Horrible Suggestions From Bookin'

Here are the suggestions they sent me today. They say it's for MY benefit. I know who would benefit from these terrible ideas:

• Secure more bookings and reduce cancellations with a very low rate.
• Attract more guests by taking reservations without credit cards.
• Boost your visibility by paying us to do it for you.
• To streamline the booking process, stop asking guests for their address.
• Let us waive your standard cancellation fees to make your guests happy.
• Get more bookings by letting us build and host your website.

Given the phonecalls we know they get because those guests use bad cards and never show up, you're right about who possibly benefits.
For some of them, tho, even they lose. No guest? No commission. Why not encourage higher rates for better commissions?
I guess with thousands of revenue streams, $10 to them is better than $0 dollars.

hahahahhahahaaaa
awesome.

I see these every time I log on to my admin panel. I keep clicking the "quit reminding me button," but after a while they come back.
I laugh every time I see them. I keep waiting for the one that advises me to give my rooms to boo king for free and let them sell them for me.

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

Duff2014 said:

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

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Duff2014 said:

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

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Can't stand them. The only reason I use them is that their ad budget usually makes Booking-listed places pop up first on lodging searches for my town. And I'm the only Booking member in town, so I often show up at the top of local Google searches, even though there's a Days Inn here.
Since I'm not a hotel, I'm buried at the bottom of TA results, under "B&B and Specialty Lodging", so the Booking connection is an effort to be seen in Google searches!

Duff2014 said:

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

.

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you could say the same as air - seen their price suggestions? they are a joke in my town its suggested £15 stuff like that - wouldn't cover my costs! Was watching B&B the best and a couple on there were like "yes we do what ever price the web site tells us" OMGGGG!

Jcam said:

Duff2014 said:

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

.

Click to expand...

you could say the same as air - seen their price suggestions? they are a joke in my town its suggested £15 stuff like that - wouldn't cover my costs! Was watching B&B the best and a couple on there were like "yes we do what ever price the web site tells us" OMGGGG!
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When air first offered it we put one room on their suggestion to see what happened. $250 in dead of winter and $50 in height of summer. No thanks! Got rid of that real quick. Lucky for us no one saw it….so, so much for bringing in more reservations!

Arks said:

Duff2014 said:

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

.

Click to expand...

Duff2014 said:

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

Click to expand...

Can't stand them. The only reason I use them is that their ad budget usually makes Booking-listed places pop up first on lodging searches for my town. And I'm the only Booking member in town, so I often show up at the top of local Google searches, even though there's a Days Inn here.
Since I'm not a hotel, I'm buried at the bottom of TA results, under "B&B and Specialty Lodging", so the Booking connection is an effort to be seen in Google searches!
.

Click to expand...

Arks said:

Duff2014 said:

I know you really love them but maybe its time to break up the relationship….

Click to expand...

Can't stand them. The only reason I use them is that their ad budget usually makes Booking-listed places pop up first on lodging searches for my town. And I'm the only Booking member in town, so I often show up at the top of local Google searches, even though there's a Days Inn here.
Since I'm not a hotel, I'm buried at the bottom of TA results, under "B&B and Specialty Lodging", so the Booking connection is an effort to be seen in Google searches!

Click to expand...

I know how you feel about them. I was giving you a hard time!

They are terrible. I argue constantly with them when guests don't supply valid credit cards. I make sure I keep them on the phone for a while explaining that reservations with bad credit cards are almost always bad reservations. What is the point of making us wait 36 hours to cancel the reservation as it does not benefit the properties and subsequently does not benefit booking. When they suggest turning on the features you mentioned I tell them that will just make it easier to put in bad credit card information. Worse it leaves us in a completely undefensible spot if they cancel and we get a charge back. They tell me every time they here this from others and are working on it but I haven't seen any change in more than 2 years. Expedia is much better in this regard.

Yeah, they're weasels. Wanna know why so many of your boo king guests cancel? Because they're encouraged to. We don't charge for a cancellation more than 30 days out, so guess what they promote? Make sure to check out the copy under the "Stay Flexible" headline.

Weasels. Excellent word for them.

PhineasSwann said:

Yeah, they're weasels. Wanna know why so many of your boo king guests cancel? Because they're encouraged to. We don't charge for a cancellation more than 30 days out, so guess what they promote? Make sure to check out the copy under the "Stay Flexible" headline.

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that's nothing - when it gets close to the time of them coming they email again and say you can still cancel so take a look at our web site and see if you can get a last min cancellation cheaper!

Jcam said:

PhineasSwann said:

Yeah, they're weasels. Wanna know why so many of your boo king guests cancel? Because they're encouraged to. We don't charge for a cancellation more than 30 days out, so guess what they promote? Make sure to check out the copy under the "Stay Flexible" headline.

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that's nothing - when it gets close to the time of them coming they email again and say you can still cancel so take a look at our web site and see if you can get a last min cancellation cheaper!
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In order to stop some of this we have added a small cancellation fee for any reservation on both booking and expedia. Booking has by far been much worse with cancellations.

JerseyBoy said:

Jcam said:

PhineasSwann said:

Yeah, they're weasels. Wanna know why so many of your boo king guests cancel? Because they're encouraged to. We don't charge for a cancellation more than 30 days out, so guess what they promote? Make sure to check out the copy under the "Stay Flexible" headline.

.

Click to expand...

that's nothing - when it gets close to the time of them coming they email again and say you can still cancel so take a look at our web site and see if you can get a last min cancellation cheaper!
.

Click to expand...

In order to stop some of this we have added a small cancellation fee for any reservation on both booking and expedia. Booking has by far been much worse with cancellations.
.

Click to expand...

JerseyBoy said:

In order to stop some of this we have added a small cancellation fee for any reservation on both booking and expedia. Booking has by far been much worse with cancellations.

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We also have a cancellation fee for any reservation. Deposit day of booking. It has stopped a lot of lookie lous.
We used to get this with direct bookings, too. We went from 10% cancellations to 1% when we instituted the deposit.

We give everyone 30 days because we can normally rebook within that window. Sometimes if we're feeling generous, we'll waive the full-charge if they cancel inside of that. Not boo king or exp people, though.
But as I've noted before, I've had several guests whose grandmothers came back to life after they found out they were going to be charged for their full stay whether they showed up or not.

PhineasSwann said:

We give everyone 30 days because we can normally rebook within that window. Sometimes if we're feeling generous, we'll waive the full-charge if they cancel inside of that. Not boo king or exp people, though.
But as I've noted before, I've had several guests whose grandmothers came back to life after they found out they were going to be charged for their full stay whether they showed up or not..

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We can generally rebook in 30 days, also. But we get so much push back on 7 days that we probably wouldn't get bookings even from people who were absolutely sure they were coming.
It's the difference in area. The shortest non-hotel cancellation period in town is 72 hours. They're basically full all the time. We started off with 2 weeks and quickly found we were spending too much time talking about cancellation policies rather than what we had to offer. So, we changed to 7 days and then instituted a deposit and next a cancellation fee.
7 days is not usually enough time to rebook rooms here, but we're not getting as many cancellations as before we took the deposit.

Next suggestion will be:-
You clean the rooms and cook the breakfasts and b.com will give YOU 15% of every booking.