different ways to make it work for the guest. I admire their tenacity but it was clear they were just trying to wear us down to just give in and make an exception to our rules...but i'm a Leo and very stubborn...so it just became a battle of wills...but really a battle of principal. I felt they were not respecting our way of doing business and felt put on the defensive to explain our rules and why we wouldn't bend them. I too have felt dictated to and definitely bullied. In fact I used that exact word in my conversation today and have asked to speak to someone higher up the food chain about it. We'll see if I get a call.
I would love to cut back on them. Luckily they don't account for more bookings right now than other sites but they definitely have the highest cancellation rate.
10 years
HostelWorld isn't raising prices, they are raising percentages. That is the same as raising taxes.
When hostels raise prices, HW automatically collects more from us because they are taking a percentage of our higher prices. They should only raise the percentage if they increase the value to hostels in some way.
Booking.com
Yes, never let any company direct debit your checking accounts. You have no power.
We got rid of merchant accounts years ago and just use Square phone swiper for cards. Never had an annoying PCI fee or any monthly fee or any hassle whatsoever with credit cards after that.
I paid booking.com every month by check as well and finally when I argued about a no show with them, I didn't pay them and told them I wanted to cancel. This was the best thing I ever did because they stopped paying google adwords to cannibalize my top natural search result. It sucks when a customer sees your business name in a google ad at top of page but its actually booking.com. Customer thinks its your website. When I stopped giving booking any availability, these ads stopped.
Also, booking threatened to send the debt to a collections agency but never did.
Another annoying thing about booking.com or any GDS site is that once they build a microsite for your hostel, even if you cancel your "partnership" with them. They will never take down your microsite. This means the microsite (site for your hostel within booking.com or others) will always come up in search results for your hostel and the microsite will just say, "you cannot book this lodging at this time". Which leads customers to think you are fully booked or out of business. How many customers on booking.com will search for a hostels website at this point? I say few. So at that point they are strong arming you. In essence, "Give us your availability or we will portray your hostel as closed or full!"
So in no way are they partners. More like vampires or leeches or Mafia.
Having said all that, if your hostel has competition (big city location) you may have to suck it up and use these OTA sites since they bring in so many eyeballs. If you aren't hurting for business, I'd say stay away.
I had frontdesk integration (booking.com reservations came straight into my PMS) and still the reservations from booking.com were the biggest nightmare. The reason they dumb down your descriptions and room types is so that they can automatically translate the page into EVERY language. We got SO MANY foreign language customers from booking thinking they had rented a house or cabin or hotel room and they would arrive and not like shared bathrooms and they refused to stay. We said there is no refund policy and then it because a 3 way fight between booking.com, hostel, and guest. This is not worth the energy and bad feelings.
I see why customers like these sites, its easy to comparison shop all lodgings. But as a lodge owner,
"I Hate Booking.com"
Every comment here should put that statement in the comment so this is the #1 search result for "I hate booking.com"
Having pointed out all the bad. We hostel owners are to blame. The only way to change the situation is to band together as an association of owners and create our own OTA site with comparison listings, no commissions, and direct bookings to the hostels. The association would have to collect annual membership or dues or a small percentage from each booking.
The other alternative is collective bargaining. All member hostels refuse to give availability to OTAs unless they agree to our terms.
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