Booking.com Integration

For the time being, I think I plan to use Booking.com payments, because it looks if I collected to my own credit card processor , itwould not take the payment until the day they check in?? (my read of the Booking.com site)

Or can OwnerRez functionality collect the payment immediately > Lynnebrook > bank?

New to using booking.com...

I have ownerrez set up to collect 60 days prior stay. Prob is, that B.com advertises that they do not have to pay till day of arrival even though my cancellation policy says 60 days. I made up uuuuuge poster among my property photos saying that payment will be collected 60 days prior to arrival. I think couple of people questioned it. But since I only had 3 bookings that actually stayed (and not canceled among 2 properties, and almost a year) I guess this is an inconvenience to explain to them every time that I have to deal with. I am about ready to pull the plug on b.com as they ironically bring no bookings./

As I said, someone else in the building only gets his bookings from booking.com. I think it is Highly regional, as Airbnb and VRBO are oalso highly Regional.

My cancellation policy will be non-refundable. I will also allow them to cancel a few hours after booking is that apparently cuts down the cancellations

If you are new (i.e do not have account from the past already) they no longer allow non refundable policies for newly signed up listings. just wanted you to know.

My theory is that more cookie curter hotel like units (like condotels) may be better suited for b.com and they get booked there. Unique stand alone whole houses are not.

They let me choose nonrefundable policy for my properties. At least it looked that way.

The booking.com payment collection said that it would charge guests ahead of time. My other option was collecting from them at the door, which is absolutely not what I want

?

OwnerRez supports all of the above (charging the card directly, booking.com payments, etc.). It will select the correct option based on the policy sent over from booking.com and whether they include credit card info.

You should be able to do a policy setting for 60 days or nonrefundable on booking.com but sometimes they like to hide that and encourage looser policies -- contact booking.com support if it's not showing for you.

Same thing on the credit cards. Sometimes they force new accounts to use booking.com payments for the first few bookings, then allow switching to the credit card integration after that.

The two choices I got were using booking.com payments if I wanted to have the guests pay before check-in, or I could collect a payment from guests at the door, and there is no way in the world I want guests to be able to wait until check in to pay!!!

Can ownerreservations, using Lynnbrook, to collect payment from the guest earlier on booking.com?

Yes, but only if they authorize you for passing guest cards over to OwnerRez. You typically have to call Booking.com and talk them into it these days unless you have established reputation. It used to be that everyone got that by default. I think a few bad apples spoiled it for everyone.

That is why I'm going to let booking.com collect the payments. There's no way in the world I want to try to get money from people at the door. I want them to pay well before they show up

Hi Chris,
I just set up booking.com for 1 of my 7 properties so far. I've received 4 booking from them in the last 2 weeks with no credit card information. When I call and speak to booking.com, they tell me that I have to collect the payment from the guests upon arrival until they validate my property which may take a while because it's already been over a month since I set up the account. They won't pass guest credit card info to owners until they do some sort of verification.

So, here's what I was thinking. When a booking comes in, I would set up a trigger email in OR for booking.com guests that would send them a link to pay for their booking following my OR rules which would be 50% at the time of booking then the remaining balance collected 15 days prior to arrival, then have them sign the rental agreement and then collect the security/ damage deposit the day prior to their arrival and send them the eRentalock email along with the confirmation that the security deposit was charged.

1. Is there a field in OR that I can use that will take the guest through the whole process after the booking has been received by OR?
The same process that they would have to go through to book a property (but after the booking has come in)
For example: Select Trip Protection, Pay for the Booking, eSign the Rental Ageement, Schedule the security deposit.

Don't worry. They will likely cancel anyway or give you a bogus credit card. in 1.5 years with 2 (last few months 3) properties I had maybe 3 or 4 total reservations that actually paid and stayed, and one charge-back. Not worth the hassle. Pulled the plug last year.

I'm still testing it out on 2 of my 8 properties, but it's been a weird channel for me.

I use Payments By Booking (I guess I could try to call them and convince them to let me run payments myself, but eh). One nice thing: they don't seem to pass along any kind of credit card transaction fee, so that's an extra ~3% I earn.

I was optimistic, because in my market, there are many hundreds of condos on Airbnb and HomeAway but only (AFAICT) 60-ish condos on Booking, so being a big fish in a small pond held appeal.

I had four or five Booking.com stays in our fall season that went well, which got my hopes up, because they came pretty quickly after I turned on the channel. However, now that we're in our deader-than-a-doornail post-holiday season and rates are in the toilet, Booking.com seems to be attracting some not-so-desireable customers. They do absolutely no screening of people, unlike AB/HA, and so anyone can just go to Booking.com and book. So I've gotten two Booking.com guests in a row that have caused a giant mess for my housekeeper (she actually billed me an extra 2 hours of work on the second) and also stolen things from the property (towels, cups, etc.) and left some minor stains and damage (nothing major, but still annoying).

Earning 3% extra on a $50/night rate for a 2br condo doesn't make up for that. I did keep the security deposit on the second guest (praying for no chargeback); for the first guest, I didn't realize I didn't have my system set up to enforce not emailing the door code prior to receiving the security deposit, so I didn't even get a security deposit I could keep. Total damage/loss cost between the two guests was about $350 (although I really could lower that to about $200, since my housekeeper worked really hard and got the stain on the quilt 90% off, so it doesn't really need replacing, and the melted carpet is in an invisible place, lol). I did earn more than that in rent, so at least I didn't lose money, and both were last-minute bookings that might have otherwise gone empty, so I think I'm still actually (slightly) money ahead, but it's been more stress than I would rather deal with.

I've added a big surcharge to my Booking.com channel, at least for the winter season, just to sort of scare away the bottom-feeders, and I've tightened up my email triggers to not send guests the check-in info until they've signed my RA and added a security deposit. I've also finally decided once and for all (maybe...) to disallow same-day bookings, because they are often more trouble than they're worth; HomeAway doesn't support them, anyway, and I think my settings still allow Airbnb guests to *request* (but not instant book) same-day check-ins.

I'm still continuing the experiment, but we'll see how it goes. It's always a balancing act trying to grow revenue without making things worse. Experience has taught me not to get greedy and allow one-night stays (even during 1-night gaps) or let rates drop below the $50 mark (Pricelabs was suggesting $33/night this time of year!), and maybe experience is now teaching me not to go after same-day bookings and maybe not even to use certain channels. We'll see. :)

well maybe it works for condos. I have 3 mountain homes, all different. So whatever descriptions BDC concocts form the list of amenities , like " holiday home is X miles from Y and A milez from Z and has air conditioning" is just not very appealing in my market where people try to outdo each other with descriptions of desirable amenities and nature views. Also, as I understand, a customer on BDC cannot simply browse a property calendar to see open dates. The property only shown is exact dates they enter are available. Which is also not conducive as we are a family destination and people like to browse before booking , even not knowing exact dates. We do not allow 1 night stays either.

I still cannot fathom how BDC is supposedly #1 in short term rentals. Maybe in other countries. Not in my market. Woefully inadequate.
my properties bluemountaincabins.com/cabins

> Woefully inadequate

This I will agree with. :)

At the very least, though, everyone else you're competing with on BDC also has crappy descriptions about being X miles from Y. Just make sure you stand out with a good money shot as your lead photo. :)

I dumped BDC last year. They are more trouble than they are worth in bookings. 3 bookings that actually paid in 1.5 years between 2-3 properties are not worth the aggravation and effort, to me.

Chris, I see you were really testing BDC a few years ago. What has been your final take on them?

Chris, I see you were really testing BDC a few years ago. What has been your final take on them?

I think I've posted more recent experiences in other threads here and in the unofficial FB group, but at least in my market, a big fat meh. I never did list more than the original two properties because the listing process is a major PITA and it's not a productive channel.

I've also settled on a 40% markup (15% to cover the commission and 25% for pain and suffering) as well as making my cancellation policy much stricter on BDC (I'm Flexible on Vrbo and Moderate on Airbnb, so that's 14 and 5 days, respectively, but I have a 30-day cancellation policy on BDC) to weed out the speculative bookers who like to cancel last-minute. (My average days-in-advance is around 20, so if someone cancels their BDC reservation, I'm still likely to rebook dates through other channels.)

This has caused my BDC reservations to dwindle from maybe half a dozen per year to a couple per year, but I'm OK with that.

It's mostly a failed experiment but as long as I don't have to do any additional work, I don't plan to actively remove those two existing properties from the platform.

If your market caters to a lot of international tourists, though, you may find BDC a more productive platform, but for those of us in markets that focus almost exclusively on domestic tourism, I wouldn't advise bothering with BDC.

Hey Randy
Did BDC ever authorize you to collect payments?  I set up one property a few months ago and finally got a completed booking and can see I am collecting the CCs, in adding my second one, they are saying it's not approved to collect. Weird