Newly listed on Booking.com

I agree, though VRBO did a charge back on me. FLippkey guests are weird, all they do is inquire, though i had few very nice guests from there.
I am staying with Airbnb and see how it goes with just them. The only drawback with Airbnb is that i have to reduce my price by much

How do you charge a credit card with only the credit card details?

I hate booking.com.

They are very guest biased, unflexible, uncooperative. They require best price guarantee, bookings are fixed etc etc.

My prices on booking.com are about 15% higher than my regular prices, and I only have a limited number of rooms available for them.

And for every little change in listing you have to call them.
No wonder they are loosing business fast.

The worst thing is, that when you accept AirBnB booking, or an other booking, and you don’t immidiately close your listing on Booking.com and get another booking. You will have to pay the 13% fee.

So unless you are always able to close your listings on booking.com, be prepared to sooner run into a double booking.

I am using stripe.

After registering you can click on payment, create new payment and putting the card details (including CVC, if you don’t have yet CVC you need to ask booking.com to add it)

I guess the best price guarantee is not working if you have one room per property :slight_smile: so I am putting a much higher price on booking.com corresponding to the extra work to use the platform. I don’t clients that are using it.
We are planning our summer holidays as guests and I am very surprised to see so many places that are listed in booking.com and not air bnb neither on google.

Our listing is in Sweden so I guess it’s not something will you do

Have you tried Wimdu, @Yana_Agapova?

Yes but I did not have even an inquity

The worst thing is, that when you accept AirBnB booking, or an other
booking, and you don’t immidiately close your listing on Booking.com
and get another booking. You will have to pay the 13% fee.

Disclaimer: We are company that prevents double-bookings. Our users manage both Airbnb and bookings.com from our site hostaway.com. I’d like to share some insight from the hundreds of properties our customers have.

Booking.com and Airbnb come from two entirely different worlds. Airbnb was created for home sharing while booking.com was created for hotels. Many bnb owners have problems when expanding business to Airbnb while many Airbnb hosts face challenges when expanding to booking.com

Airbnb is a peer-2-peer market place while booking.com is booking agent. Airbnb does not sell anything, it merely facilitates financial interactions between guests and hosts and provides the legal framework through their terms of use. The host has an opportunity to decline a request, and should a booking take place, Airbnb transfers the money from the guest to the host.

Booking.com acts as a booking agent. It’s a 1-sided marketplace where they sell rooms. It’s important to understand the difference. The hosts set up the rates and availability and are responsible for ensuring they are correct. Guest bookings are automatically confirmed for the host. Typically the host is responsible for providing the guest with arrival information and a payment method. The host is not able to cancel a booking. Once the guest has arrived, the host pays booking.com a commission.

Most of the issues people have are related to the different business models the platforms provide. Booking.com charges only for successful bookings. On booking.com, the customer is king: if you sell a room at a certain rate, the guest should get it. On Airbnb, which is a 2-sided market place, there is no specifc customer. Instead, each reservation is a result of (sometimes automated) negotiations. This gives more flexibility for the host, but many guests that are new users may end up getting rejected because of lacking communication skills.

In some markets, booking.com rates are much higher than airbnb and hosts get a good amount of bookings. We have clients that receive more than 50% of their bookings from booking.com. There are also markets where you don’t really get premium-priced bookings on booking.com, but the best way to find out is to try it.

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And that is why sites as Booking.com and Tiscover are loosing business fast.

Their authoritarianism is putting many small businesses off, and many big hotels are also looking for ways around them. Zero service, for 13% (or more) commission,

A good thing is that governements are now starting to put restrictions on the bullying by the big booking sites.
In Germany the “best price” rule is already forbidden, and Austria is following soon.

I ignore the best price rule and add up to 15% on my booking.com rates, if guests are too lazy to book directly, they should pay my booking.com fee.

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Great comment Chris! We at Hostaway help Airbnb hosts get live on other sites and manage the rates. Many of our clients use dynamic pricing (through Beyond Pricing, pricelabs.co or everbooked) to update their Airbnb rates, then they adjust the markups for Booking.com and other channels on Hostaway.com. That way, they get dynamic prices on all channels with a markup that is customized based on their wishes.

What do you charge Hostaways?

My opinion: Avoid booking.com.

I was listed there.

100% fake bookings, not a single valid booking.
Stolen credit card numbers, fake telephone numbers, guests that cannot be reached in any way…welcome to booking.com!

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I just received this email from Booking.com. Poor, poor customer abandons their booking because they are asked for credit card info…wah wah wah…lol.

"Bring in more domestic guests by removing the need for credit card details
_ _
Internet-savvy users need things to work quickly and easily. When you activate the No Credit Card option, you’re simplifying the booking process for your guests.

A lot of customers start a booking, and then give up when asked for credit card details. The No Credit Card option allows guests booking from within your country to make a reservation without this step – meaning more completed bookings and more profits for you.

It also means that your property will appear in searches with the No Credit Card filter, so guests who prefer cash payment will find you even faster."

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We charge $15/month/listing without any limits or commissions.

As someone said here, booking.com is not for vacation rentals by owners. Hotels with many rooms might be able to pull this " no credit card " policy.
I don’t know how I did it the whole year. I think I needed money THAT bad.

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After trying out Booking.com for a while now, I can give some feedback.
We have only been using Booking.com when Airbnb could not fill the dates.
Since February we have had 11 bookings, 2 NO SHOWS and 2 cancellations. (The two no shows came from what I suspected were prostitutes, so I sent them the house rules from Airbnb, saying “No prositution allowed”. So they never came. :slight_smile:
The guests we have had has been very nice. Just as nice as the guests from Airbnb.
Having to take payment from the guests ourselves and with the 15% fee from Booking.com, are the only downfalls from Booking.com vs. Airbnb so far.

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What is your location, @Bobas? And I’d be interested in seeing your listings too, if you want to provide them
.

I have also good feedback since I put compulsory CVC number (don’t forget you get the information only one time so print the client card number). Easy to use stripe to charge clients

If you are not new, booking can also directly charge the client and transfer you the money

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But if you are new, they refuse to give you the credit card information in total! Have fun charging a guest without credit card information…