Booking on website?

[Alibi Ike]

"Bonjour" to all you guys over there... This is my first post here, from France.
Reading this forum from time to time, I find much differences (and similarities) between both sides of the Atlantic.
Online reservation system is a major difference with France. Few owners have one here. There are forms for booking enquiries, there are plannings on websites, but "Book now" button is not common.
This shows culture differences at both owners and clients level. May be in USA, guests are more used to it and thus need it more.
I am looking at such a solution and will try to arrange it in the coming year.
To help the "poor" GrandKlintDK, here is a link to an Owner's forum from Spain and in Spanish. This should be a good way to get additional information.
Might be that Spanish guests are not used to Online reservation systems & would not like to leave their card details online....

Actually it is our OVERSEAS guests who appreciate the online reservations most.
Culture difference in client and guest is just ignorance really. The US is always ahead of the curve, if you came to this forum and listened to American/Canadian innkeepers and what is working NOW for them here you too would be ahead of the curve overseas.
I remember 10 years ago eCommerce was UNKNOWN in Australia and now Aussie's all shop online, got right into eBay and all the online stores fell into place.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Saying Spanish guests won't book online without actually LETTING them book online, hm, what kind of experiment is that, it's not one, it is an empty statement. We go through this and have for years on this forum, once someone steps across the threshold to online reservations they never look back. If what you do works for you, then keep on doing it. We are always forward thinking here...making it easier for guests, and to increase our occupancy.
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I consider my activity as a business and I plan to set-up an online booking system in the coming year.
But many owners, here in France, are not doing this activity as a business. They do it as a side activity, a way to get busy, meet people and get some extra money. Quite a lot are retired people using the rooms freed by their kids. They are not even registered as a business. As such, "being ahead of the curve" is not what they look for.
As for your "empty statement", that was not a statement, just a what-if.
I agree with your "absence of proof..." but it depends of your targets. As for GrandKlintDK, is he in a stage where he looks to maximize the bookings or not. I do not know.
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That explains a lot about some of the things we hear about bookings in Europe. If a lot of people are doing the 'B&B thing' as a way to meet people rather than as a business, they don't want lots and lots of reservations, but enough to meet their needs.
I think almost everyone on this forum is running a 'business' with the intent to make money and pay their bills. So, we have to use everything available to make it easy for the guest to make the reservation.
We get a fair number of guests from Europe and elsewhere who reserve online at their own convenience. But, the phone calls are funny because they always preface it with, 'I am calling from (fill in the country)...' and I take that to mean, 'This is costing me a fortune, talk fast!' I don't understand why they don't just reserve online, but you've explained that in they don't want to put their cc info online.

 

[gillumhouse]

"Bonjour" to all you guys over there... This is my first post here, from France.
Reading this forum from time to time, I find much differences (and similarities) between both sides of the Atlantic.
Online reservation system is a major difference with France. Few owners have one here. There are forms for booking enquiries, there are plannings on websites, but "Book now" button is not common.
This shows culture differences at both owners and clients level. May be in USA, guests are more used to it and thus need it more.
I am looking at such a solution and will try to arrange it in the coming year.
To help the "poor" GrandKlintDK, here is a link to an Owner's forum from Spain and in Spanish. This should be a good way to get additional information.
Might be that Spanish guests are not used to Online reservation systems & would not like to leave their card details online....

We had guests from Spain MANY years ago - he was an American married to a physician in Madrid and he was in banking. He e-mailed me his credit card number to guarantee the rooms! Straight e-mail! I wrote that number down and deleted that e-mail as fast as I cvould. I could not believe it came that way. I was actually willing to forego the numbers because of the intercontinental aspect. So I am not so sure that the online booking would not fly in Europe.....

 

[souslechene]

I believe the slowness in adopting it is mainly due to the owner's view on their activity than the guests' attitude.
Guests are mostly ready to give CC infos, now... Booking.com, Hotels.com and the likes work fine here as well.

 

[toddburme]

I have a few friends who rent houses in Turkey to English tourists and they do not have an online reservation systems. I aksed about it and they said no one does it. Might just be a cultural difference thing.

 

[souslechene]

I have a few friends who rent houses in Turkey to English tourists and they do not have an online reservation systems. I aksed about it and they said no one does it. Might just be a cultural difference thing..

You mean ignorance, no?

 

[gillumhouse]

I have a few friends who rent houses in Turkey to English tourists and they do not have an online reservation systems. I aksed about it and they said no one does it. Might just be a cultural difference thing..

You mean ignorance, no?
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Cultureal differences and ignorance are two vastly different things. Also there is ignorance of something meaning it is not known to someone and then there is the ignorance that is a synanom for stupid. Some ignorance is curable by education and then there is the other ignorance that is only cured when the owner of that ignorance finally dies.
No one on this Forum would imply another was ignorant. We are blunt enough that we do not imply anything. We just say it, however we give each other the assumption of intelligence. At least that is my take on things.

 

[JBloggs]

And by ignorance I meant "unknown" to them. I know many European B&B's don't have their own websites and rely heavily on tourism portals to send guests/bookings their way. Again, this may be the norm now, but knowing what is coming down the pike is important, just view U.S. as the standard for what is to come.
Example: Trip Advisor. Our overseas guests are 100% into TA now, they use it intensely for travel, they use the UK version and others in their own language.
Edited to add: The standard in the USA was B&B Guidebooks, then B&B Directories, and now more than ever the bookings are coming from our websites specifically, vs a directory or portal. WHY? Because the public is becoming more net savvy and can get around the internet better and not feel reliant on those B&B directories. I can attest, as will most others here that the directories are now lagging far behind our own websites for bookings or inbound linked referrals. The times they are a changin'!

 

[Samster]

"Bonjour" to all you guys over there... This is my first post here, from France.
Reading this forum from time to time, I find much differences (and similarities) between both sides of the Atlantic.
Online reservation system is a major difference with France. Few owners have one here. There are forms for booking enquiries, there are plannings on websites, but "Book now" button is not common.
This shows culture differences at both owners and clients level. May be in USA, guests are more used to it and thus need it more.
I am looking at such a solution and will try to arrange it in the coming year.
To help the "poor" GrandKlintDK, here is a link to an Owner's forum from Spain and in Spanish. This should be a good way to get additional information.
Might be that Spanish guests are not used to Online reservation systems & would not like to leave their card details online....

Welcome, Thomas!

Your comment is interesting about online bookings. I traveled with some friends 12 years ago to France and we booked everything ONLINE through the accommodations' own website. The best way to compare all the small hotels and B&Bs that we were considering.

 

[souslechene]

Things are changing here as well. Directories do not bring much visitors to us and much less bookings.
By introducing Maps data in 1st page results push the directories further down as well.
But I repeat, going up the business curve is not what many owners down here are looking for and your way of doing things may not be a standard of where they want to go.

 

[Bommelhoeve]

Welcome sous le chene. I am in Europe as well, and yes we are behind. And things are different.
Like you I see this B&B as a business and also plan to go to online booking. One of my many winter projects is to find a decent program for a reasonable price. In my opinion, if a program like re servation key was available in Europe, with multi language capabiliites for 10 Euro/month I think we would catch up quickly!

 

[JBloggs]

The title of this thread is "Booking on Website" if you do not believe in this concept, then why are you discussing it on this thread?
There are many options out there for online reservations, most are very expensive. Given free advice on this forum is worth its weight in gold, members of this forum are much more giving than any innkeeper you will meet elsewhere. Maybe we should all be pushing the big bucks programs, and keep the good advice a secret hidden from other innkeepers. Just wondering if this is what you are really after Thomas? For the record I did not call anyone retarded, nor would I. Ignorant means UNKNOWING, that is where the European market is currently on online reservation systems.

 

[agoodman]

Having worked in Europe and Installed res systems in France, the UK and Ireland, Disneyland Paris and having been the Intl Ops manager for lastminute.com, I am surprised people are saying that online booking, res systems etc are not used that much across the pond, or that people don't use it as much.
The Minitel in France preceeded the internet by about 15 years - a little screen provided by the phone company where the DOS text would roll slowly down your screen but you could book everything from a room to a call girl .... 3615 Je m'apelle Madeleine .....
lastminute.com was light years ahead with concepts not seen at that time (1999/2000) in the States and has offered a booking engine for years, bedandbreakfast.com offers their booking engine to properties in France and perhaps other countries, Relais et Chateaux of course a French organization for upscale resorts, and Amadeus, one of the largest GDS organizations based in Nice. On the smaller side, Logis de France and Gites de France offer small Inns great little systems. There are also many free standing (non organization) systems out there that work with the European regulations.
I think it is that we in the US NEED to have online booking because our guests want it and our competitors have it, and it's more of a personal choice in Europe NOT to have it.One of the big differences between Europe and the US, PC's are more expensive, internet access not as cheap or as available.
Also a lot of "inns" are, as one poster said - a room in someone's house, a room on a farm, and if I only had one or two rooms I probably would not go to the expense of an online booking system either. I would however contract with hotels.com, expedia.com (.fr, .eu), lastminute.com (.fr, .co.uk) and at least have a web presence, where although the commissions may be higher, the visibility is "out there".

 

[souslechene]

Thanks agoodman to help me show that the situation here is different, not necessarily behind (seems "behind" is a more correct word than "retarded": in French "retard" means "late" and I wrongly translated in my message to Joey).
When I say not many people here use online booking systems, I am talking about bed & breakfast (chambres d'hôtes, in French). By law, we are restricted to 5 rooms maximum, 15 persons maximum to keep a familly feeling and make a difference with business minded hotels. The average owner have only 3 rooms. In the hotel business (above 5 rooms), the situation is very different and most of them have online booking systems.
Yes, in 1982, with the Minitel, France had a very nice product, a kind of simple Internet where you could buy train tickets, check yellow pages. It was rented free of charge to all telephone line customers and most French families had one. Many years before the public adoption of the Internet. But this made us slow to adopt broadband Internet afterward. Minitel is still working now. Was supposed to be closed down in 2010 but they continue as more than 2 million people still use it!!!
To Joey:
The title of this thread is NOT "Booking on Website" but "Booking on Website?". Furthermore, I believe my messages give another view (different from yours, sorry) to the questions GrandKlintDK was asking. I did not give any advice, just a different view and a suggestion, free of charge for the pleasure of sharing it and helping a poster.

 

[souslechene]

On my side, starting this activity 3 years ago, I purposedly decided not to have a booking system online, not even a planning. All enquiries went directly to me (mail or phone), I could note when I rejected guests when we were full and it gave me, at the end of the summer a very usefull data for adjusting our prices. Rejecting 20 enquiries on a day meant I could comfortably increase on next year.
We started with a flat yearly night fee of 53€ for a couple all year long. Now, our prices for the same couple go from 75€ to 169€ depending of the month, the day of the week and on the room. Without this data, we would be far from this. We gained very much on the turnover. May be more than having and online booking.
After 3 years, I have a better understanding of the situation. I feel this data is not as important as having a booking system. Thus my plan to have one on coming year.
Edit: of course, the competitive situation here made this strategy possible. If many local colleague had online booking (I am not sure if any one have now, not talking hotels), we likely would have done much earlier...

 

[Alibi Ike]

On my side, starting this activity 3 years ago, I purposedly decided not to have a booking system online, not even a planning. All enquiries went directly to me (mail or phone), I could note when I rejected guests when we were full and it gave me, at the end of the summer a very usefull data for adjusting our prices. Rejecting 20 enquiries on a day meant I could comfortably increase on next year.
We started with a flat yearly night fee of 53€ for a couple all year long. Now, our prices for the same couple go from 75€ to 169€ depending of the month, the day of the week and on the room. Without this data, we would be far from this. We gained very much on the turnover. May be more than having and online booking.
After 3 years, I have a better understanding of the situation. I feel this data is not as important as having a booking system. Thus my plan to have one on coming year.
Edit: of course, the competitive situation here made this strategy possible. If many local colleague had online booking (I am not sure if any one have now, not talking hotels), we likely would have done much earlier....

Very good planning. You have to know your business before you can excel at it.
I still do the same thing, even though I have online booking. The majority of my guests still call or email instead of booking online. They will call if I'm full and ask if there is a chance someone will cancel or if I can refer them elsewhere, so I am still collecting that data 10 years later. Because it does change. An example of something I might not have caught with only a couple of years' experience is how, if a holiday falls mid-week, we do not get any reservations for that holiday. But, if it is on a weekend or near the weekend I will fill up. If my only data was from mid-week or the weekend, I would be pricing all wrong and putting 2- or 3-night minimums on something that wasn't going to get reserved no matter what, or, missing the opportunity to demand the minimums.

 

[egoodell]

On my side, starting this activity 3 years ago, I purposedly decided not to have a booking system online, not even a planning. All enquiries went directly to me (mail or phone), I could note when I rejected guests when we were full and it gave me, at the end of the summer a very usefull data for adjusting our prices. Rejecting 20 enquiries on a day meant I could comfortably increase on next year.
We started with a flat yearly night fee of 53€ for a couple all year long. Now, our prices for the same couple go from 75€ to 169€ depending of the month, the day of the week and on the room. Without this data, we would be far from this. We gained very much on the turnover. May be more than having and online booking.
After 3 years, I have a better understanding of the situation. I feel this data is not as important as having a booking system. Thus my plan to have one on coming year.
Edit: of course, the competitive situation here made this strategy possible. If many local colleague had online booking (I am not sure if any one have now, not talking hotels), we likely would have done much earlier....

On my side, starting this activity 3 years ago, I purposedly decided not to have a booking system online, not even a planning. All enquiries went directly to me (mail or phone), I could note when I rejected guests when we were full and it gave me, at the end of the summer a very usefull data for adjusting our prices. Rejecting 20 enquiries on a day meant I could comfortably increase on next year.
We started with a flat yearly night fee of 53€ for a couple all year long. Now, our prices for the same couple go from 75€ to 169€ depending of the month, the day of the week and on the room. Without this data, we would be far from this. We gained very much on the turnover. May be more than having and online booking.
After 3 years, I have a better understanding of the situation. I feel this data is not as important as having a booking system. Thus my plan to have one on coming year.
Edit: of course, the competitive situation here made this strategy possible. If many local colleague had online booking (I am not sure if any one have now, not talking hotels), we likely would have done much earlier...

I have my online system to only allow reservation requests. This way I could do the same thing - I check and accept each one individually and take the room out of availability. I do this not to check how many I am rejecting, but to ensure that I have space on my wine tours. I am allowed up to 5 rooms only as well, and only have two at this time.
Just wanted to point out that the online system can be adjusted to what you need. I use Webervations.
Best,
RIki

 

[souslechene]

On my side, starting this activity 3 years ago, I purposedly decided not to have a booking system online, not even a planning. All enquiries went directly to me (mail or phone), I could note when I rejected guests when we were full and it gave me, at the end of the summer a very usefull data for adjusting our prices. Rejecting 20 enquiries on a day meant I could comfortably increase on next year.
We started with a flat yearly night fee of 53€ for a couple all year long. Now, our prices for the same couple go from 75€ to 169€ depending of the month, the day of the week and on the room. Without this data, we would be far from this. We gained very much on the turnover. May be more than having and online booking.
After 3 years, I have a better understanding of the situation. I feel this data is not as important as having a booking system. Thus my plan to have one on coming year.
Edit: of course, the competitive situation here made this strategy possible. If many local colleague had online booking (I am not sure if any one have now, not talking hotels), we likely would have done much earlier....

Almost a year later...
Having the booking engine on our website for 6 month now. About 25% of our guests choose to book in this way. Good.
Another 25% through booking.com which is XML linked to our booking engine.
Very satisfied. I chose LogisManager from Belgium. They already work with more than 1000 hotels. Very smooth operation. Multi European languages.