 Poster: A snowHead
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| under a new name wrote: |
| @James the Last, i don't think AirBnB charge anything like 15% ... |
They charge the owner 3%. And they charge the renter "Between 6 and 12%". Always looks like 12% to me. So that's 15% the owner is giving away.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@James the Last, umm, I've checked our rates, to the extent I can without paying anything and they <appear> to be without any 6-12% ...
We leave contact details in the apartments so that repeat books can come direct.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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But I see, @James the Last, you are quite correct.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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10-15% charge for anything makes sense if it gets you a whole load of business.
It doesn't always make sense for a private owners to run a website and booking system for a small number of properties. And certainly they will be harder to find. Repeat business is great but it's not necessarily going to fill your slots and there will be churn of the client base.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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It also allows for some vetting in the process. Something air have had problems with in the early days but a weakness that can ultimately be their strength.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Layne wrote: |
10-15% charge for anything makes sense if it gets you a whole load of business.
It doesn't always make sense for a private owners to run a website and booking system for a small number of properties. And certainly they will be harder to find. Repeat business is great but it's not necessarily going to fill your slots and there will be churn of the client base. |
yes, obviously it's a decision that providers need to take. The situation is quite complex, for OTA's like booking.com 10% would be pretty low, they've got properties on 20% and more if they choose some promotions. But really the OTA is operating at scale so they can run on much smaller margins.
Part of the commission is spent on third party websites, for example, it's quite easy to set up as a reseller of booking.com properties. That's not great for your brand sometimes, you can get guests rocking up who booked via "we-are-complete-fruitcakes.com" or "we-like-being-disruptive-at-3am-com" where you'd possibly not have chosen to advertise.
Another part of the commission is spent on schemes like google adwords where they'll actually outbid the property owner for their own property name because they're prepared (for example) to spend nearly all of their commission on google adwords. The property may feel that's not a good return and has to choose whether to chase the bid or not.
The other issue is the quality of the bookings, for us OTA bookings are lower quality. More no-shows, more invalid credit card details and so on. Our own booking system is better at validating card details, it's linked to Stripe for payment and our manual intervention in a booking is pretty near zero apart from the delivery  That means we have to manage the T&C's a bit and use some tech to validate bookings, there's a small added cost for that.
Booking.com don't much care if a guest is a no show, the loss to them is minimal but it hurts a property particularly at peak time. It's clear some guests don't think they're booking as much as taking an option on a room.
So, 10-15% is low for an OTA and a property can find itself in a position where servicing the OTA booking actually costs more than a direct booking.
And, then OTA's are really good at delivering one-nighters who are doing Europe in two days and they're quite hard work
But, as you allude, running a booking system isn't for everyone, it takes more IT savvy than most owners have. If they pay someone else to do it then the cost saving is eliminated of course.
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| hammerite wrote: |
I get the impression that the TOs in Austria seem more aligned to the local business. They often don't offer a booking system, just a system of listing and referrals - booking and payment is usually done directly with the owner.
Using Saalbach as an example, in summer they list lots of properties in the area. Some of the properties offer a "free" card called the Joker card, this gives guests free use of all the open lifts, the pool, mini golf and discounts off lots of things. Clearly the properties offering the Joker card are paying the tourist office for the card, but I guess that is in return for a listing on the site (the card itself is a huge advantage in itself). Not all properties offer the Joker card, but they are still listed. Whether they pay or not for the service I don't know.
When looking for properties I look at a number of sources, but then often bypass the system and contact the property owner directly to book (if it is possible to find their contact details). |
Whether I got the Joker card or not was a huge decision in where I booked my stay in Hinterglemm this past summer given it seemed to indiciate to me a hotel that was cheapskating out of a programme of massive benefit to many guests & the card could not even be bought standalone.
Re the original post, I have to say I use the TO website as my main starting point for a new resort and kind of take it on trust that any guesthouse etc that cares about their business or won't be a pain in the harris to deal with will be listed. Frankly some TOs have slick booking engines some are just a pain in the back bottom as they show availability that just isn't there or owners aren't prepared to take e.g. 4 day bookings.
I guess the OP is disabusing me of the notion but sometimes a one stop shop does have its merits. I really don't want the exercise of booking a B&B for a few nights at a modest price turn into the car insurance game where I have to use multiple aggregation sites and a few places directly to ensure I'm seeing a decent selection of the full market.
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| Dave of the Marmottes wrote: |
I guess the OP is disabusing me of the notion but sometimes a one stop shop does have its merits. I really don't want the exercise of booking a B&B for a few nights at a modest price turn into the car insurance game where I have to use multiple aggregation sites and a few places directly to ensure I'm seeing a decent selection of the full market. |
Not quite disabusing, some TO's are very good and have moved with the times, I work with and for a few. Some reach out to me to get me to take clients there, just not the one that's where I actually live.
Aggregation sites shouldn't work, they mostly simply list the same property with several different versions of the same OTA. Given the price parity clause that OTA's insert, and the fact that OTA's own some of the sites, it's stinks a bit. ie hotels.com, trivago, expedia are all the same company.
The TO's using a booking system are onto a hiding to nothing really, they're often not linked to review sites so guests still go look at TripAdvisor or booking.com. You'll find while it's quite easy to stick two fingers up at the TO system owners are mostly stuck with the real OTA's.
From a owner point of view, OTA's are quite good at delivering guests that we'd not reach otherwise, Russians, Chinese in particular or people using their app' to find somewhere last minute which is a nice filler.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@ise, but are the small local guesthouses all on the likes of Booking.com? I tend to only see the more aspirational places where the owners either know they offer something that competes well with the "proper" hotels or are obviously savvy about revenue optimisation. Actually the type of places I quite like staying are where the family run the hotel or restaurant etc and granny has "retired" to the B&B next door.
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@Dave of the Marmottes, that's linked to comment that @Layne made I think about whether you can run a booking system and website.
If you f*up a booking.com reservation they'll charge you the cost to put the guest somewhere else. It's a breeze for us because we've a booking system with a channel manager that automates updating booking.com with availability. So we don't have to spend hours manually updating it or run the risk of double bookings. So, some small places struggle to manage it.
On the other hand, I know small places that only use booking.com and have it on their website or don't have a website.
Some just don't move with the times, don't take credit cards, don't list etc. I have to do a lot of this for my own business and I have a tech' background so it's no work really. The previous owner was a case in point, paper based credit card thing, huge spend on a poor website, manually updating booking.com etc. Loads of work, loads of expense. The difference between profit and loss probably, certainly enough difference to pay for a few holidays of our own
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Dave of the Marmottes wrote: |
Whether I got the Joker card or not was a huge decision in where I booked my stay in Hinterglemm this past summer given it seemed to indiciate to me a hotel that was cheapskating out of a programme of massive benefit to many guests & the card could not even be bought standalone. |
Same here. I'd not been to Saalbach in the summer before so at first I had no idea what the Joker card was. I found a nice apartment on the tourist inforrmation website that was directly on the Schattberg X-Line mountain bike route (perfect as we were mountain biking) which was about £250 for the week. I then realised what the Joker card was and ended up staying somewhere that cost £300 more - the apartment was a bit bigger but the main advantage was the Joker card - we felt the extra cost was worth it just for the card. I must have averaged about 10 uplifts a day!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@hammerite, It's horses for courses. We've never bothered with the joker card but may well look into offering it next summer (which may impact on our rates - currently £20 per adult per day). It's true to say that the cost of the accommodation probably reflects whether the joker card is included, and I'm not surprised to hear that the apartment that offered it was more than twice as expensive as the one that didn't. Some people are of course happy to save the money and spend the saving on things for which you don't need a joker card. We stay in Saalbach for a month to six weeks every summer, and we don't usually bother with the lifts. We drive up to various restaurants and swimming lakes/pools (e.g. the Hecherhuette, the Sonnhof), and we hike up to some of the more remote (and in winter inaccessible) spots (e.g. the Saalalm). You can swim for nothing in the most picturesque surroundings imaginable up at Hochalm and other locations (to which again you can drive up), and we've never bothered with the Captain Hook public swimming pool in the village (for which the joker card would save you a few euros). Any cycling we do tends to be along the river between Saalbach and Hinterglemm, or round the lake at Zell am See. It really depends on how you prefer to spend your time.
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I think that it is fine that the Tourist office charges a fee and depending on how big that fee is, also charges a commission. This is justified is the website is good and directs custom that the hotel/bnb wouldn't have otherwise got.
There should be a clear line between what the tourist tax goes on and what the fees for being on the website go on. I couldn't gather whether this is really the case. What maybe should be accounted for in this situation is that UK traffic to Switzerland is way down and the tourist office may see little benefit in spending money on getting UK traffic when the swiss dollar rate is so high and few of the other accomodations are targeting the UK market. I've never heard of this village/town.
What is bad is that the big hotels seem to be extremely pally wit the tourist office and so not paying in and are getting better deals. Considering that often in ski resorts hotels are owned by local rich families, this may be common occurrence.
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