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It really depends on your finances.
I know lots of hosting businesses that use the advanced payment for investments.
When you are a small hosts with 1 room the difference is not that big.
But if you are larger, the difference quickly starts paying off.
Also it helps you trough the slow seasons.
This year, because of Easter being this late, May is almost dead, but we still manage to keep the cash flow positive due to the summer down payments coming in.
If BDC would process the bookings for us, this would be a negative cashflow.
Our booking window is generally four to six weeks ahead, advance bookings several months ahead only occur for specific events in the area, it is not the norm. I’m not happy that BDC have introduced this charge, but as they are not our major provider I’m happy to suck it up and accept it as just part of the deal with them.
I’ve recently had two of these. Before either declining or accepting, I sent messages asking them to book for the correct number of people. One did immediately, the other ignored me, so I asked Air to contact them. I thought they might cancel (and hoped…) but they coughed up for the extra person as soon as Air asked them to. They were also good guests. I suspect they hadn’t read the message.
I got so fed up with doing this I just raised my price and removed the second person fee. I’d rather have kept the small second person fee but the ones who mis-book ruin it for everyone.
One of my in-house suites is 2 bedrooms/en suite Jack&Jill bathroom, for 2-4 people. If I had a set price for the whole suite, I’d lose out when 2 people book, then use both rooms, i.e. one each.
My Wheelhouse pricing collapsed recently, with a flurry of sudden bookings that left me subsidising five nights.
Ah but you are talking about chalk and cheese @Flyboy
In the UK anyway if someone wants to make you redundant they have to go through a legal process, explain why the role is redundant, give you notice, pay you compensation.
Airbnb can close down your account with no notice or reason given leaving you high and dry.
Coming from someone who has been made redundant twice, it still felt like getting Shit on. I’d prefer airbnb TBH. At least they don’t make out you are safe.
I recently heard from a friend working at a big boy bank in Canary Wharf. The fire alarms sounded and the building evacuated. About 100 employees were unable to re-enter the building; their security access passes had been cancelled during the “fire drill”. Redundancy pay, yes; gardening leave in lieu of notice, yes. Proper consultation on redundancy, no. Unfair/constructive dismissal claims? Prohibitive, given the now cost of going to an employment Tribunal. Employer regard for employee well being? No.
Tried it for a bit, got (a few) views but nothing concrete. They use the same review system as Tripadvisor, and actively encourage you to solicit reviews from past guests, who may already have reviewed you on other platforms.
It looks like they are moving the brand over to “Tripadvisor Rentals”, although that may simply be a European marketing thing.
The backend is nowhere as sophisticated as BDC or ABB, and given that we’re doing quite nicely just from those two platforms I put both listings offline for now. I also couldn’t be bothered, at the time, bugging past guests for reviews. I get the impression it’s no different to other OTA’s in that reviews get you bookings, or at least enquiries.
I’ve been on FlipKey for more than two years. It was good for a few bookings at first but only one booking since then. The biggest thing to know is that they still keep customer service separate from TripAdvisor, even though they market under TripAdvisor. So when you need CS support you wait more than 12 hours for someone to get back to you…even then I had to bug them repeatedly. Fortunately it was not a pressing issue but just be advised…you will need to be very self sufficient, and I certainly would NOT count on them if there was a problem.
