Ugh, now ebay

[egoodell]

Oh boy now it looks like Ebay is going to get into the travel market. Cheeze.
[tr][td]eBay: now coming to a travel site near you[/td][/tr][/table][tr]eBay, the world’s largest marketplace, has added a booking facility to enable it to become a full-scale booking platform for travel services.
“
eBay was previously only of limited suitability for the sale of holidays or hotel stays because the system lacked a booking facility,” the company says, but it has now added Cultuzz Digital Media. “This not only enables users to buy a voucher for the offers listed but also to carry out booking at the same time.”

Cultuzz has so far sold some 750'000 hotel accommodation packages on 20 eBay markets worldwide for hotel customers. Within the travel categories, Cultuzz is the only provider worldwide able to display the current availabilities of a listing and enable direct booking from the hotel's inventory after the purchase, the company says.

Technically, the current availability of a listing are queried from Cultuzz' own database system "CultSwitch." This system is a web service to which hotel management systems (PMS), destinations or central reservation systems (CRS) can send their availabilities and rates via XML.

Sales via eBay can take place in either the "Auction" or "Buy it Now" formats. While an auction starts with a low price and the highest bidder wins the item, listings made under "Buy it Now" are bought at a fixed price.

“We wish to develop eBay into a strong sales channel for travel services and are therefore quite prepared to give other system providers the opportunity to use eBay as a sales channel for their travel products within the scope of a cooperation partnership," said Dr. Reinhard Vogel, Managing Director of Cultuzz Digital Media.

By David Wilkening
[/td][/tr][/table]

 

[Innkeeper To Go]

I think it was LittleBlue who said she had a lot of luck selling rooms on eBay when she was starting out.
Can't imagine doing it myself, but everyone's different.
LB, are you out there? Am I remembering this correctly?

 

[bbinnsitters]

OMG! Crazy!

 

[Don Draper]

I could see it working for off-season or last minute specials, etc. You could guarantee yourself a certain rate.

 

[egoodell]

I could see it working for off-season or last minute specials, etc. You could guarantee yourself a certain rate..

All I see is re-enforcement of the calls, "I'll give you $XXX for your room and you don't have to give us breakfast". I had my first one and didn't care for it. I'm lucky that we have so much bookings from the tours so I can say, "sorry, we have our prices set".
He told me he would give me XX for Friday and no breakfast - he had Saturday booked for one of our last weekends that we allow one night stay. Chris was tempted but I said no. When we have down time it is more important to me to enjoy it.
Since I work all week at the university, if I'm going to be working a 6.5 day week, they will pay full price or I'll take the night off.
While I understand many cannot afford to do this, since i CAN, I like to feel like I'm able to stand up for our industry and train the public that we are NOT like hotels with hundreds of rooms and offer value and don't work for nothing. Once we are in the business 100% I may not be able to do this.
The guest was very very nice - both of them. They plan to come back, they said. They wrote up a great page in our room book. But I'm still glad I stuck to my guns.
Riki

 

[Don Draper]

I could see it working for off-season or last minute specials, etc. You could guarantee yourself a certain rate..

All I see is re-enforcement of the calls, "I'll give you $XXX for your room and you don't have to give us breakfast". I had my first one and didn't care for it. I'm lucky that we have so much bookings from the tours so I can say, "sorry, we have our prices set".
He told me he would give me XX for Friday and no breakfast - he had Saturday booked for one of our last weekends that we allow one night stay. Chris was tempted but I said no. When we have down time it is more important to me to enjoy it.
Since I work all week at the university, if I'm going to be working a 6.5 day week, they will pay full price or I'll take the night off.
While I understand many cannot afford to do this, since i CAN, I like to feel like I'm able to stand up for our industry and train the public that we are NOT like hotels with hundreds of rooms and offer value and don't work for nothing. Once we are in the business 100% I may not be able to do this.
The guest was very very nice - both of them. They plan to come back, they said. They wrote up a great page in our room book. But I'm still glad I stuck to my guns.
Riki
.

Good for you! Nothing is more important than you having your priorities set and sticking to your guns.
We got everyone from this weekend rescheduled so now I am looking forward to being snowed in with just my honey!

 

[EmptyNest]

I could see it working for off-season or last minute specials, etc. You could guarantee yourself a certain rate..

All I see is re-enforcement of the calls, "I'll give you $XXX for your room and you don't have to give us breakfast". I had my first one and didn't care for it. I'm lucky that we have so much bookings from the tours so I can say, "sorry, we have our prices set".
He told me he would give me XX for Friday and no breakfast - he had Saturday booked for one of our last weekends that we allow one night stay. Chris was tempted but I said no. When we have down time it is more important to me to enjoy it.
Since I work all week at the university, if I'm going to be working a 6.5 day week, they will pay full price or I'll take the night off.
While I understand many cannot afford to do this, since i CAN, I like to feel like I'm able to stand up for our industry and train the public that we are NOT like hotels with hundreds of rooms and offer value and don't work for nothing. Once we are in the business 100% I may not be able to do this.
The guest was very very nice - both of them. They plan to come back, they said. They wrote up a great page in our room book. But I'm still glad I stuck to my guns.
Riki
.

Breakfast is complimentary I felt and did the same way you do.

 

[wendydk]

I think it was LittleBlue who said she had a lot of luck selling rooms on eBay when she was starting out.
Can't imagine doing it myself, but everyone's different.
LB, are you out there? Am I remembering this correctly?.

I think it was LittleBlue who said she had a lot of luck selling rooms on eBay when she was starting out.
Can't imagine doing it myself, but everyone's different.
LB, are you out there? Am I remembering this correctly?

Yes, selling gift certificates on ebay got us through some lean times those first couple of winters. However, I am no longer using ebay to sell rooms...it's just too expensive these days. Combine their fees with the changes made by paypal and it's not worth it, at least to me.
I will say, however, that the exposure was incredible, and they were a number one referrer to our website anytime we had a listing there. Good for Inns just starting up, but I've outgrown it now.