Just looking for support/if anyone has experienced similar

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No. Every host has the option to rent via inquiries only. The problem on BDC with that is that the chat function won’t work until a booking has been confirmed. Therefore, guests who send an inquiry choose what information they are willing to provide ranging from “I want to book” to “I’m travelling with my husband to visit the lovely city and see the sights. We’re non smokers and agree to your house rules”.

Hosts on BDC can report any guest for misconduct if there have been problems. We have done so with one guest who caused damage to our property and they got banned from BDC. There is no review system but you can report abusive guests.

IF the guests leaves notes in their review, the hosts have the opportunity to respond publicly (pending BDC’s review). So far, all of our responses to reviews who thought they would get towel service etc. have been approved and published on the BDC website.

Some things could be improved but it’s pretty usable in our view.

Abusive guests with such a low rating will find other ways to make a reservation on Airbnb or any other platform. Even if it means that they use a friend’s account on Airbnb. We continue to receive reservations from Airbnb members who make the reservations for someone else - which is now forbidden. Therefore, we ask for all personal details of the actual guests who will stay with us up front (which will be checked on arrival day with the ID etc.).

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Well, if you can’t communicate with a potential guest until a booking is confirmed, I don’t see the purpose of inquiries on BDC- it might as well be all instant book. On Airbnb, if a guest has sent a nice informative message along with their Request, I will message them back and accept the Request. If they are newbies, and/or have no reviews or don’t give any info in their Request message, I dialogue with them before deciding whether to accept or not. And if they aren’t a good fit for my listing, haven’t bothered to read and understand what I offer, they sometimes withdraw their Request. So the BDC protocol would never work for me.

And while it’s all well and good that you can report a guest for bad behavior, that doesn’t accomplish the same thing as being able to read their reviews, as you would have already been subject to their behavior, rather than having been able to decline them to start with, or question them about a past bad review.

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One of the things I hated about BDC was that their “bot” would write our description. Here’s the one they wrote for our property:

"Villa Grand Piton is a villa in Soufrière that offers views of the Pitons, a pool and staff that is available to assist you day and night. Guests may relax by the outdoor pool.
The villa is composed of 3 bedrooms, a fully equipped kitchen, and 3 bathrooms. A flat-screen TV and Blu-ray player are featured.
The villa offers a barbecue. Driver and cooking services are available at Villa Grand Piton, while horse riding and snorkelling can be enjoyed nearby."

It is simply putting some key amenities into sentences. Nothing about the critical aspects of our home (like no glass over the windows!). So BDC isn’t nearly as appealing to me as Vrbo and AirBnB where I can “sell” our property while managing expectations.

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I’m ABB API connected. I take deposits, or waive them if the guest has lots of 5 star reviews.
I’m here to say that most problem guests will NOT book you if you say you take a security deposit. So you avoid scammers 99% of the time. And if you have a few hundred bucks of their money in case of damages, the guest will avoid damaging things and follow your rules. I only take deposits actually 10% of the time, because I get so many 5 star requests! So it’s not much extra work.
I have a PMS system that can connect you API to Airbnb for less than $10/month/listing.

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I’m not on ABB but I am API connected on Vrbo. That’s because ABB requires us to go to Simplified Pricing if we API connect. Not every has to do that - US properties are exempt. None of my competitors are using Simplified Pricing. Since we are one of the highest-priced properties on a per-bedroom basis, SImplified pricing would make us non-competitive.
But as soon as ABB requires everyone to go to Simplified Pricing (the California law may hasten that change), I’ll API connect, too.

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Hi, James, may I ask which PMS system you are using?

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Many years ago now myself and a uni colleague were attending a conference and put up in a motel sharing a room. He was unaware of how bad a snorer I am and eventually broke the toilet seat in the middle of the night and told management it was broken, and could they move him to another room. it worked!

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Stands for Booking.com

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@Hosterer I wasn’t planning on doing BDC, because I rent a room in my house, where I sleep. On this list from a post I saw when I was previously researching, there are several factors that wouldn’t make it a good fit for me.

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BDC is more expensive if you sign up to the Genius programme-can be up to 30% off and then there is the 15% commission and the 2.2% credit card fees
I have had far more cancellations through BDC compared to other OTAs.
I have have fraudulent credit cards only through BDC
The rest is true.
The reps are just as bad if you can a phone number that works.

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I’m not trying to defend BDC but I’d recommend to make an assessment AFTER having gained personal experience instead of judging from hear-say.

While, certainly, some items on this list are true, we have had positive experiences with BDC but this mileage may vary depending on the location and type of your accommodation.

We’re located in France and live on-site. Every guest is greeted personally. No anonymous lockbox check-in or sneak-ins possible. We work from home and usually there is always someone home 24/7. We intervene immediately. Interventions did not just happen with BDC guests - in fact we have a lot more Airbnb guests trying to break Airbnb’s rules of booking for other family members.

BDC guests have the option to add another guest’s name as well (as Airbnb IF the ‘other’ guest has an Airbnb profile!!!).

Last month’s global traffic of BDC was roughly 5 times of Airbnb’s - hence more opportunities to get a booking.

We never had a fraudulent transaction with BDC in four years and hundreds of guests.

Cancellations that did happen on BDC (as they also happen on Airbnb) with an exception of two reservations were weeks in advance.

BDC offers a free partner liability insurance (which I consider similar to AirCover). BDC allows a set up of a security deposit to facilitate claims in case of an issue - Airbnb doesn’t provide that feature.

Every guest who didn’t properly read our descriptions and who expected something differently was identified before check-in through regular chat conversations and they all cancelled themselves.

The statement of BDC being ‘harder to use’ is subjective in my opinion. Every website has its quirks.

The biggest issue that we have is the fact that BDC does not allow to put our own description. But overall with have an accommodation rating of 9.2 and a host rating of 9.8, so we’re not too concerned about that.

Customer services has been working fine with BDC as it has so far with Airbnb. Both companies have been mentioned before of atrocious CS support which we didn’t encounter thus far.

There is much more to write but I don’t think that every host can just make an educated decision without even trying another leading platform. BDC itself is not a scam - so why not try it?

It’s fully understandable that certain accommodation types would not work well with BDC (probably in-house hosting) and that’s perfectly fine.

If we would have listened to the internet about how bad BDC is for hosts we would have never used them and missed out on a majority of our income as Airbnb has its ups and downs and BDC is always there to pick up the pieces.

We adjust our pricing to make up for the higher commission charges on BDC so we end up with the same as Airbnb. BDC guests don’t seem to care about the higher prices.

These are our personal experiences and I’m not generalising this for all other hosts!

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Yes, travel agencies have found a way to abuse the system.

In our area we get a lot of guest from the Middle East, who in general are messy and destructive guests.

In the past they would not get trough the AirBnB IB vetting system. Nowadays they have travel agency’s generating accounts with 1 or 2 fake 5 star reviews so they can IB.
These accounts are disposable and only used for 1 trip, if you check their account after a few weeks, they have a bad review from all of the places they stayed in.

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Do you have a source for this information?

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What kind of source do you need?

It’s common knowledge in our region.
Most of the host stopped with IB because of this.

These guest all have the same things in common:

  • 1 or 2 5 star reviews from a host in their own country
    If you ask questions when they arrive:
  • it’s my first time on AirBnB
  • the guest has no clue what they booked “My brother booked for me, it’s my brothers account”
  • almost always they “forgot” to book the children so they arrive with more guest than booked

I also got several request from a travel agents to have cheap one night stays, with nobody staying in exchange for reviews. I refuse to do this.

But I know a host that is doing this, €50 a night, easy money, no cost.

Basically the AirBnB guest review system is broken.

36

So… anecdotal.

And third party bookings that you accept. Why?

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That seems to be quite true. Some platforms are used more extensively by guests in some parts of the world than others and for different reasons. Therefore, a host might get more objectionable, or good guests through one platform as compared to the other.

And one doesn’t have to have first hand experience for their knowledge to be valid. One of my best friends who has owned and run a small hostel for 25 years. She has had thousands of guests. She used to just list on hostel sites, but decided to try BDC. She said she got the worst quality of guests through them she had ever had- tons of no-shows, guests who trashed out their rooms, who disrespected the other guests, and who stole things. Then BDC failed to pay her for a bunch of the bookings.

My friend has no reason to lie about this and I know other hosts in my area who have had similar experiences with BDC. I have never listed with them, but don’t need to have personal experience to be aware of this.

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I don’t see a problem with a no-show. The host still gets paid… Depending on the cancellation policy this shouldn’t be problematic…

Why wouldn’t she set up a security deposit, which would also help to sift out the worst guests…?`

Why would BDC not pay out after a guest’s stay? I’d love to hear the back stories about that issue.

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She didn’t get paid for the no shows. And I have no idea why she didn’t get paid- she argued with them for weeks about what she was owed and finally gave up and took her listing down.

There isn’t really any “backstory”- it’s just like when Airbnb refunds a guest for no good reason and in contravention of the cancellation policy.

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My problem with such ominous cases of hosts not getting paid without any given reason is that the platforms can do this with any accommodation/host, anytime. Who is verifying that these non-payments are even actual complaints then? Maybe the platforms simply cash in the guests’ charges and don’t even pay the hosts to keep all the money?!?!

This sounds so broken and wrong.

I would raise hell to figure out why I would no be paid for a guest that stayed with us.

I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen, but it sure leaves a sour taste in the host’s mouth…

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Exactly! That is why some hosts are so frustrated with Airbnb!!! And this is where we often come to commiserate and get advice.