Are TA under pressure?

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
Stewart
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2011 1:32 pm
Location: Fife, Scotland

Are TA under pressure?

Post by Stewart »

I have published a number of posts previously wondering if we can live without the global listing sites. In particular their "Ryanair" focus on low, low pricing (at the expense of everything else like, err, features, customer care and quality) being a non-sustainable model.

Well after five years trading we dumped HA/OD and ramped up our TA/HL prices for 2017 and have seen one booking through them as a result. But we have had no problem maintaining business through our own site (at the margins we want). The seasonal booking distribution has not changed.

I get the impression that our local competition is similarly not getting the business they once did either through the big boys and are using the booking.com, lastminute and similar players.

This is likely to be our best year yet (letting approx 190 days in rainy Scotland). TA/HL used to provide a quarter of our bookings).

About 20% of our business is repeat now.

BTW we are now "piloting" AirBnB who IMO offer configuration flexibility for owners and a better deal for customers. We have reasonable hopes for the Nov to April season.
bobbie diamonds
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 5:24 pm
Location: Norfolk

Post by bobbie diamonds »

For me I'd say 90% of my bookings are through AirBnB. Plus their customer service is fantastic. Obviously I can only speak for myself but I cannot speak highly enough about them in the way they deal with issues. Holiday Lettings, on the other hand, are terrible. They seem to just care about the money, not customer care. It seems that AirBnB realise that good customer service reaps benefits for both the host and AirBnB themselves. Look after the pennies the pounds will take care of themselves!
Jenster
Posts: 454
Joined: Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:24 am
Location: Cornwall
Contact:

Post by Jenster »

Funny, Airbnb do not work for me and I am not willing to accept the steep (15%?) commission on booking.com.

TA have never worked well for me either and OD bookings are in decline. We too seem to be managing fine with a few repeats and a lot of direct bookings through our website, something I never thought I would be able to achieve.

OD still seem to be strong for the summer holidays though - my feeling is that time poor young families would rather pay the service fee for the convenience and ease of booking. At other times my market is generally older couples who are more willing/able to take the time to find their perfect property at a good (direct) price.

It all depends on your market I feel.
bobbie diamonds
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 5:24 pm
Location: Norfolk

Post by bobbie diamonds »

Youre right, it does depend on our market situation. I really need to start asking guests why they chose to book with a certain listing site, get a feel of the customers requirements.
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