@flettie - if you decide to list on Houfy, use this import tool to transfer your ABB or HA listing. It will import the majority of your listing in less than 10 seconds. Houfy is more than just a site that lists vacation rentals, It’s a social site will have real estate, etc. Until the site is marketed, right now it is a great way to build a repeat clientele. I send all of my departing guests my Houfy listing. No booking fees, no middleman. Some of my guests are also joining Houfy after they book. They “follow” me on there and can read any new posts I make about the local area. They can share this with their friends on social media, then can comment on my guides, etc.
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Here is my listing:
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@amafzal We take the deposit through paypal. It’s a bit of a pain but at least you have control over it, unlike airbnb,
If I understand you correctly, yes - I find that BDC bookings come in very early but then they cancel… so it works out the same in the end!
That is what I tried with my last guests from BDC, it is a bit of a pain but actually better than asking them to handover a deposit in cash when they check-in, plus Paypal has a handy feature to just do a ‘refund’, so easily goes back to the sender. So I will be doing paypal deposits for future BDC guests.
Yes there are lots of cancellations, so I am wondering if putting in a non-refundable policy or introducing only a 50% refund after booking might be a way to prevent many cancellations, although it would stop quite a lot of bookings coming through and in essence drop the listing in search results.
I do like the fact that you can create your own custom cancellation policy on BDC, unlike Airbnb where its either 1 day, 5 days or nothing.
I was only on BDC for a short time, years ago and the cancellations and inability to write my own copy drove me away.
However, I should add that as a guest I love BDC. If I have a short 1 to 2 night stay I always use BDC first. Any longer I go to Airbnb.
The discussion here is tremendously helpful.
My husband and I have a place in Whistler (Canada) and are considering using BDC to expand our reach (currently listed on Airbnb and VRBO), so curious to glean any insight on bdc in Canada.
When you start listing on BDC I would advice you to invest in a good channelmanager.
When adding more channels the risk of of overbooking increases a lot, and non of the OTA’s likes to cancel a guests because of this, and will penalize you.
There are some channelmanagers specialy designed for people that started with AirBnB and then expanded to other platforms. They even include a direct booking system.
I personally like Lodigfy for price/performance, an other good choice is Hostaway, they are more expensive but therefor offer a better service.
BDC is a very good choice to expand your reach, but it is 100% instant book, and no ability to review the guest. But it gives you a lot more freedom, they do not have their hand in your pockets and give you a lot more freedom in cancelation policy and deposits.
Because you have to manage payments, they also have no policy on taking money outside BDC.
Also keep in mind that BDC does not split the service fee over host and guest, but puts the complete fee on the host. So you need to inflate your rates by about 11% to keep the same payout as with AirBnB. The guest will pay exactly the same.
I don’t have experience on using BDC in Canada, but I have listed our Caribbean home (full home listing, large, three bedrooms, staff, pool - pretty high price) and I’ve gotten nothing. Maybe it’s because we don’t have reviews (I refused to discount dates on BDC just to get bookings from them), or it’s because larger groups don’t use BDC or we are priced too high, I don’t know.
The thing I hate the most is their host cancellation policy - if you cancel on the guest, you have to pay the difference to re-home them. For us, that could be thousands of dollars.
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BDC do actually handle payments on your behalf now, atleast here in UK, not sure if that maybe not be the case in other regions. Although they do hold the payment until the middle of the next month after check out, which is a bit annoying for cashflow purposes.
I agree, the freedom on creating your own cancellation policy is great, although they don’t handle deposits so you are left to deal with that on your own with the guest. I am currently waiting on a guest to reply back to my deposit request since last week, the guest is meant to arrive tomorrow 
Why I bailed on Bookee-en dot com. Very high risk of one guest wiping out a full quarter of earnings.
What is BDC?
I advertise on Airbnb and VRBO/HomeAway. I get about half from ABB half from VRBO. I tried to advertise on booking but I don’t like their 15% commision fee and other accounting costs that cut into my profit, so I deleted my account with them.
I put my house on Houfy in jan and now is march and I havent had ANY guest from them.
I also signed up with traveling nurses. Except an inquiry last month, nothing.
Booking dot com
2020
i don’t like them. 15% commission is too high.
Airbnb has an average 15% commission as well, they just divide it differently between guest and host, but it’s the same thing on the bottom line that guests pay. Get ready, Airbnb is already experimenting with moving fees over to the host side.
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I kind of like the fact that the commission is all together in BDC, atleast you know exactly what you would be asking the guest to pay each day, with airbnb that is usually a mystery!
From a guests perspective its good too since the price they see per night is what they would pay at check-out rather than the price advertised on ABB’s search page and then that changes once you click into the property!
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You can find it with a little effort but I agree more transparency would be very welcome. I paid 13.3% on a $6000 booking an the host pays 3% so that’s 16+% on a high dollar booking.
We use BDC and they account for about 40% of our business.
A different type of client from Airbnb, generally we have much less interaction with them and their communication is often poor.
Yes, they charge 15% but we sell on BDC at roughly 25% higher than our Airbnb rates, so that takes care of that.
As regards their cancellation policies (from a hosts perspective), the short answer is don’t cancel bookings. If you suffer a catastrophic event then your insurance company should pick up the tab for the event, and the subsequent cancellation penalties.
But to be frank, for most folks they aren’t actually that onerous.
Their interface takes a bit of getting used to, but the functionality is far greater than Airbnbs. You can create multiple room rates, different guest cancellation policies, promotions etc.
In Europe, BDC handle the payments, we get paid ten to fourteen days after check out.
It isn’t perfect and not for everyone, but it works for us, especially off season when the Airbnb traffic slows down here.
JF
I’m not getting anywhere with the Furnished Finder site for Travel Nurses … a couple of inquiries / visits but no closed deals … I imagine that market got saturated by dissatisfied Air hosts.
I still don’t like booking. So, if i set a price of x $/night this is what I want to get. It should be their job to add their commision and fees and taxes on top of that, like ABB does. Instead they took 15% of my income.
The other reason I don’t like it is that I am not a corporation. I am a landlord. Meaning from tax point of view here in US, I just attach a form in which I put the amount I earn/year and that’s it, as opposed to being a corporation where you have to have an accountant fill your taxes 4 times per year. I dont process credit cards etc.
Booking does not do the accounting for me. Booking wants me to process credit cards or be there to accept payments when people arrive. I can’t. I have a full time job. My guests have to use a lockbox to get it.
Booking does NOT mention any of this on their website when you sign up with them. So after I created the account and I saw that I deactivated it. 6 month later I get an email saying we now do process payments on hosts’ behalf. Great! I re-instantiated my account only to find out they only accept like an initial payment on my behalf and then still I should be able to process the rest.
The thing is that until I find this out - that they didn’t process the payment like airbnb - a guest has booked. I spoke with customer service and I said that I want my account deactivated again until they will handle the payments like Airbnb and they deactivated it but somehow I got slammed with a fine from them that I refused that guest. I sent an email to that guest and ask her to cancel and I explained why pretty much like I do with ABB when something happens. I don’t know what happened but Booking wants me to pay that fine when I didn’t host anybody yet and it is their fault because they don’t explain properly how things work on their website. They are so clumsy. I will never do any business with them.