Getting divorced from booking.com

[The Grey One]

We have come to the conclusion that we do not wish our hotel to be associated with booking.com. We have become uneasy with some of their operating practices. When a company offers for instance to lift you to the top of their "recommended" list if we paid them more money, questions about their code of ethics are raised. There are, throughout the hotel trade, rumblings about the way in which this company is misusing it's power in the market.

In common with almost all hotels we did not give this company all our rooms. I pointed out that they carried a misleading message when they had sold their allocation. The message was that we were "fully booked" when in fact we were nothing of the sort. Booking.com were at all times aware of the number of rooms we have and the number we gave them to sell. They therefore knew that they were not in a position to comment on our overall bookings. I wrote asking them to remove this misleading statement and was met first of wall with silence and then with obstructive replies. I would have more respect for them if they had simply replied that they would not change the wording.

No doubt there are many places that find being on the booking.com system is beneficial. For us this has not proved the case, almost everyone who has booked through this portal knew about us already. Usually this was as a result of our own marketing effort so paying booking.com a 12% commission (the minimum you can pay) just adds to our costs. Anyone searching on Google is likely to find our own website anyway. The terms and conditions that this company impose mean that we were supposed to keep however many rooms we give them available at all times. We had, as an example, four people turn up at 7pm on New years Eve, the Email notifying us of the booking arrived about 30 mins later! Had we not been able to open up rooms for these people we would have been faced with draconian penalties under the terms of the agreement with booking.com

Bookings at Gasthof hochalmspitze can be made either by using the booking form on our website booking page http://www.hochalmspitze.com/booking-offers/ or by Email to [email protected]

Summer is coming, in a few weeks time my bike will be back on the road and by the beginning of May we expect all the high roads to be open

John

 

[Bumpkin]

From your perspective as a hotelier I can see your point John. From the user's point of view booking.com is a very useful tool that is frequently used in my trip planning. Currently using it to string together a sucession of hotels for our Pyrenees trip this summer.

Whilst there are competitors I don't think any quite match them for breadth of coverage and functionality/ease of use. Added to which the ability to change or cancel a booking with only a couple of days notice gives great reassurance, I can see that that must be a PITA for the trade though. Having said that in the 30 or so hotels I've booked with them I've never used that feature... yet.

Ease of use, English language and a familiar common interface across all establishments is one of the aspects that attract me, and doubtless many others. The prospect of finding individual hotel websites for a series of one nighters, then ringing/emailing each in turn to find availability and prices isn't an attractive prospect. For a week's stay somewhere it's worth the effort to research and book direct though.

Places that we've visited before usually get booked direct. We have one in Northern France that we've put maybe a total of 25-30 person/nights business through individually and in small groups let alone the recommendations we've put their way.

Admittedly the room allocation thing is something that's not occurred to me before. Also the commission seems quite high, they must be raking it in! No wonder the owner of the hotel above asked us to book direct at the end of our first visit.

Your place is on the shortlist for a 5 day stay either next year or 2016. Naturally we won't be doing that via booking.com



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[Deleted account Cooperman]

I use them for reviews as they have better coverage in Europe than TripAdvisor, but have only occasionally used them to book as I always try and make direct contact.

TripAdvisor didn't used to show prices but now Booking.com are one of a few (expedia/venere) that pop up.

I have a German hotelier friend who will not use any of these sites.

You know best how much business they provide, but it suggests to me they are starting to abuse their position.

Maybe some of these Eurocrats should have a look

 

[The Grey One]

As I said 12% is the minimum, lots of places pay 20% and more to be "Recommended" And it is a percentage of the entire B&B charge so is levied on VAT and tourist taxes that are included in the price.

All these booking systems can be useful for finding places. Long before we opened this place we used to use sites such as booking.com to find potential stop overs. I always tried to find the hotel's own website and then make a booking direct. It's often cheaper and very often you will find they have vacancies where the booking agency say they do not. It's also nice to be able too check up on things like bike parking, if the owners aren't bikers they sometimes have strange ideas about what constitutes a suitable surface for a bike.

One problem we have had is people telling us that we were full when they tried to book. What we have found is that most people assume that if booking.com say we are fully booked then we have no more rooms available. Nowhere on booking.com does it say that they only have a proportion of a hotel's rooms. This has also happened to people trying to book rooms at places on the way to us. Last summer we had a group of 10 people coming in August who sent us a message to say that everywhere en route was booked. Turned out that because they wanted 5 double rooms and most places only put a few rooms on booking.com there was nobody with that number of rooms on the system. When I suggested they approach the hotels direct they got into every place they wanted.

John

 

[E. Buygum]

John, I use booking.com a lot but would always book direct if I know the hotel. As a reasonably "clued up" user, I am familiar with booking.com declaring a hotel "full"...I never take it literally...this just sends me straight to the hotel website where you can see the true picture. In fact, I usually check the hotel website in any case to see if there are any better options available than through booking.com. If the accommodation/ deal are about the same through booking.com, I will use them to book (if unfamiliar with the hotel) because of the language, cancellation policy and the proper confirmation they send out (a lot of hotels don't bother although I know you do). I have also been ripped off by hotels increasing the price on arrival and also I have cancelled hotels within cancellation policy but haven't received a refund. That would never happen at your place, of course (and needless to say), but the point is that sites like booking.com provide a measure of security and the reality is they are probably here to stay.

I can imagine booking.com is fairly awful to deal with but they are very useful for travellers in an unfamiliar area. When I left your place last year, I was heading for Split (optimistic) but I got tired mid afternoon and, stopping for a coffee on the Croatian coast, I found a great hotel nearby through booking.com (Android app) in 30 seconds. I'm going again next year (booking direct with hotel).

Tough call but I wonder whether you could sacrifice just one or two rooms at to booking.com at 12% just to keep your name in the mix? Anyone who knows how these things work will check your website in any case. A separation with visiting rights rather than a divorce? Good luck.

 

[The Grey One]

John, I use booking.com a lot but would always book direct if I know the hotel. As a reasonably "clued up" user, I am familiar with booking.com declaring a hotel "full"...I never take it literally...this just sends me straight to the hotel website where you can see the true picture. In fact, I usually check the hotel website in any case to see if there are any better options available than through booking.com. If the accommodation/ deal are about the same through booking.com, I will use them to book (if unfamiliar with the hotel) because of the language, cancellation policy and the proper confirmation they send out (a lot of hotels don't bother although I know you do). I have also been ripped off by hotels increasing the price on arrival and also I have cancelled hotels within cancellation policy but haven't received a refund. That would never happen at your place, of course (and needless to say), but the point is that sites like booking.com provide a measure of security and the reality is they are probably here to stay.

I can imagine booking.com is fairly awful to deal with but they are very useful for travellers in an unfamiliar area. When I left your place last year, I was heading for Split (optimistic) but I got tired mid afternoon and, stopping for a coffee on the Croatian coast, I found a great hotel nearby through booking.com (Android app) in 30 seconds. I'm going again next year (booking direct with hotel).

Tough call but I wonder whether you could sacrifice just one or two rooms at to booking.com at 12% just to keep your name in the mix? Anyone who knows how these things work will check your website in any case. A separation with visiting rights rather than a divorce? Good luck.

They certainly are high handed, earlier this year we had a number of fraudulent bookings through booking.com. The first batch were 4 bookings, all from Libya, with the same card details under 4 different names. We had dozens of them, all with card details that did not work. When I contacted the customer services at booking.com they were not interested. Even when I contacted head office and expressed my concern not only about the time wasted but also because they were sending booking confirmations on our behalf before any checks were carried out. One of the criteria to gain a visa for people coming to Austria from Libya, and therefore being able to freely move around mainland Europe, is a pre booked hotel room. Booking.com were providing such evidence. We were extremely uneasy about and felt we had no support from booking.com despite the fact that it is us and not the guests who pays them.

We have tried over the previous 5 years to work with them with just a couple of rooms at a time. Sadly you are in a minority in knowing how they work, most people we speak to don't know this. It is very common for me to help guests trying to book their next hotel. Almost always they will just accept what booking.com tell them and are amazed when I contact their first choice place and find they have plenty of rooms. Hopefully this knowledge is spreading but it certainly is not common knowledge at the moment.

One of the problems is that if we are busy and we have just a couple of rooms left we could not let them without logging onto the booking.com site and cancelling the rooms on there. Even if we did this, because of the delays with these things, we could easily have a booking.com Email arrive after we have done this. According to our contract we would then have to find alternative accommodation and pay all costs ourselves. There is no cut off point for this (up to our closure for the night) so it is possible to be in this situation at 11pm. The only way to be safe is to turn away late comers to keep the rooms against a late booking from this company. I know of several places who, having been caught out once like this, now just turn people away and accept they might end up with empty rooms

I know we might loose a few booking by withdrawing but we know we have lost booking by being listed. There might be an acceptable balance there if it were not for the ethics of the company concerned.

John

 

[E. Buygum]

Bin the bastards!

 

[Rasher]

John,

I really am surprised you even bothered with these people!

Having said that I do use internet site, but I always thought they just showed everywhere as almost full to try and panic suckers into booking, if travelling somewhere unfamiliar and with no recommendations I do use sites, I think Hotels.com is my normal choice, but I often look for tourist information etc when staying somewhere nice.

I am sure you can do as well or better without these "services", I heard about you via Ian and or David (maybe both) plus I had previously noticed you on this site, I am sure good old fashioned word of mouth is another great source of punters for you along with your yearly pilgrimage to the NEC.

Hope you have a great summer

 

[stever1]

I,m horrified. Just before Christmas I went onto booking.com looking for 2 double rooms in June, having a rough idea of your location I looked for your hotel. Guess what, your full so we went elsewhere in Austria. Lesson learned !!!

 

[The Grey One]

John,

I really am surprised you even bothered with these people!

Having said that I do use internet site, but I always thought they just showed everywhere as almost full to try and panic suckers into booking, if travelling somewhere unfamiliar and with no recommendations I do use sites, I think Hotels.com is my normal choice, but I often look for tourist information etc when staying somewhere nice.

I am sure you can do as well or better without these "services", I heard about you via Ian and or David (maybe both) plus I had previously noticed you on this site, I am sure good old fashioned word of mouth is another great source of punters for you along with your yearly pilgrimage to the NEC.

Hope you have a great summer

Thank you young man. We should have known better-all the experts say that we should be on booking.com but then those same experts told us that nobody books early any more. Our summer bookings started coming in last September and are about 25% up on last year so far so we hope that continues. We are in the UK at the moment doing a bit of work, we have a stand at the Manchester bike show ans are doing 4 evening presentation to bike clubs.

John