Booking.com

I am considering trying Booking.com. Chris, can you tell us about your experience with the platform and is OwnerRez completely integrated? Any advice or things a newbie would need to know about setting up?
Thanks

Yep, OwnerRez is directly integrated with booking.com! Once you've got it configured, we'll automatically push rates and availability to booking.com and pull back bookings (with credit cards/payments) from booking.com.

Here's an article on the setup process: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/connect-ownerrez-t-booking-com

Personally, booking.com has worked pretty well for my own properties. The big recommendation is to set strict policies (deposit due upon booking, free cancellation only for the first few hours, after that a cancellation fee, and a requirement for address, phone, and card security code).

The main issue folks report with booking.com is lookie loos that book and then cancel, even more than fraudulent bookings. With the strict policies above, that's much less of an issue. Even if it's a bad credit card, your calendar is only tied up for 24 hours and then OwnerRez will auto-cancel the booking if the guest doesn't get a good card on file.

So for my personal properties I've had a few of those where the card doesn't work or people cancel in the first couple days after booking. Other than that everything has run smoothly and I've got a chunk of bookings from them.

Thanks Chris, so good to know. I appreciate your experience with all of this.

I am still trying to set them up. They automatically enrolled me in Booking.com payments which I do not want to do - I want to do payments via OR/stripe. I sent an opt out request on jun 22nd, looked today - still shows Booking.com payments. I will not go live with those.

Chris, can you share your settings example for cancellation policy, cancellation fee etc. I just want to make sure I set up in a way that discourages tire kickers and fraudsters. TIA

Have you heard back from booking.com yet?

For my properties, I've got it set to require address, phone, and card security code. That's the big thing. If your account doesn't have a switch to require card security code, contact booking.com support and they can add that for you.

In terms of payment policies, I'm doing payment due upon booking, but free cancellation until 60 days before arrival. They've got a pretty rich settings section for that, so some folks will do 30% nonrefundable on booking, the remainder 30 days before arrival, cancellation until 30 days before arrival, stuff like that.

partially. they have "verified" my property, but no change in payment methods yet - still shows Booking.com payments. Thank you for the advice - I will go with payment due at booking, free cancellation at 60 days or more as it is my policy on other sites as well. Waiting for payment enablement to see if they have CVV set up

I am just curious, does anyone have a feel for the experience on booking.com when they do have guests? Not payment or management perspective, but does anyone have a feel about how the guests who book through it on general are? AirBnB guests tend to be younger and sometimes messier I find, whereas VRBO guests tend to be older and pickier. Any thoughts so far on booking.com? It seems to be a big site....

Well for one thing, I believe it is a lot more likely to bring international guests than the other sites. Of course, where you live highly determines that

Yes, it depends. My market is frequented by US travelers, rarely do we have international so it is not a consideration. It took me a MONTH (yes, a month!) to get set up on B.com. since then I had 4 reservations 3 of which either canceled themselves or I had to cancel due to invalid card or lack of communication. So far it is much ado about nothing.

Hi BlueMtn., Did you get this worked out with Booking.com? I have started the process and am finding the same problem. No way to take my own payments. urgh....
Thanks, Sherene

I did. Took a month, they have finally removed their payments BUT they do not allow to set up prepayments because I am new. So pick your poison - either use their payments and possibly require prepayment ()for example at 60 days) OR use OR payments but Booking will try to force you pay-at-check-in