Trip Advisor

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
shaz
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:57 am

Trip Advisor

Post by shaz »

What are your opinions and experiences with Trip Advisor. Are they any good. How do they treat owners. I have just been looking and they say they charge 3% per booking.
Joanna
Posts: 1091
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:12 pm
Location: Chester, North West England & Sidmouth, East Devon
Contact:

Post by Joanna »

Add VAT to the 3% - I think it works out at about 3.6% for us. Then they also add a booking fee on top which the guests are supposed to pay.

When we used to be on a subscription listing (i.e. flat fee annually and no commission or booking fees) we worked out the optimum peak rate for our house. There seems to be a psychological barrier at £800 per week so we got plenty of bookings at £790 but struggled when we tried just over £800. The TA booking fees push our total prices above that £800 threshold and, not surprisingly, we got less enquiries. This means that we would need to reduce our base prices so that, in effect, we're paying part or all of the guest booking fee as well as the commission. This makes TA more expensive than it first appears.

We're on TA because we started out on Holiday Lettings over 10 years ago before TA took them over. Their pricing methods don't match ours and other things are tricky to work around - we can do weekday changeovers, not weekends but they only allow a single specified day or any day. If we turn down a booking request we get penalised (moved down the search results). You have to know how to play their system to get the best results - LMH is a great source of tips on that front!

On the plus side we have lots of positive reviews on there and it helps to reassure people that we really do exist. I've had to contact them a couple of times - mainly when I tried to upload our terms and conditions and it didn't work. It took a while to find a phone number but once I did they were quite helpful.

They don't send our money until after the guest has arrived which is OK for some owners but we don't like it so we only release dates to TA in the next 8 weeks. We're aiming to fill the other dates using other sites, our own web site & Facebook. Hope that helps :D
Jo

Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
Dusty
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2012 3:32 pm
Location: St Cernin de Labarde, Dordogne
Contact:

Post by Dusty »

We only get maybe 1 booking a year from TA and although these bookings have been good we only stay with them now as we have so many reviews on there.
russellt
Posts: 353
Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2014 8:03 am
Location: Ivybridge, Devon, UK
Contact:

Post by russellt »

If you are at all sensitive about group profile/over-occupancy, don't trust their 'No. of Guests' on a booking enquiry. In my experience, it is almost always wrong. You need to double-check with the travelers, every time.
Web: https://yofftoo.com/property/esmes-cottage
Twitter/Facebook/Instagram: @esmescottage
Jenster
Posts: 454
Joined: Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:24 am
Location: Cornwall
Contact:

Post by Jenster »

I am on TA but hardly get anything from them, I believe because of the large traveller fee they charge.
shaz
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:57 am

Post by shaz »

Thank you very helpful :)
kg1
Posts: 2347
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:23 pm

Post by kg1 »

russellt wrote:If you are at all sensitive about group profile/over-occupancy, don't trust their 'No. of Guests' on a booking enquiry. In my experience, it is almost always wrong. You need to double-check with the travelers, every time.
Very true. Amazing how many forget they have kids/dogs!
BargeeSpud
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:41 pm

Post by BargeeSpud »

Joanna wrote:Add VAT to the 3% - I think it works out at about 3.6% for us. Then they also add a booking fee on top which the guests are supposed to pay.

When we used to be on a subscription listing (i.e. flat fee annually and no commission or booking fees) we worked out the optimum peak rate for our house. There seems to be a psychological barrier at £800 per week so we got plenty of bookings at £790 but struggled when we tried just over £800. The TA booking fees push our total prices above that £800 threshold and, not surprisingly, we got less enquiries. This means that we would need to reduce our base prices so that, in effect, we're paying part or all of the guest booking fee as well as the commission. This makes TA more expensive than it first appears.

We're on TA because we started out on Holiday Lettings over 10 years ago before TA took them over. Their pricing methods don't match ours and other things are tricky to work around - we can do weekday changeovers, not weekends but they only allow a single specified day or any day. If we turn down a booking request we get penalised (moved down the search results). You have to know how to play their system to get the best results - LMH is a great source of tips on that front!

On the plus side we have lots of positive reviews on there and it helps to reassure people that we really do exist. I've had to contact them a couple of times - mainly when I tried to upload our terms and conditions and it didn't work. It took a while to find a phone number but once I did they were quite helpful.

They don't send our money until after the guest has arrived which is OK for some owners but we don't like it so we only release dates to TA in the next 8 weeks. We're aiming to fill the other dates using other sites, our own web site & Facebook. Hope that helps :D
Au contrair I'm afraid, with a TA subscription listing you still pay the 3% commission + VAT per booking although your guests do not pay any booking fees.

I've just got my TA subscription renewal & its gone up by 20%, to £718 from last year's £598 which was itself an increase of 27% from £430 for 2016. I decided that I'd rather my guests don't get lumped with high booking fees (which can be upwards of 20-25%!) & get as many bookings as possible. I firmly believe that booking fees can put guests off. I've also highlighted "No Booking Fees" on my Listing's description too.

Popular conspiracy theories seem to suggest that these subscription fees have been hiked by so much in order to "persuade" subscribers to move over to free listings where they'll earn more in booking fees from your property than they would get from your subscription fee. If you do the maths, then that theory could have legs.

So, it all boils down to balancing what you're prepared to pay for your TA listing over how you think your bookings might be affected by booking fees - or not. You pays your money & takes your choice as they say.

Cheers, Ade.
Ade. (as in lemonade)

In the garden of happy memories, it is always summer, so keep you face towards the sun & the shadows will fall behind you.

All dentists are bar stewards.
User avatar
Cymraes
Posts: 519
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:31 pm
Location: North Wales

Post by Cymraes »

I'm there on a commission listing - I generally get a handful of bookings a year which at 3% commission I'm happy about.

If the guests are prepared to pay £300 on top of the price for the privilege of using TA then that's fine by me. It would take them only a few moments on google to track me down and book direct so I assume they don't want to.
FelicityA
Posts: 2816
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2010 2:54 pm
Location: Cotswolds
Contact:

Post by FelicityA »

Au contrair I'm afraid, with a TA subscription listing you still pay the 3% commission + VAT per booking although your guests do not pay any booking fees.

Actually, I have a subscription (through FlipKey) and nothing at all to do with their payment system. So I do not pay 3% to anybody. I book entirely directly and my guests nearly all use Transferwise if they are coming from abroad.
Post Reply