Using TravelNest as a complement to Airbnb?

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Any anyone having experience using TravelNest?

I am considering using them as a complement to Airbnb to increase the number of bookings. By listing my property with them at a higher rate than on Airbnb I will not reduce earnings per booking but might get more bookings.

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Nope, can’t be done as far I can see, at least not in a straightforward manner.

If you are already on existing channels like Airbnb and Booking.com, we do not transfer these listings into TravelNest. At present, we do not transfer existing reviews from any channels into TravelNest. When you join TravelNest, we ask you to snooze your existing listings. Snoozing your listing is a way of temporarily deactivating them - they are not permanently deleted and you’ll still be able to access the content.

Essentially you are giving them the sole rights to market your property. Of course you could simply not snooze your listing, but you’d then either get booted from TravelNest, or run the chance of double bookings.

I’m always up for investigating additional marketing resources, but I actually had to create an account to get to the help pages. That’s irritating.

We use Airbnb, BDC and VRBO. We get exposure on all subsidiary channels, e.g. Kayak and Agoda with BDC and as VRBO are owned by Expedia, we appear on Orbitz, Travelocity etc, as well as the main Expedia site. So other than TripAdvisor, which I snoozed a while back, we wouldn’t get any real benefit, plus we’d be starting from scratch from a review perspective.

To go back to your initial concept, the only way of doing it is if you created a completely new listing on TravelNest, to run parallel with your existing listing on Airbnb, and, and it’s an important “and”, can find some way of synching the calendars.

It’s a bit of a curates egg, great exposure for a new listing with minimal input from the host. However, it’s all instant book so probably not ideal for someone new to hosting.

JF

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Thank you John, but according to TravelNest it should be possible as long as you dont list your property on Airbnb via TravelNest. I will follow up with them again. When it comes to instant booking you need to link your Airbnb calendar to the TravelNest calĂŞnder to block booking that you get on Airbnb.

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Yes, by doing what I said. However the synch issue is still there, they only offer an iCal synch, they don’t provide an XML connection.

Not for me, too much chance of a double booking.

Let us know how you get on, it’s an interesting concept.

JF

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This is the response from TravelNest: "Good morning, You would have to either snooze your current account or not select Airbnb on our marketing channels.
"

When it comes to synkningof calenders I do not see the problem using Ical Sync, it should be more robust then using an XML connection. Why do you prefere XML ?

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Their response is pretty much what I thought it might be.

It’s instant. We use a channel manager and, for example when someone books an apartment on Airbnb, those dates are immediately blocked to BDC, and vice versa.

An iCal synch is dependent on the settings within the individual (OTA’s) calendars. We have to use iCal with VRBO due to their terms, which concerns me.

I tested it once, and after blocking a couple of days off in our channel manager, they were still available on VRBO four hours later. Fortunately, VRBO is a small part of our business, and I can cancel without any (financial) penalty if a double booking occurs.

When we receive a booking from Airbnb or BDC, we manually synch VRBO, which is a pain the arse.

JF

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John, thank you I will look into it. The only thing that matters to me is the time a booking from Airbnb turns up in the Travelnest calender. All other potential double bookings is the responsibility of Travelnest.

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I would think that double bookings would your responsibility not Travelnests @Per_Norlin

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Helsi,

Double booking between Airbnb and sites managed by Travelnest is my responsibility. Double booking within sites used by Travel nest is their responsibility.