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Doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but I get your point and as I said, it’s not for everyone.
Works well for us, approximately 40% of our bookings come from BDC.
They’ve just snuck an extra 1.1% in, if you allow BDC to handle your payments, effective 1st June 2019. We’ll suck it up as it’s still cheaper than Stripe and removes a level of hassle.
JF
HI Picton, this is Hamilton. Over the 6 months at least half my bookings are direct through Kijiji.
15% is still lower than the 23% AirBnB charges.
I switched my AirBnB fees from the 3% to the 14% host fees yesterday (I increased my rates to compensate).
When doing a search in a private browser, I noticed it dropped my rates compared to the competition, and it moved me a lot higher in the search ranking.
So what happened is that I didn’t know when I set up my listing that they don’t collect the money on my name like ABB and vrbo do. So someone booked me. I saw they didn’t pay so I called customer service and they explained this to me. Next thing I messaged the person who booked me asking them to cancel and explaining the situation. It’s not like they were coming tomorrow. their travel was like in months! They canceled but Booking fined me 100$ for not being available. I don’t like their policy and I am not a business, but a landlord and have no means to collect the money myself.
Related to the 15 or 16% fee: ABB and VRBO doesn’t retain from my payout that much. These 2 they take some from me and some from the guest which seems fine. Taking 15% from me is way too high, so I ditched them. Deleted my listing.
Hi John,
if you don’t mind me asking. Where are you located and what do you get charged by Stripe? Are these international guests?
To repeat again what has been said here many times: AirBnB’s “insurance” is not true insurance, and trying to collect from them for damages is a difficult and complex process where you must follow exact rules the in the correct sequence and even then it’s like the proverbial river in Egypt (denial). If you are concerned about liability, you need coverage for short term rental liability, which some home insurers are now providing but most are not.
This makes no sense. ABB and VRBO charge the customer that amount. All you have to do is add the 15% fee to your booking. As per the $100, ABB and VRBO have cancelation metrics and extenuating circumstances and other crap to hosts. They are certainly not better.
All you are doing is shooting yourself in the foot
"Related to the 15 or 16% fee: ABB and VRBO doesn’t retain from my payout that much. These 2 they take some from me and some from the guest which seems fine. Taking 15% from me is way too high, so I ditched them. Deleted my listing.
They fined me $100"
For EU cards it’s 1.4% + €0.25 per transaction and for non-EU cards it’s 2.9% + €0.25. Quite a few of our BDC guests are from the U.S. and Canada, so it’s a no brainer to carry on allowing BDC to process our payments.
We’re in mainland Spain.
JF
AirBnB will do exactly the same, if you cancel with “I did not read your Terms&Conditions, as reason for cancelation”.
Having no means to collect is not a very good excuse, since it is very easy to get a paypal or stripe account.
@Klatchers you are right that I can increase the price by 15% to compensate for the booking fee, but I don’t want to do this. There are many articles out there on the internet which advice the potential guest to shop around because the same property might be listed on different platform at different prices and they have to chose the cheapest. If I increase the my price by 15% that would deter people who might see it listed on ABB or vrbo, so why bother? Besides, I don’t like booking concept to take that fee from me. ABB has a lower percentage. I also don’t like their strict no cancellation ever policy and if you make a mistake they penalize you financially. I mean ABB synchronization feature is buggy. I had a few incidents where this didn’t work and I had double booking. I couldn’t even imagine how many $$$ booking would had penalize me for such a thing.
That is not what I said. I said you can add a 15% fee to the price. That is already what Airbnb in the HomeAway group is doing to guests.
Thanks. So if BDC adds in 1.1% or more, how much is the cost when they process a card from U.S.? I am on BDC but take payment directly. And also have Stripe. I just rarely get international guests. I actually have Square, Stripe, and PayPal. I recently stopped using PayPal and invoiced my last two BDC guests with Square. But I think their rates are 2.9% across the board …would need to check again.
Will definitely invoice using Stripe if it’s a guest who has a European card. But I wouldnt actually know if it’s an international card until the guest pays and I see my charge? But even guest used a non-European card, guess it wouldn’t be any worse than if I just billed using a Square. But 1.4% is a nice rate. Why is that you think? Because many Europeans don’t take credit card?
@mypictonhouse I think it’s rather dangerous to be over reliant on a single provider for STR, and more widely to be dependant on STRs as the main source of your income.
Hopefully there will be tourism jobs you can take in the 8 months of the year that make up your tourist season that will make you less reliant on STR income.
In terms of STR you need to rethink your marketing strategy. Start with you key target audiences for your listing and base your marketing efforts around attracting these audiences.
You won’t find another listing company with the firepower of Airbnb but you can definitely find alternatives and market yourself directly to potential customers - website, social media, online ads, other listing companies in your area, speaking to relevant businesses about becoming a provider for temporary workers etc.
Be interesting to hear what you mean by Airbnb having dictatorial rules for those offering shared spaces @mypictonhouse I am in this situation and haven’t noticed any rules being introduced that have given me any issues.
@klatchers, yes, but ABB does not take that 15% from me. They take some from me some from the guest. Booking takes that entirely from me.
I also explained that I don;t want to add 15% to my price for the reasons explained above and that I don’t like booking because of their inflexible cancellation policy. Which is something else.
Math was not your favorite subject in school was it?
Let me help you:
AirBnB charges you 3% and the guest 20%
Your set your nightly rate at 100 in AirBnB
The guest has to pay 120, you get 97
Booking.com charges 15% guest 0%
You set your nightly rate at 115
The guest has to pay 115, you get 100
So on booking the guest pays less, and your payout is higher.
This is the reason why I went from the 3% to the 14% host fee on AirBnB. My rates are more competitive and the payout is better.
(And search ranking is better too)
The U.S. is non-Eu, therefore 2.9% + €0.25.
Lots of Europeans take credit cards, why would you think otherwise?
Your maths, from our perspective, doesn’t appear to make sense. We get charged less by BDC than by independent payment processors, so makes total financial sense to carry on allowing them to process the payments - even after allowing for any interest gained on the funds.
JF
@Chris… Exactly. i tried twice, but like speaking to a rock. I said you can add a 15% fee. Same price, with 15% fee added on. Like the 20% you said ABB does. Avoiding a powerful revenue source like Booking.com due to their logic is bizarre. Who likes money??
Possibly not yours either.
As per their own web site, Airbnb may charge up to 20%, but in the vast majority of cases charge less. A few searches I did earlier this evening while looking at our competition showed that in our area, on average, for a one week stay under €500 their charge was circa 15%. Once you broke the €1,000 barrier it dropped to circa 13%.
JF
$450 is shockingly high. That would probably be a deal breaker for me. I don’t know if the host’s being responsible is still the case. Two years ago, ABB seems to have been more supportive of the hosts. I had a couple cancel because they looked at my place and decided they wanted something more high-end. CS was very nice and asked if I would cancel the booking and that they’d give me one night’s fee. I thought that was very supportive of them. I think those days are gone.
Thanks, Helsi. Fortunately, I’m also a musician, so I have an income stream from that. The workers temp housing is an avenue I’m going to explore next year. My county is a Mecca for artists, so my long-term plan is to rent to artists from the city who want to have a pied-a-terre in our community. By dictatorial, I mean: I have a listing in the city that is a small studio apt in a prized neighbourhood. It has a twin bed. I say in the listing that it’s for one person. I declined 3 requests in a row because there were two people who wanted to rent. ABB paused me for 5 days. I negotiated at length with CS, but they kept repeating that I had transgressed their policy. (The policy being having two many “declines” on my listing. I couldn’t negotiate with them in the end and just sucked it up, but I’m leery of them and their dictates now.