Contact with guests and rental agreements

Hello Barbara-Schiphorst nice to have you here in the forum.

Sometimes guests do not reply to e-mails send through Booking.com. they just dont want to bother, although I think that they receive them. I had the same issue with my first guest. He told me that since he receives many advertising e-mails from booking.com he just doesnt read them all so he had missed mine when I tried to get in touch with him.

When guest dont reply to my e-mails I try again and again and finally they respond.

I am new on the platform and am researching where to reference that guests must share email address to receive the rental agreements, and must send it back signed for the reservation to be completed. Can you p,ease tell me where you wrote this, to then be able to send the rental contract? Thanks!

Hi Barbara Schiphorst,

I am so new with extranet. so you said that you phoned your guest, you cant reach him thru chat inbox at the extranet? so the guest will get your message thru booking.com app or website. Correct or not?

I also put on my policies that our guests need to send 50% prepayment thru bank transfer. i dont know yet how i send the full invoice and bank details. I am thinking to send in thru extranet inbox guests message. So that mean will be not in attachment file invoice.

Thank you

hi Barbara, I'm new too, I am still in the 'reading everything' stage. And I found your message. I started to rent out our apartment last year and asked our guests to sign a booking form. Think it's a good idea.

My query is that I wrote to booking.com as they put me under their payment scheme. Their reply was I had ticked no access to credit card and so had to go on their scheme. But reading your post states that you dont accept credit cards and opted to use your bank transfer method.

How did you do this, because I want to do the same? I'm in Italy but that shouldn't alter things??

Thank you

Hello everyboy,

This is what Leandri a few hours ago suggested.

"There is no Physical Agreement between the Owner of the Property and the Renter that needs to be signed and mailed back, or anything like that (that I'm aware of). Once a guest registers on the Booking.com website, they automatically agree to the Terms and Conditions of using the website (Which can be seen as an agreement between the owner and renter as you yourself also agreed to those when you got your contract). Furthermore you add all the terms and conditions etc on your property which a member has to accept before they can confirm a booking. It's their own responsibility to read through all your rules and descriptions before they confirm the booking.

If you want to have a Physical agreement, you will need to write it up and process it yourselves."

I absolutely agree with her and most partners dont send a physical agreement. If you have any special conditions you can add them in your fine print.

Sorry, casamia I wanted to inform you that I also use bank transfer payments through booking.com and I am very sattisfied with that.

In your Finance tab find Bank details. There you can edit your Bank name, IBAN etc. Its very easy.

Check this out, I think it will help you.

/en-gb/help/policies-payments/introducing-payment-solutions-bookingcom

Have a nice evening and welcome to the forum.

First, thank you for your post re the rental agreement, it explains it clearly and I wont be doing one but will put what i expect from guests.

Coming to the opting out of the booking.com payment scheme, this is what I rec'd from them re my query:

"
I understand that you want to manage your own payments rather than have us collect the payment on your behalf. I also understand that this is not what you were expecting.

During your property registration, you indicated that you do not have the ability to charge credit cards. Therefore, you have been designated as a cash only property. Our experience with cash only properties has been that obtaining payment from guests upon check-in resulted in a lot of cancellations and no shows without any opportunity for the property to get paid. We created Payments by Booking to alleviate that partner pain points.

If you have the ability to charge guests' credit cards, we can request to opt you out of Payments by Booking.

If you have any other questions the Partner Help Center covers many topics, and we’re always here to help."

So I can't opt to take care of payments myself via bank transfers, like Barbara did.

I want to know why? Can this forum help or should I write to booking.com?

They keep your money until the check out of the guest, I want to ask for a prepayment deposit of 50% of the booking, but I won't get that either, booking with keep it. For August bookings it's a long time to wait for your money. Don't you think?

I am a little confused you state " understand that you want to manage your own payments rather than have us collect the payment on your behalf".... so you prefer to manage your own payments??? Yes its a long time to wait for your money but they are secure and this way you have less cancellations and no shows. It all depends what you really want.

Yes, I want to manage my payments. B.com contacted me and we are chatting throu4 all my concerns. So feel quite pleased about that. Thanks for replying and good luck in your business in 2019.

Thank you casamia, same to you. Massive pleasure after all we are not only partners but also neighbors.
Ciao...

Hi! Barbara-Schiphorst Yesterday I was reading Payments terms and privacy policies of another OTA and I thought to share it here for your knowledge. “Upon receipt of a booking confirmation from ......a legally binding agreement is formed between you and your Host, subject to any additional terms and conditions of the Host that apply, including in particular the applicable cancellation policy and any rules and restrictions specified in the Listing”.
Hope that helps....

I am sure you will.
Take care...