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@cabinhost - You may be right about FK burying non-commission listings as I’m sure it happens to mine. I’ve never taken the time to look into it. I am just happy not having to pay-per-booking as with Air.
Months go by without a peep from FK but then, like konacoconutz who had four bookings in a row recently, I get clusters of bookings that come in without rhyme or reason. In the past 8 days or so, I also had four FK’s which turned into bookings (and one from Air)…talk about being surprised!
I suspect it’s because my subscription renewal is coming up soon but who cares. The fee is taken care of with a few days rental and then it’s smooth sailing from there on in.
Yesterday I was messing around with my VRBO listing and playing with rates, etc. And doing the same a little bit with Air and FK. So you know how sometimes it seems you will get inquiries after you play around with your listing? (or some claim to have this happen).
Well…I kept hearing my text go off and kept getting a little bit excited hoping it was a new inquiry. No!! Every single time it was damn Straight talk texting me over and over again about silly stuff. Sigh…
I get the huge questionnaire from Air when I up my rates–the low one for Smart Pricing. Of course there’s no selection that says, “Because my place is worth more but this is as low as I’m going to go.”
They charge booking fee on nightly rate and cleaning fee. Every time I add the two together and multiply by 13.5% or let’s say 14.5% - it always comes out to exactly the amount of the booking fee.
Kona’s clean fee and rental cost comes to $890. Fourteen and half percent of that is exactly $129.05 to the penny.
Your cleaning fee is built into your nightly rate already…that’s why it seems different.
Before the FK booking that I received the other night - the one before that was made on Sept. 18th. That one had a 13.5% booking fee. So sometime within the last 5 months there has been an increase.
I can’t remember if you saw this thread but in the spring I posted this oddity about FK.
At the time of the reservation inquiry… the service charge was 13.5%. After a couple of days it went down!
I only discovered this after trying to get the guest to move off the platform… Weird… like BOOK NOW! and if you don’t… FIRE SALE, DON’T MISS BOOKING!
I wonder if the increase of your FK bookings has anything to do with them combining their booking fees into the night rate on the Trip Advisor site. Can any of you tell if your bookings are coming from Trip Advisor or from Flipkey? You know…kind of like how you can advertise just on VRBO but you can see if the inquiry originated through HA?
I don’t see the pricing breakdown on Trip Advisor. The nightly rate for the “test” time period below is $185 a night. The “owner fees” is my cleaning fee plus the lodging tax on the cleaning fee (since FK no longer adds tax to the cleaning fee). My cleaning fee is $105 plus taxes of $12.34. So the total is $117.34.
This is what is shown on the first screen when you enter in dates:
The numbers are just rounded to whole numbers. Then when you click the “book now” button…it shows this:
Wed, Mar 1, 2017 - Fri, Mar 3, 2017
2 nights / 2 guests
Base rate $440.66
Cleaning Fee $117.34
Tax $43.48
Price for 2 nights $601.48
Refundable Deposit $250.00
Total $851.48
There isn’t a price breakdown detail to click on there. The booking fees are $70.66 for a 2 night stay: 14.5% of ($185 + $185 + $117.34).
My total nightly rate is $370. But you see they have my total nightly rate showing as $440.66 ($370 + their $70.66 booking fee).
I think possibly guests were more likely to leave the site when they saw a separate detailed booking fee. They may have then thought to figure out that they are paying an enormous amount to use the site, and it just rubbed them the wrong way. Now they just see it as part of the nightly rate and less likely to be rubbed the wrong way. Now they just decide if they can afford the rate or not. The end result is it leads to a higher conversion rate.
It pisses me off because my guests think that’s the price they are paying me.
Ok, let me ask. Did FlopKey go away as a brand? I’m only seeing requests come through the TA platform. The first screenshot I posted was from TA and shows the details of the booking. At the top of your dashboard you can see what your listing looks like on their other holdings… Holiday Lettings is one of them.
But you are saying that when you get a request through the TA platform you don’t see the details but that when you get one through FK you do?
Oh, I would fight back just a bit. I would send a welcome message to them and include the request that they confirm the amount of the booking, but I would change the breakdown so that the booking fee is its own line. This would make the point.
I always see the regular detail invoice breakdown in my FK dashboard. But now I am starting to wonder if the guest does not see this on their end.
I noticed this over a year ago on Trip Advisor. Go to your listing on Trip Advisor and see if yours includes the booking fee into your nightly rate total.
Now I am really pissed! OK…I just went to my FK listing and see there is only one review. This was the missing review I had last year that never showed up with all my other reviews on FK/TA. Well…I see that I can only send an inquiry through there and not a booking request…
So I just did a test and sent myself an inquiry through FK. And it showed up in my gmail inbox as an inquiry through vacationhomerentals.com. They too are owned by Trip Advisor and part of this little family along with House Trip.
When I first signed up for an annual vactionhomerentals.com annual sub, they assured me it would not affect my FK listing. I already made plans not to renew when it expires in six weeks. They apparently replaced my FK account with my vacationhomerentals.com subscription.
Yet, vacationhomerentals.com is a separate site. I am not renewing because they only gave me one booking this year. Maybe two. I bought it at a discount of $269.10 and they jacked up the rate this year.
The notifications of a new inquiry always come from TripAdvisor but the source of whether the guest found it through TripAdvisor or FlipKey is in the “Guest Details” further down that page.
Three things are listed: Ph. No., Email, and "Sent Via: FlipKey [or TripAdvisor]. It will state one or the other.
