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Hostelbookers Strikethrough pricing.

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Plakian started this discussion 12 years 11 months ago

This in from HB:
Dear Partner,
As of Monday 28th November, Strikethrough Pricing (STP) will feature on HostelBookers.com
STP is an added value service for all of our properties. By providing an attractive price display, we will continue to invest in promoting your property and increasing your bookings across our language sites.
What is Strikethrough Pricing?
· The rate you enter into our backoffice remains the price that we sell beds / rooms at. However, we will also display a higher price – STP.
We will promote the STP on:
· Destination pages
· Your property profile page
· The checkout page
Examples of how your property will be promoted on HostelBookers.com:
Do I need to activate STP for it to be visible?
· No – this is an automated service for properties.
Can I opt out from STP?
· No – this is an automated service applied to all property listings.
How do we calculate STP?
· This is based on your selling prices on HostelBookers over the coming 6 months for the same room type.
Why doesn’t my STP show up?
· We only show the STP if your rate is between 5% - 50% cheaper than STP.
· If your rate falls outside these percentages, it won’t have a STP.
Wherever possible, we look forward to promoting your property with accurate STP. Please remember – you will not need to do anything. This is a free and automated service for all our partners!
Best regards,

WTF! So for this hostel it would appear that the price is 10 Euro but beside that they might add €14.00 with a line though it. This I do not like. It seems to infer that the price for a walk-in is 14 Euro and that HB have "negotiated" a special rate of 10 Euro. I don't want anyone to think that we might be charging 14 Euro.

This surely is false advertising and there are laws in the UK to prevent this type of thing.

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Rucksack Brian

12 years

It’s probably not as bad as it may sound. Misleading? YES. But not criminal.

How do we calculate STP?
· This is based on your selling prices on HostelBookers over the coming 6 months for the same room type.
Why doesn’t my STP show up?
· We only show the STP if your rate is between 5% - 50% cheaper than STP.
· If your rate falls outside these percentages, it won’t have a STP.

So if your price is always listed at the same rate over the next 6 months you won’t have any strikethrough price and there will be no confusion at all. If your rate does fluctuate over the next 6 months then they will list your highest price for that room type for the crossed-out figure. At least in this case it’s actually a rate that you set and not just an arbitrary number that they pick. (That is my understanding of the new system anyway)

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Plakian

12 years

OK, I think I understand what you are saying but they don't make it very obvious, do they.

So, for example, if I show a spring price of 10 Euro and a summer price of 12 Euro, then I would get a strikethrough price shown of 12 Euro.

Take a shop sale - a shirt is priced at 10 Euro in the sale with a strikethrough price of 12 Euro. You query this with the sales assistant and she tells you that the 12 Euro price is what the shirt will cost when the sale is over. That is illegal under UK law.

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Rucksack Brian

12 years

As far as I can tell, your analogy of the shop sale is exactly right. I had no idea that that was illegal in the UK.

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Plakian

12 years

There have been Trading Standards laws in the UK for at least 30 years and they are vigorously enforced. As you can image, before these laws came into place, there were all sorts of scams involving 'Sales' that were not really Sales. Nowadays, if you are offering goods at a reduced price in a Sale, then you have to have prove that the "30% off" is genuine.

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