My experience booking a rental with Abritel

[French Cricket]

I've just gone over to the dark side and used Abritel (French HA) to book us a few nights just over the border in Catalonia at the end of October - the place we've stayed before has now been sold and I had a moment of panic when I realised that the French school holidays are a week earlier this year.

Anyway, I found a nice looking apartment with availability for the week I want, at a good price, with great reviews. It had online booking, so I thought I'd give it a go to see what it felt like, given that the service fee would only be 19 euros or so. Spanish owned, French run. Perfect.

So I booked. Online. Within 5 minutes, I had a holding response through Abritel from the Spanish owner. Within 10 minutes, I had a long and very professional yet chatty email - to my own email address and from hers - from the French manager. They would, she said, process my booking outside the site as they had 'serious concerns' about the online payment process, and hoped I would be happy with that. If I was, they would cancel my booking through Abritel and we would continue the process directly between ourselves. I was, and we did. I've paid a small deposit, by cheque, which won't be cashed and will be returned to me when I leave; the rental charge will be paid in cash on arrival. I have not been charged a service fee.

The Spanish owner has three properties, and it seems that they're doing this with all their bookings. Which means that they must be cancelling a lot of bookings. And yet the property I booked is still coming up on page 1 (out of - oh, loads!) of a generic town search, done in incognito mode in Chrome.

So that's one owner's method of taking back control. Presumably they have a subscription listing, but so far at least don't seem to have been penalised for serial cancellation.

Interesting.

[Hells Bells]

I did this exactly this with a booking I received through Homeaway recently. I had not had an online booking through them for a while, and after the booking had been placed, noticed that payment was not immediate but did not happen until after the guest left in Feb. I don't seem to have been penalised (I used the unsuitable for my property choice), and guest was happy to rebook. I didn't have a subscription listing, but there were no fees subtracted. I gave the guest a small discount. He wasn't charged a service fee as it was days before they were introduced.

[kevsboredagain]

It's exactly how I handle all HA bookings now and some of mine come through Abritel too. I'm concerned though that while some may trust you and be willing to to deal direct, others may see a red flag and run a mile. When most enquiries come to nothing anyway, it's been impossible so far to judge the true reaction.

[French Cricket]

So ... have I got this right?

You can have an HA/OD/Abritel/whatever subscription listing, enable online bookings just to keep your place in the listing hierarchy, disable payments by credit card (and presumably enable alternative payments) ... and then respond to an enquiry outside the HA communication system (having sent a holding reply within it) to the guest's own email address and complete the rest of the conversation/booking completely outside the HA platform? So the guest adds their card details just for the service fee, but is never charged as the booking through their system is never confirmed by the owner?

I can't be persuaded to return to OD/HA/Abritel personally, but just wonder why more people aren't doing this as a workaround?

[Hells Bells]

It seems so at the moment, but how long before the penny drops? My listing was actually a commission only one when I cancelled the booking, but he'd paid the deposit, so I had contact details. As long as I cancelled for the reason .

[French Cricket]

Well well well well.

Owner and guest 1, HA 0.

I like it!