Is anybody here also listed on Booking.com?
I just joined Booking.com a few days ago, and after a minute getting listed, I recieved the first booking.
I am however, a bit scared to list on several sites, and Booking.com looks to be more for businesses and for the professional user.
I wanted to list with Booking.com because it helps filling up the calendar in slow months.
What are your experiences with Booking.com?
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I hesitated to use it since they do not require guests to verify their ID. My guests stay in our home with my family.
However, a verified ID is no guarantee of anything, so I may return and activate my sight. After the first of the year I was busy with booking requests, but now itâs gotten quiet.
I am listed with Booking.com but be careful as there a lot of scammers on that site who stole credit cards then turn around booking your place. You might end up refunding the real user and you end up eating the cost. I have that happened to me and wrote booking.com and received a reply that says to call the police. Couldnât believe a big company like them doesnât verify the credit cards numbers that guests used. There are instances where guests want to pay me upon check-in and arrived with no cash. I can go on and on. Try Expedia.com instead. They are more reliable.
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My feeling is that customers on booking.com do not fully understand that they will stay at someoneâs place and expect the amenities of an hotel, and will treat the place like an hotel.
I noticed that hosts in my area tend to get bad reviews on booking.com (whereas they get good reviews on Air) due to unrealistic expectations, for instance lack of A/C (in a residential building in ParisâŚhello???) or elevator (which is specified in their listing).
I once hosted another Airbnb host who also has her place on Booking.com and she confirmed that the relationship with booking.com customers is ânot the sameâ and much more âcommercialâ.
Another thing is that youâll have no idea of the guests you will host, and they will have no idea of who you are either (much like when you book an hotel), which could be a concern. For instance, weâre a gay couple and I noticed that my fellow hosts get a lot of customers from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE⌠Not a good match IMO ^^
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I definitely do not like bookings.com, though I can see how it would work for most people. The one aspect of bookings.com that I find absurd is how they prevent hosts from describing their own place If one is offering something different; (such as an island for exampl, how exactly does that fit their hotel-oriented format.
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Go on to some of the sites where people have reviewed their experiences with Booking.com - They have a very bad reputation, they corner their providers into making sure that the lowest price they provide is through them (and in fact have just faced court in Ireland over this). They advertise prices but when people turn up at the hotels etc they often find that price has changed. There is no after sales service and they donât screen people.
Leave it to the big chain hotels. My own experience with them has been a nightmare.
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have you tried/are you on homestay? thatâs a much more kindof âfamily/friendlyâ type of site but you have to be careful as homestay take all the deposit so you need to work out your own terms with the guest. i havenât fully sorted this out yet
I been on booking.com for 5 years. I have a love hate relationship with them. They have gotten better. I wish they would stop referring to me as my hotel. Because apartment owners are a complete different animal. I would never list with them if it was a share inside a house. All of mine are vacation properties only. First off when someone books. I check there credit card for a buck to make sure itâs real. If not I report it right away to weed them out. Second I confirm the reservation and spell everything out they need to do and what we will do in our confirmation. 5 days prior to check in I run there card in full to make sure it goes through. If not at least I got a few day window to re-book. Itâs best asset is last minute. Itâs worse. Your on your own with the charges. You never know who you will get. There rating system is hard to get a good grade. There commissioned based on just the rent so to cover there fee put in a higher cleaning fee then normal. Make sure you lock there calendar correctly. Or you will have the dreaded double booking.
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I just signed on and they will roll out their own billing feature directly to the guest and deposit in our account very soon. My rep told me it should come out this summer and it will be for non hotel folks like us.
I have used booking.com only for the days I wanted filled and got a booking straight away. It was great BUT booking.com does not take payment so I had to collect payment off the guest. I advised guest that I accept PayPal only. That was fine thankfully and got the payment.
Booking.com invoices me the 15% commission for the booking made.
Also booking.com does not help you with damage cover.
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Hereâs my experience with Booking.com: I listed my place, promptly got a booking for 2 months in advance - a gentleman who would be traveling with his girlfriend and daugher. Over the next 8 weeks he sent me approximately 25 emails with questions that were answered in the description, called me twice before arriving, upon arrival they turned their nose up at my place and when they left they left multiple âsurprisesâ in the toilet for me, that would no longer flush. So I unregistered.
Granted, I got a bad guest, but it kinda put me off. Airbnb all the way now.
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Go figure my airbnb and Booking exploded over night for a week that a prior guest cancel and was free. Of course trying to log on on booking wouldnât accept my password, got routed to someone in China and could talk to the office until this morning. So I am now double booked for easter week and what I found out is if they find an alternative (motel 6 is the cheapest and closet to me, Although better damn good hotel newly remodeled) they will invoice me for the difference. which is about 50 bucks. So no IB on air and will make sure the pricing on Booking is a lot higher. I also got a year in advanced booking for same dates.We will see what happens with that one.
Carmen, they will invoice you. Because you are new you probably dont have reviews, but if you did you would have another problem. I have 10 reviews at 8.5, which is very rare here in Hollywood and considered to be very good rating. I got overbooked too once and the guest was placed to La quinta for 100$ more than my rate because it was the closest to my rating at 7.3. So they are not just looking to place a person into any hotel closer in price but closer to you rating.
My experience with booking.com was very difficult in a beginning. They dont let you make your own descripton, and because i am only renting 2 rooms in my house, the confusion was just overwhelming. People thought that its a house they are renting only on a rrival to discover that its just a room, and on top of that we are living there.
Then they thought it was something like bed and breakfast, bigger and we were not there. So, after several negotiations with booking.com they added us to description.
2 of my low reviews are only based on a fact that its not a hotel. My answer was : why dont you read next time what you are booking:) It says clearly that the house has only 2 rooms for rent, and owners will be present through out your stay.
Now the confusion declined but still i always get this uneasy feeling when someone books through booking.com.
I like Airbnb guests much more. Unfortunatelly, Airbnb guests expect much lower rates and i can not get enough business from them. During busy season i mostly rented to booking.com guests. Most of them i have to say were very pleasant, though i had couple that were the opposite.
As far as payments goes, i am used to it now but in a beginning it made no sense to me. I needed myself to charge them. And if the card doesnt go through, you basically are stock with unpaid non refundable reservation. SO, guests donât show up most of the time when card does not go through but i can only free my calendar after 6 pm.
Here when Air comes into game. I am trying to rent through them and then at 6 pm, booking.com starts working.
THEn endless reqests from guests whos plans changed and they already paid asking for refund. I reffer them to non refundable policy and dont refund them. They dispute the charge, but i still get to keep the money.
So, as you can see its much more work with booking.com, but the money is so good and because i depend on this income, i made it work
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well That is why my booking listing is a lot higher then what I get in Airbnb so if I do get booked it is worth the hassles. Good to know about the rating systm.
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MIne too is much higher but still it does not feel good just to throw away a 100$
That was the deal breaker for me.
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I believe Booking isn´t´still prepare for vacation rentals handled by owners. It is a hotel platform and more suitable for them than to us. The first thing I don´t like about Booking is the fact I need to handle the payments directly with my guests which I believe makes the transaction a bit unsafe from the guests side. The other thing I don´t like is that your data isn´t private at all, so anyone with a different intention than to book with you can easily get your private data with only pretending he is going to stay with you. In comparisson Airbnb releases this data only once the payment is done. And the last thing I don´t like is that there is no sense of community here. It is just a transaction so you can´t rate your guest netiher have information about how is the one that plans to stay with you. This make the transaction more unsafe because if you aren´t going to rate the guest then you can´t expect he will take care of your place.
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Well folks the horrible night mare happened this weekend with booking.com when I was double booked.
THEY never contacted the guest to rebook them and told me not to contact them that they would handle it. I even called my US CX contact and asked the reservation stilled appeared on my home page and I didnât want them to think they had a reservation at my place. I was assured that they would not because they had been in contact with the guests and no one would be coming to my house.
I am out to dinner with my son for his birthday about 45 mins away when I get a phone call âHello this is Jorn and I am in front of the house where is the key or code?â I asked if customer service ever called him and to rebook him since I was double booked. I apologized and told him the the closest hotel to us was Motel 6 about 5 mins away.
I felt horrible for the rest of the evening and I was so pissed off and planned on calling US contact this morning.
Booking calls me at 4 am to talk about the guest if he ever booked with me, I was livid and sent a scathing email stating DO NOT even invoice me since I direct him to closest hotel and they never contacted the guest.
I am really am thinking twice about this but have two other reservations and will give it one more chance.