When I first put my property on Airbnb I also put it on booking.com.But never spent much time on that site because it was so much harder. But I finally got around to doing the property verification which is receiving the letter from booking.com and entering the unique code into their site. Now I’ve received a couple of bookings from them and I’m trying to work out how to handle it.
It seems booking.com is more like a hotel so the processes I have in place for my Airbnb will need to be modified. As a guest I’ve booked a few places on booking.com but they’ve always been hotels and not personally managed properties. So I have no personal experience.
For example I send extensive instructions to the guests before they arrive and have instructions in the apartment itself. I’m wondering what other hosts do when they have their accommodation on both sites. The calendar is a slight issue but I have managed to synchronize booking.com with Airbnb so it will never allow anybody to book on booking.com when that room has been taken or Airbnb. But I can’t get in the converse to work so if somebody books on booking.com I have to manually block those dates out on Airbnb.
To me the main issue is insurance or damage deposit. Airbnb appears to cover you in case the guests damages your apartment though I’ve only had smaller experiences in that area. But booking.com requires you ask the guests for a damage deposit which they cannot collect on your behalf. So I’ve created an account on Stripe to see if that will help me accept credit cards.