What some of the differences between Airbnb and Booking. I used to host on AirBnb, but I am quite unfamiliar with Booking. I want to list my ‘granny flat’ (separate unit attached to my house) on Booking.
The mobile apps offered by BDC are extremely poor and do not include many of the settings available in the web version of their platform.
Unfortunately, the platform itself feels outdated. The web interface is old, unstable, and full of issues. What is even more concerning is that some of these bugs appear intentionally designed to bypass host-defined restrictions. In several situations the system attempted to reduce the price I had set or to reopen dates I had intentionally blocked, usually when the platform needed to relocate a problematic guest.
As a host you also have very limited control. You cannot decline a booking made through BDC. The only option is to block a guest after they have already caused damage, which is hardly a solution and offers no real protection. The entire process is opaque and not at all transparent.
To be fair, BDC invests heavily in marketing compared to Airbnb and in many regions they dominate the market. The costs for hosts are similar to Airbnb and their customer support is equally mediocre, if not worse.
Another disadvantage is that hosts cannot review guests on BDC, which means you have no reliable way to evaluate potential risks to your property. In addition, the so-called Genius program is essentially a trap. It takes money from hosts while allowing BDC to claim that they are offering discounts to guests.
What is disappointing is that Airbnb has recently begun to adopt some of the same practices used by BDC.
I used an AI tool to polish the text above.
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A friend who has a small hostel and used to just advertise on hosteling sites tried out BDC at one point. She said she got the worst quality of guests through them she’d had in 25 years. Of course they weren’t all terrible, but a lot of them were slobs, thieves (she’d never had anything go missing before, but one of them stole her guitar, which had always hung on the wall in the shared living room, for anyone to use) and lots of no-shows. To top it off, she never got paid for some of the bookings, and after days of arguing with BDC, to no avail, pulled her listing off.
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@admins This forum still have issues on managing draft messages. I strongly recommend to all users using a separate tool for drafting.
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@admins I am also still having the same issue posting here. “Times out” after only typing a few words, when I try to refresh page, get “429 error- Too many requests”. Vicious circle.
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Booking and Airbnb are hugely different platforms. Airbnb is very much created to be easy to use and take care of the day to day activities, whereas Booking is a legacy platform that has been adjusted to include holiday rentals in addition to hotels. This has a knock on effect that a lot of the back-end feels clunky and weird to holiday home owners, because it wasn’t designed with them in mind.
It’s also very slow moving, so changes take time whereas Airbnb is designed to be reactive to change and stay ahead of the curve. This means you’ll see new features and more interesting options in Airbnb well before they make it to Booking
Depending on your location, property type and customer, each channel will work differently to bring you bookings. In the UK for example, Airbnb is good for shorter weekend bookings, whereas Booking is good for longer bookings. It’s not hard and fast rule, there will be variations.
Getting set up on Booking is a bit of a pain, so you may need a hand, and their support team isn’t as responsive as you’d hope. If you use a channel manager or software, ask them for their Channel Onboarding support and training, as they’ll be more responsive and will get you up and running quicker and better.
Hope that helps 
Welcome to ask me questions, take care Kelly.
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