m
1
Turn off instant booking
1. Please advise how do I turn off Instant bookings.
2. I syncronized with Airb+ b (imported and imported correctly). Why did a "booked" one date on Airb+b calender not show on Booking.com calender and therefor cause a double booking?
Dear Mariette Venter, thank you for posting in the community!
There is no option to turn off instant bookings. The moment that a guest makes a reservation is automatically confirmed. Regarding the sync of the calendars please note that reservations are not synced in real-time. This means that there’s a delay when reservations from external calendars are synced with Booking.com’s calendar and vice versa. You can find more in the link below: https://partner.booking.com/en-gb/help/rates-availability/how-can-i-connect-my-bookingcom-calendar-other-calendars
Best of Luck!
Mariette - You cannot turn off instant bookings. Community Admin is talking absolute *** with commends about the calendar sync. The BDC calendar sync does not work. It is broken. Do not rely on it. Always block manually - if you get a booking on AirBnB, block those dates on BDC, and vice versa. If you get a double booking, contact BDC via your extranet and ask them to cancel it.
Kindy tell me how I can communicate with booking.com via my extranet. Currently, I cannot tell them about double-bookings they make on their own plaftorm ito instant-bookings. ;-(
i have the same problem, its crazy that you put up your home and instantly anyone can turn up without you veting them 1st!!! booking.com is more of a hotel booking system than a home rental. they got even worse when Expida took over and advertised all of their homes on that site, it caused a *** with some of my guest and i was forced to close it down, airbnb and vrbo have never had syncing problems you have total control over what is going on in your home and i highly recommend them
And now with the coronavirus spreading, it's even more important to vet guests
Host cancellation due to the Corona virusit states that the host can do the cancellation process at Reservatulions icon, but for booking.com specifies that they have to be informed else commission to them applies. So if I process the cancellation (by the request of a non FC guest) online at booking.com is that suffiecient "advise booking.com" so that I will not be charged commission.
My BDC calendar did not synchronise properly with my Airbnb one (some bookings synched, others did not, making it more difficult to pick up the problem). I contacted the BDC customer who was very understanding and said he would cancel his booking, I'd already informed BDC about the double booking due to the sync error and they say they will still be charging me their commission. They may of course also earn commission on the alternative property they offer the guest. Last month they charged me commission on a cancellation made by a guest during Covid 19 lockdown, when I'd refunded the guest in full and their own policy stated that guests must be refunded if prevented from travelling. I was told charge his "may" get offset against a future commission charge. How generous when it should never have been taken!
I'm appalled by the way owners get treated on this site and am now blocking all my dates, until they bring in policies that protect us better and stop charging us for their own IT errors.
Agreed. Airbnb is knocking the socks off all these dusty old booking platforms. I even get instant-booking double bookings on BDC itself! How can the system even allow this, without notifying the second guest to book that the room they are trying to book is already booked by another instant-booking guest? Please tell me how on earth you are able to communicate with booking.com to inform them of double-bookings on their own platform! I have no idea.
I am now on the Nightsbridge platform and I have not had a double-booking since using them (great support too). It seems that the only way to avoid instant bookings (and guests who book and pitch late or don't pitch at all... and let's face it often, if not always, 'instant bookings' are the most inconsiderate guests) is to block out your rooms as unavailable in the afternoon (as if you've had a direct booking for all your rooms).