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Booking.com - why aren't people upset about them?

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Maria A started this discussion 10 years 10 months ago

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.

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bbjgm

10 years

Here is another discussion on booking.com recent news:
http://www.tnooz.com/article/pricelines-booking-com-eases-rate-parity-eu...

RE: Putting strict cancel policy on booking.com. This really wouldn't help in my case because when a guest shows up and doesn't want to stay and you say they have to pay anyway, its a really bad scene at the hostel frontdesk when you are trying to explain what a hostel is to someone in another language, and no cancel policy, and the whole family is there bitching in the background with screaming kids.
(People don't read the text, they just look at price and book)

I like John M's idea to get around rate parity. But really, its a bad rule. Lodging owners should be able to advertise whatever rates they want on whatever site they want and let the market decide the prices. Just don't use booking.com, or for hostels: just put a higher rate on booking.com... I doubt they will ever notice. Or have a rack rate with parity and then offer a multi night discount or any other sort of discount you can think of. AAA, foreign traveler discount, military, student, senior, etc.

The only way it will ever change is if ZERO hostels give inventory to OTAs like booking or HW, and we make our own site as an association.
Because this is a hard thing to transition to, it likely won't happen.
So just come to terms with a percentage of your overnights coming from OTAs and treat the commission as advertising expense.

But again, the main reason to NOT enable booking.com is that they cannibalize your site's direct bookings and then take the commission and build their "Brand" (TV commercials and adwords) instead of your brand. I say you would be better off not using booking and paying for adwords advertising yourself and take more the direct bookings. Make sure your google natural search result says "Book Direct for Best Price" and takes users directly to a page they can book on.

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Ria

10 years

This is all great information. I have a new question - has anyone just dropped the rates on their own site despite this and if so, did they get a reaction out of booking.com?

Also, I believe the contract says rate parity for same rooms...so if I understand this correctly - how is booking.com going to know if its a same or different room? I ask this because they are really weird about how they label rooms - so how will they ever really know if it's the same room or not? maybe the one on your site has a hairdryer in it vs the one listed on booking.com so it has an amenity not available online...

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John Moriarty

10 years

This is all great information. I have a new question - has anyone just dropped the rates on their own site despite this and if so, did they get a reaction out of booking.com?

I added on the commission about 9 months ago making them 15% more expensive than direct bookings and I was never contacted.

I am a very small place so not sure am I treated differently but I think it is worth a try.

Also, I believe the contract says rate parity for same rooms...so if I understand this correctly - how is booking.com going to know if its a same or different room? I ask this because they are really weird about how they label rooms - so how will they ever really know if it's the same room or not? maybe the one on your site has a hairdryer in it vs the one listed on booking.com so it has an amenity not available online...

Yes you are right. Many have talked about this before.

I am sure you might have rooms say with a garden view or sea view that are priced more expensive that maybe you sell on booking.com :)

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zomac

10 years

After reading all T&Cs of booking.com, I don't work with them since the first day of the hostel because as Ria said, they are bullies. They don't have much protections for accommodation owners.

Our hostel is the most popular one among foreigners in my city so I think there's not much to lose.

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Peter K.

10 years

@bbjgm

The only way it will ever change is if ZERO hostels give inventory to OTAs like booking or HW, and we make our own site as an association.
Because this is a hard thing to transition to, it likely won't happen.
So just come to terms with a percentage of your overnights coming from OTAs and treat the commission as advertising expense.

Well, this association has existed at least here in europe as the EHC, founded in Berlin by 40 Hostels from around europe. They had developed Gomio.com as an OTA but now (around 2009) it is sold to Spain and privately owned.

I think interesting current approaches are http://www.opentravelexchange.net/ who are trying to enforce direct bookings on a hostel to hostel base and also www.goaroundeurope.com with a hostel card giving a 10% discount on direct bookings.

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HostelOffice

9 years

I think the key is the level of demand in your location. If you have 1000 units of demand every day for your city divided over 10 hostels then all hostels will be full all the time. If some of those hostels put zero effort in to their own web presence via their website then they will get their inevitable bookings via OTAs. If all hostels are connected to OTA's then some of their inevitable bookings will be delivered by OTAs.

If a hostel disconnects from OTAs then that hostel is seeking to be found by 100 units of guests out of the 1000 units of total guests. There are people preferring to book a hostel via the hostel website so a hostel is more likely to achieve full occupancy when there is higher demand for their city than the amount of beds they need to fill. The hostel that first disconnects and does attract their full occupancy without OTAs will be first to gain goodwill with the premium forward thinking guest.

But full occupancy for the leading edge non OTA reliant hostel is not 100% of beds full. For a hostel that gains direct bookings their profit margin goes up as their price is no longer driven down by the way OTAs aggregate hostels in lists so the lower price becomes an unbalanced issue for the guest. It is possible for an independent hostel with 80% occupancy to have higher profit to an OTA reliant hostel with 100% occupancy.

The premium forward thinking guests value the experience and see the lowest priced bed in the city, such as a $10 bed as a waste of money, waste of their time and ruins their holiday. So they are prepared to pay $15 for a bed to gain a better experience. These guests are the cream of the guests that leading edge hostels should be working to attract.

Leading edge guests not only pay more for their bed but also deliver more value to the hostel via clicks, links, posts, and other interaction. For the hostel paying attention to their web presence then all these interactions are more likely to be more positive and attract more leading edge guests.

It is ok to attract the leading edge guests and still use OTAs. But when you are a leading edge hostel then you use OTAs on your terms. You increase the price on OTAs and do not give them 100% allocation 100% of the time. OTAs will gain more overall commission income from your hostel charging $15 a bed with 50% allocated as they gain from a hostel charging $10 a bed with 100% allocated when the actual qualitative booking process dynamics are played out.

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Riccardo Causin

9 years

The question is very easy here in our Hostel we folliowed the indications of a Lot of other Hostels since the 10% or the 12% or the 15% are just costs and we are Happy to pay only 10% and since the 5% for the hostel means 50% of costs more it's enough to have a look at Hostelz.com and you will see as a lot of other Hostels we charge there Guests more money! Please check in Germany the all group of A&o in Berlin hamburg Munchin etc..etc..Ostello Santa Fosca here in Venice la pescheria Backpackers and a lot of other hostels and they are trying to buy Hostelsclub.com just to make the commission higher and higher . All OTA should know that they can charge even 50% as a commission we will ask 50% more to there customers

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Peter K.

9 years

To be able to discuss about Rate Parity on first hand you have to have the ability to even give your allocations to different channels and your website too. This is where a channel manager is becoming part of the game. MyAllocator.com has gained a lot of popularity among the hostel business as they did a pretty good job on this. But now it seems to have, well... changed. It is obvious that HostelWorld has taken over control and it is now converted into something, which is focusing around HWs BackPackOnline. There is a lot of work going into the changes which means in turn there is a lot of investment going on. And why do these people invest? To give you better service for better prices? It might as well be the opposite, as this thread is basically about monopolist misbehaviour.
This just as an idea to discuss.

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adam_harris

9 years

Hi All

I want to go on the record and say we have not in any way been taken over by HostelWorld. HostelWorld is a channel like any other channel on Myallocator. BPO, is another PMS integrated with Myallocator like the others found on the link below:

https://www.myallocator.com/pms-connections/

We currently have several dozen other new PMSs integrating with Myallocator and we encourage and welcome new integrations.

Adam @ Myallocator

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Concierge.io

6 years

Not sure if I am allowed to promote here, but I am CCO of a freemium model online travel platform by the name of Concierge.io just raising awareness, reaching out and hoping for your support. For more info read our whitepaper docs.concierge.io and join our rapidly Telegram community on https://t.me/conciergeio_chat. Many thanks from the concierge.io team!

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