Do your guests get confused by the way the booking engines word the 10% commission: 10% "deposit" ?
When something goes wrong do guests demand a refund of that 10% from your hostel?
15 years
A not uncommon problem. I think the majority of guests think that we get the 10% deposit - none of the booking engines make it clear that these "deposits" are in fact their pathway to a healthy bottom line!
It would be very useful if the booking engines, on both the customer and hostel copy of the confirmation of the booking were to add, after where it says
10% deposit
Retained by HostelWorld or Hostelbookers or whoever.
It would also be truthful!
15 years
Ask the pope to put this disclaimer on every church:
"There is no god. We just want your money. We dont have a pathway to heaven, just a healthy bottom line because you are stupid enough to believe our bullshit".
That would be truthful.
To be fair, two things have to be said:
*Hostelbookers staff! Hint! Hint! ;)
15 years
I take on average 1 phone call a day regarding this issue. The guests think we get the money, sometimes the caller can not even remember what site they booked through. I have not had a caller get mad yet. We are a HI property so I need to find out what HI's policy is on cancellations/refunds.
15 years
There is quite frequently confusion, but it's usually fairly easily explained.
Like PatrickO`D said often the question "Which site did you book through?" only gets shrugged shoulders, and blank looks.
It's fair enough if guests want to make sure they're not getting overcharged. If worst comes to worst I walk the guest through it with a calculator and a print out from the booking engine.
15 years
This morning two Italian girls cut short a HW reservation by a few days and asked for their deposit back. No amount of explanation from me would convince them that I was not stealing from them.
I looked out the License Agreement with HW and halfway down the page it says very clearly:
The Licensee (read hostel) Agrees:
To charge the customer the balance only on arrival. The balance being the difference between the full price quoted on the Internet and the deposit retained by Hostelworld.com.
The girls are now happy.
Thanks HW for this unnecessary grief.
The lesson - have a copy of the Agreement at the front desk.
15 years
Yeah, this happens often. I will take your advive and print out the page and keep it at the FD. Sometimes it tries my patience when I have to tell a guest that HW does not run hostels and hostels do not operate booking engines!
15 years
Sounds like they need to state when people are booking through HW that the deposit is a payment and kept by them before the booker says ok.
15 years
If someone books a hostel through BUG, then cancels the booking and emails me to ask about refunding the deposit I just give them the money to keep them happy (we are an affiliate of Hostelbookers but from the customer's perspective they assume the booking was processed by BUG). Since we didn't take the credit card info, we can't simply refund the credit card transaction so we explain the situation to the customer then give them money via PayPal or send them a gift voucher to the value of their deposit.
This isn't something we publicise, but we have been doing it for years. A refund of the 10% deposit only costs a few dollars which isn't much to pay to prevent a customer from blaming you for stealing their money (which is what some customers may think if we don't give them a refund).
I'm surprised booking agencies keep the deposit for a cancelled booking and I am sure that this must be illegal in some countries. I just don't think it is right to keep the deposit and as a traveller I would want this refunded.
So if it was a Hostelbookers booking originally made through BUG, you can tell you guest that BUG will refund the booking fee. If you want, if the customer shows a booking confirmation showing that the booking was made through BUG, give the customer the money, then email me the details of the cancelled booking and I will reimburse you for the refund by PayPal. Otherwise tell them to book through bug.co.uk next time :)
15 years
I'm surprised booking agencies keep the deposit for a cancelled booking and I am sure that this must be illegal in some countries. I just don't think it is right to keep the deposit and as a traveller I would want this refunded.
I must admit I've wondered about the legality of HW retaining deposits for cancelled booking before. There seem to be plenty of businesses that do no refund policies now - a lot of prepaid rates with rental cars, airlines, and hotels are non refundable and non changeable. So I can only assume this is legal. It's certainly in the small print of the HW T&C.
As a business we have to have some non refundable deadline - for small bookings its 24hrs. It think it would be unreasonable to assume you can just not turn up, or ring up at 9pm on the night and expect a refund, it is then very difficult for the hostel to sell the bed. For large groups it's 2 weeks - the problem is that if a groups has booked out the whole building say, and then rings 2 days before to say that they are not coming, we would take a significant financial hit as we'd probably not be able to sell those beds that had been blocked by them sometimes for months. I assume as long as you make this clear in the terms and conditions then it would be legal.
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