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How can I get paid from no-shows or cancellations.
Hi all,
Hope everything finds you all well. By the moment I am charging my guests in cash in Ecuador. However, I want to charge them when they cancel or do not show up. What are the options to charge them when it happens? In the past, I was selecting the option to charge them but Booking.com did not send me any money. Do I have to add a paypal account? or a credit card service for charging guest? Does Booiking offer any kind of service to transfer me tha money to my bank account in Ecuador or to my credit card directly?
Very grateful for your help.
Kindly regards,
Crystian
Unfortunately if you are charging guests in cash you have no way of making them pay if they cancel or no show. The type of people that do this will then not answer any messages you try to send them to try and make them pay. Booking.com will not have taken their credit card number to get them to pay and will not do anything about it. If you are able to, it is a good idea to get booking.com to process payments for you. Email and check if they do it in your area. They do charge for the processing but it stops people booking and not showing up and you will be able to do a cancellation charge. On the whole it works out more cost effective.
I opted out of B.com to take my payment because of the LONG payout period and the HIGH admin fees on top of that. I changed my booking advance period to 3 days to collect money and cancel before the 48 hour period starts. I have a lot of no-shows NOW. And I'm loosing out on bookings. B.com refuses to cancel any bookings and keeps on telling me to get hold of the guests. Guests don't give their correct number to contact them or won't respond to any messages sent. I had a huge argument with them. On the platform it tells guests they can pay at the property. I've told them numerous times that I don't work like that. I'm a small business owner and need to be guaranteed of each booking. They absolutely don't give a damn about your losses! I'm fed-up with them. It's like their first priority is the guest and not the establishment. I've told them yesterday not to bother anymore I'm going to bill them for the full booking value for each no-show!
Opting out of Payments by Booking.com is a bad move - very bad - and that is the cause of your problems now.
High fees? Increase your prices. The guest pays.
Long payout period? It's a few weeks. And far better to have the guaranteed income through Payments by Booking.com than zero income because of the choices you've made ......
I'm going through the exact same thing as you were. A guest that reserved my place with almost two months in advance decided to cancel their booking with 1 hour prior to their check-in moment, a reservation of 2 weeks, in the middle of the season I might add. The fact that booking.com does not retain any information about the guest (credit card details, ID or even a phone number) is fricking MENTAL. There is no way (THROUGH BOOKING.COM) a guest can be held accountable for such a thing. And the funny thing is that after hearing so many complaints, on the forums and in their call center, on the subject they are not doing a thing to resolve this thing or improve their platform in any way. It get me thinking if I should be using Booking.com anymore or switching to other, more capable API-s.
Cash is never a good idea. The no-shows and cancellations are most likely fake bookings. Ask Booking.com to set up Payments by Booking.com. If they don't allow that, switch to AirBnB.
List on a few, depending on the type of property. Majority of my bookings come through booking.com, then Expedia.com (who process everything for you without any additional fees) and occasionally from airbnb. Nothing stopping you listing on all and synch your diary.
I use the the prepayment option with my OBA taking payment on Booking.com, Expedia and Airbnb, plus my own site. I price my rooms competitively but to take account of the charges of each, so can make my own website prices proportionately cheaper. I recently made weekends and Bank Hols non-refundable, introduced a strict 30 day non-refundable weekday rule and removed the grace period completely. I'm considering restricting weekend bookings a minimum of two days. I don't give refunds for cancellations unless a replacement guest can be found by the OBA responsible, and I charge the full amount for no-shows. Sound too tough? Well, I know it's been an exceptionally busy year, but I've not seen any reduction in business and I have benefitted considerably, because I occasionally get paid twice for a room that may still remain empty that night. I find guests have responded by using the Risk-Free option, which means we are all happy - except possibly Booking.com, lol, because they sometimes have to foot the bill. I never accept cash bookings and don't advertise street-side as I'm located in the countryside away from passing trade. I don't use a business bank account, so can't have an expensive card system. Instead I accept BACCS, Paypal or cheques for my direct reservations. Old fashioned? Yeah, but it saves money and works fine.
Much the same as we do, except everything we do is non-refundable, although we do give the 24 hour grace period, primarily because we get so many double bookings through Booking.com that the grace period makes it easier for us to get them cancelled.
We use minimum 7 nights in school holidays, 4 nights between Easter and late September, 3 nights over winter. We don't normally accept 2 night stays unless there's a gap and we have enough cleaners to spare.
But a word of warning:
If your guest is already in the non-refundable period, don't agree to a change of date that takes them out of it if they are not prepared to make it a non-refundable transfer. They can use it as a way to get their money refunded immediately afterwards, which is sneaky.