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Jenn - Community Program Manager
Did you know you can now compare your property’s performance with similar properties?
At Booking.com, we’re always looking for ways to help our partners grow their business. And we thought it might be helpful for you to see how you’re doing compared to other similar properties. That way, you can see where you’re doing well – and where you can improve.
So we’ve added a feature to the Opportunity Centre that compares your performance in several areas against other properties of a similar size and price point. Check out this video for more information.
We’d love to know if any of our community members have already used this feature in the Opportunity Centre. Did you find it useful? Do you have any tips for other members?
Let us know!
I was unable to find the link to the video. Please Kindly share the link of the video as well.
Thanks for catching that! It's been added now.
Hello Jenn! Thanks for info. I have been using this feature for a long time. I find it very useful. Of course we have to know the performance of other similar properties in our area so we can improve our rates, Policies etc.
Wish you a wonderful day.
Hi Jenn
Good to know you want to help partners grow our businesses! A few things that will REALLY help us:
1 - fix the calendar sync. It's broken and causes double bookings and dates getting blocked out. This costs us time to deal with and money when properties are blocked by double bookings.
2 - Authorise customer cards for a damage deposit, which you automatically refund 7 days after departure, unless we make a claim. At the moment, Booking.com refuse to do this because they don't trust us, as if we are criminals. The damage deposit is essential to encourage guests to take care of the property and to protect the next guests. If a guest does not pay a damage deposit and causes damage, it can make the property unusable for the next guest. Booking.com's policies are unfair on property owners and guests.
3 - Fix various other bugs in the Booking.com systems. They are a pain. You can read about them in this community.
4 - Train support staff properly to be helpful, not to simply re-iterate official xxx. Support staff send us round and round in circles with useless replies.
5 - Fix the Pulse app so that we can message Booking.com from it and do the other things we need to do to manage properties properly.
We are new to holiday rentals but I echo your sentiments entirely.
We recently had a guest who left our property late..refusing to let our cleaners in.I immediately logged a complaint but on gaining access our cleaner found the place was in a terrible state.The worst she'd seen in 15 years of cleaning.Bath bottom chipped and cracked...mirror cracked..toilet seat broken..towel rail pulled of wall..pizza shoved down side of toilet...cigarette butts at side of bed...kitchen rail pulled off...2 bedroom blinds broken...outside table broken..wine stains on couch throw...neighbours reported excessive drinking and noice into all through night...Our next guests arrived seeing the mess as previous guests refused to leave....they were very understanding...our superb cleaners got it ready...enlisting local help to repair bath so shower could be used...so we didn't lose our guest although we spoke to her and promised to relocate her if we had to.
Because I'd already made a complaint...I could not then add to it...reporting damages and state...this is not a good system...I think booking should take a damage deposit and hold card details for all customers...it weeds out those who have no moral compass or respect for others properties...no refundable deposit...no booking!
I hope this does not happen to us again but surely this would be a sensible step to protect against that?
Mark
2 fat Ladies Chapel St Leonards
Sorry to hear this Mark.
I've posted about damage deposits before .... I've had long running disputes with BDC over this ....
I view damage deposits as essential as they help protect owners and future guests. If guests do cause damage, the deposit may not cover the costs of the damage, but it can help, if we choose to claim on the deposit. We also have to remember that if we do claim, guests can dispute the claims or write bad reviews - good reviews are worth far more than a few quid claim on a damage deposit.
The most important thing is that when a guest has paid a damage deposit, they tend to take more care of the property because they want their money back. That's great, because if they look after the place, it's available for the next guest. If they trash the place, we might have to cancel bookings at the last minute (on the day of arrival) - that is totally unfair on us and future guests.
The simple solution is for owners to use Payments by Booking.com and for BDC to authorise cards for an additional £75 or £100 at the time of booking, just the same as AirBnB / TripAdvisor etc. But Booking.com don't want to do this because, in their words, they do not trust property owners.
Yes, that's right - Booking.com do not trust owners, like we are a bunch of criminals.
I have 3 properties listed on BDC. 2 have settings that say the damage deposit can be paid by bank transfer (direct to my account), the other says it will be collected in cash on arrival and refunded in cash on departure. We can't do that as we have self catering properties accessed via key safe - we rarely meet our guests and we cannot wait at properties for hours for them to travel possibly hundreds of miles with a ferry crossing that might be delayed, and cannot expect guests to wait outside a property for us to arrive after the guests have had a long journey.
After lengthy discussions with BDC, they allowed me to set an automatic email reply, which is sent immediately after a booking, asking guests to pay the damage deposit by bank transfer. They allowed this for all 3 properties. This didn't work as guests generally don't read the messages sent to their inboxes.
We also had a separate problem with guests printing the booking confirmation and arriving without the access codes to the property, because they hadn't read the messages in their inboxes.
To resolve both "reading messages" problems and to get a damage deposit from the guest, BDC said to add information to Property > View your descriptions > "The Fine Print". This is visible on the booking confirmation which they tend to print out. Our "Fine Print" includes the wording " Please note that a refundable damage deposit of GBP 100 is required. Guests should check their Booking.com inbox for payment information."
This now partially works and we get some damage deposits paid - we have to chase for others. BDC have also said that if a guest does not pay the damage deposit, we should contact BDC to report non-payment and they will contact the guest. Of course, knowing how useless BDC support is, they will take one look at the policies, deny all responsibility and almost certainly refuse to do anything.
We do now have a separate bank account for damage deposits by bank transfer - this will make it much easier to track who has paid their deposit and to track all refunds.
As a tip, if you go down the road of automatic emails with bank details for damage deposits, remember to ask guests to provide their bank details too. We spend a vast amount of time chasing guests to send their bank details for their refunds ......
Thank you both for the additional feedback. We truly do appreciate it! I'm sending this through internally to the appropriate teams managing these various areas.
That's nice.. Specially I like to see is:
Cancellations (My property): 1,21%
Cancellations (Similar properties): 38,87%
That reminds me of another issue .... where bookings are set as non-refundable, guests can still cancel, but won't get their money back .... it's still shown as a cancellation in the system, so we are still penalised ..... I've only had 2 cancellations, one last year in one property where the guest booked the wrong property so cancelled and rebooked, and one in a different property a few months ago where the guest decided on the day of arrival that he couldn't come, so tried to cancel .... our stats still show that we have had cancellations, so we are still being penalised .....
What do you mean by you being "penalised"?
Go to Analytics > Ranking Dashboard and Your Search Result Score. At the bottom it says " These factors can help improve your visibility, which directly impacts your conversion. Keep in mind that every customer is unique and you shouldn't look only at these metrics. "
So, if we get a cancellation, it penalises us in search visibility.
All green, so it's fine by me :)
The only issue I have is with "Price Quality Score". Mine is 64, area average is 94. "This score is a reflection of your price on Booking.com compared to the lowest prices on other channels." I use the same rates on all OTA's, so this is the only thing I found a bit "unfair". I guess anyone that sells also on Expedia will have a problem with this score regardles..
Thanks Isle for this tip. I will certainly have it in mind....
No wonder my Performance Score has dropped so low...
Not only my cancellations have almost reached 100% giving me tough time and frustration I get low Performance Score???
Thats probably one of the reasons other properties have only non-refundable rates.
Thanks again for your comment.
Hi I am new here, I made mistake to put wrong info and how to delete my rooms,
Jenn - Community Program Manager Thank you for remind of this feature. I wonder how many similar property that system compare with the hotel.