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Lorenzo
My partner and I are in Guadalajara, Mexico. With one of us being from the United States and the other Mexico, we understand creating memories for guests. The hotel, one of the Grand Homes built around 1920 is now LA PERLA Hotel Boutique B&B. We bought it in 2000 and gradually restored it over five years. Today, many guests who are visiting and considering retiring in Mexico, enjoy conversation at breakfast asking questions about retiring in Mexico.
The Apartment, next door to the hotel has a separate entrance and does not include breakfast or cocktails on the rooftop terrace with other guests or any hotel services. When we opened LA PERLA Hotel Boutique B&B in 2005, we were one of only three small inns and b&b's; now there are over 100. Guests return year after year to see and spend time with the friends they met at La Perla.
The Apartment, next door to the hotel has a separate entrance and does not include breakfast or cocktails on the rooftop terrace with other guests or any hotel services. When we opened LA PERLA Hotel Boutique B&B in 2005, we were one of only three small inns and b&b's; now there are over 100. Guests return year after year to see and spend time with the friends they met at La Perla.
Because we have really increased our reservations by using Booking.com, but found no one at Booking.com can help with payments by Virtual Credit Card, we opted out of it.
Go to Finance, Online payments, and there you will see the options.
We made both 1. ON-LINE payments IN-ACTIVE and 2. Virtual Credit Cards IN-ACTIVE.
To get our money, from the first Virtual Credit Card, we had to add our Bank Information for a direct Deposit. They have a monthly schedule for direct Bank Deposits, so we had to wait a long time, but eventually received it. I think it took us one month to discover they did not know how to help with the Virtual Credit Card and another month to receive the direct deposit.
Before adding a channel manager with credit card service, we could not process a credit card deposit without the credit card present. Now, we get a deposit and that eliminates no-shows of people booking more than one location for a reservation, and losing out on another possible reservation. We process all payments in-house.
For properties that this is not an option, activating the On-Line payments, with direct deposit does work, just very slowly and you pay a premium for the service.
We are very small and now use LittleHotelier/Siteminder as a channel manager. There are many channel managers available, but their association with Stripe for international credit card processing has been really important for us.
We are really happy with Booking.com, and hopefully, Booking.com will soon realize the negative effect that their Virtual Credit Card service is having on their association with property owners. It is SAD!
Aaltje,
Thank you for your kind words. I normally find solutions easily on Booking.com, or with customer service. On the forum, I wanted to offer constructive criticism to Booking.com and warn other small property owners about this ongoing problem.
We used to request deposits with PayPal until we started using LittleHotelier/Siteminder as a channel manager. I initially added it primarily for processing Credit Card DEPOSITS, and have loved the entire system. They were wonderful trying to help to find work-rounds for the Virtual Credit Card problem, when Booking.com could not help.
Hopefully Booking.com will offer better service with their Virtual Credit Cards soon.