Everyone knows Booking.Com. Anyone who starts a Bed & Breakfast can hardly ignore the platform. Because a large number of our current guests still use this booking site, we have to deal with the high commission costs. But at least it will get us known by a large public. Some of whom will become regulars. And when they become a regular, they usually will no longer book via Booking.Com, but directly with us. Great. Because although accommodations in Spain have recently been allowed to offer their own accommodation for a better price on their own website, we do not charge the whole cost of the commission to the booker. Both they and we pay half of it.
But now that the bookings are no longer pouring in, unlike the summer period, my sisters and I decided to take a critical look at other booking platforms. After almost a year of being in business, we know exactly what we like and what we don’t like. Websites that cannot automatically channel our current availability, will not be among the ones we’ll choose to advertise on. When a guest wants to book, it must be clear whether or not there is availability and what the specific conditions of the booking are (something that can vary greatly per period). I have already written off some smaller Dutch booking sites – which have not yielded a single booking after a year. I have also canceled our listing on the Spanish escapadarural.com – despite the fact that it resulted in an actual booking last month..
Not because one booking wasn’t enough. No. If one person books, more may follow. But because, with our free account, we could only respond to a booking request after forty-eight hours(!). Not very useful if the site not only does not automatically display our current availability, but it is also not clear to the booker that the booking is only final once it has been approved by the accommodation. The fact that our first booker tried to book a one-night stay for the next day – and I was unable to respond to that request – made me want to delete our account as soon as possible. Fortunately I still had a room available and the guest called an hour after booking to ask if I had seen the booking, otherwise I would have had a problem. Then I wouldn’t have any other choice but to take out a subscription in order to be able to inform the booker in a timely manner about the current availability and the impossibility of staying with us the next day.
That’s why I continue to look at other possibilities together with my sisters. While Suzanne is looking into Airbnb, which they use as the only platform for their luxury apartments in Switzerland, I try to learn more about bedandbreakfast.eu. “We are already listed on the site,” both sisters tell me soon after I inform them of that. Surprised, I start searching. When I find our registration, I see that the information, photos and reviews in question come entirely from Booking.Com. Potential guests can already find us. But that’s all there is to it. Because there are no fewer than 17,089 B&Bs in the province of Alicante on the site. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Especially because half of these B&Bs have a review score between 9.0 and 10. Only when I filter by guest room and private bathroom and sort the results from highest to lowest rated do I find us on the second page. At number thirty. Maybe a paid subscription to the site isn’t a bad idea at all. In any case,that seems to be a better plan than participating in Booking.Com’s ‘Preferred Partner Program’, in which only the 30% highest scoring accommodations are allowed to participate. In exchange for a (undoubtedly) beautiful badge and more visibility, they not only increase your commission, but they also (again) prohibit you from offering your accommodation for a better price on your own website. And although we cannot ignore the billion-dollar company at the moment, we hope to change that in the (near) future. The sooner the better. Because that is not only better for us, but also for you.