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BOOKING.COM should (and could) care much more to protect host from missconduct, cancellations and no-show
- Guests are not rated. Suggestion: implement host rating of guest. Symmetry. (As most digital B2C businesses) - Hosts have no information about guests. Hosts are blind. Suggestion: provide information as * How many reservations does the guest have for the same dates? (Multi booking) * Number of cancellations, very late cancellations, and no shows (and #successfull bookings, as a reference) 1 year / 5 years * Guest misscondut and lack of payment. Since inception. - Booking todes not manage colletion in many countries. Suggestion: implement collection on behalf of hosts #1 suggestion and kind request is ALLOW HOSTS RATE GUESTS. Symmetry. Fairness. Expetaction management.
I don't know how many times I need to repeat this, but use Payments by Booking.com so that guests pay at the time of booking, just like on AirBnB / TripAdvisor and so on. It stops the fake bookings and no-shows. In your settings you can require guest address and verified phone number. Use non-refundable so that even if they cancel, you get paid. This will cure 95% of your problems.
1) Maybe you woudn't repeat that READING the messages, and LEARNING that services are not all available in every place. I am suggesting implementing Payments by B.c in more places e.g. in América. In case my massage was too long, I quoute: "Booking does not manage colletion IN MANY COUNTRIES. Suggestion: implement collection on behalf of hosts" 2) Does your repeated advise provide a guest rating?
Sounds like you need to switch to a different OTA, one that does provide the services you need
Isle, another assumption... I work with 3 OTA's airbnb provides collection services, and two types of insurance, and plenty information about guests. I post here to foster BOOKING.COM improvements, useful for many hosts ("partners...") Giving up would be the easy way. --------------- Isle, does BOOKING.COM provide rate and/or info about guests? It does not. Is this a de-fecto standard in digital B2C? Yes, symmetry is a golden rule. THes window of no service is like opening a can of worms: it seriously damages our business, or motivates a too strong policy (that most guests do not deserve)
Dear Antonio,
Sorry for your frustration...
Please edit your profile in Community, so we are not blind about our partners...so we can help eachother.
I would like to inform you that my Athens local BDC support team has excellent service...
Wish you well.
Thank you. Profile updated !!
Thanks Antonio,
Your photo is very nice.
de-facto*
Hello Antonio Pages! Booking.com provides partners with tools helping to solve this kind of problems. But thank you for sharing your feedback in the Community.
Thank you Sergei. Please, tell me about that tools ! How can I get information about guests?
Hey Antonio Pages!
So for guest misconduct I would recommend you to read this article https://partner.booking.com/en-gb/help/first-steps/how-do-i-report-issues-guest-misconduct
And here are several tips about how to reduce cancellations https://partner.booking.com/en-gb/help/guides/how-better-understand-prevent-and-reduce-your-cancellations
I hope it will be useful!
Sergei, one concrete question: I get a notice of a new reservation by John. What can I know about John, if there is NO partner rating? OK, forget rating, the plaform is asymmetric. As a mitigation, can so I know at lest this very simple metris about John?: - Number of reservations held for the same dates - Rate or no-show/n¿reservations - Rate of Cancellations/reservations (all stati) I look forward to your kind reply
Sergei, honestly, I doubt whether you are commited to do something to mitigate the problem, to improve partners satisfaction and profit, or just pretend everything is fine. Please, read about my concern: it is to AVOID cancellations and missconduct.... and you have sent me an article about HOW TO REPOR MISSCONDUCT: I wan to avoid missconduct, i want to prevent missconduct, we need information BEFORE the fact. Sergei, mebye your missing the point or missintepreting what is the community mgr job.
I, and many others, agree with you that Booking.com needs to improve and protect hosts / partners. But, they won't.
Many hosts / partners report bugs or faults in Booking.com systems. We are told that we are wrong. We have to fight to get simple things set up the same as we have on AirBnB / TripAdvisor / HomeAway and others. Booking.com simply do not care about hosts / partners.
The only way forward is as I said, if Booking.com do not provide the service you need that protects you and other guests, switch to another OTA. If you are already using those other OTAs, stick with them, forget Booking.com.
Your post below (about $4000 loss) shows exactly why you should not use Booking.com until they provide you with the service you need and deserve.
Community Admins are here to edit our posts. Sometimes they will direct you to official Booking.com policies or guides, which are very poor and do not fix the problems. Community Admins can see hosts / partners reporting the same problems every single day, but they do nothing about it.
In the AirBnB community, if we report a problem / bug or something, the admins will pass information to the right people to deal with the problems. That won't happen here.
And I bet that, as often happens, a Community Admin will edit this post but not say "I have seen 132 posts about double bookings caused by calendar sync not working and have reported it to developers", or "I have seen 256 posts about non-payment / no shows and have reported this to the senior team and developers".
Agree! Now I have a very restricting policy and much higher prices in BOOKING.COM than in all other OTAs. I'll take your advice and add up a couple more ones.
*** reserved my place in MAY to stay from Dec 23 to jan 5. ABout $4000. *** cancelled Dec 22. He owed a penalty of 30%. He never paid, BOOKING.COM did nothing. No way to pull his credit card. I've lost $4000 QUESTION: is it there any plan to implement collection (Payments by Booking) in all America or, at least, in Argentina? Sergei, you said most of my concerns are already solved. Enlight me.
Someone has deleted the name of a ***. What I have written just states a fact, documented in the extranet. No opinion, no offense, no insult. ANd it is a way to provide the information we need - no judgement, just information Why should someone delete the name of ***? I think the bias towards ALLOWING guest to play games with us is getting too far... Just hiding real facts... like the obscure Mid Age
Dear Antonio, very sorry to hear about your payment problems. I can fully understand your frustration...
What payment method are you using??? Can you have non-refundable rates???
Wish you well.
Hi Antonio Pages! Thank you for your feedback. I would like to answer.
1. As you asked about guest misconduct and cancellations problems, I replied to you and shared what Booking.com tools are currently available to help partners with this. Since the point of the Community is to share experience, I would recommend you to ask other partners about what they do to solve this kind of problem.
2. You want to get more data about guests because you think that it will help you to prevent misconduct. Thanks for sharing your opinion in the Partner Community. This is an open discussion, other partners can join it and share their thoughts about it too. This is how Community works.
3. You mentioned that you had a problem with collecting payment. Do you need a Customer Support help with it?