Tripadvisor/holidaylettings listing fee

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
goosie
Posts: 408
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:47 pm
Location: Cotswolds

Tripadvisor/holidaylettings listing fee

Post by goosie »

We moved from a paid for listing to a commission based one at the start of the year but the prices they are charging are extortionate. Our summer price is £2500 and they are adding another £350 on top which means it’s well beyond the reasonable pricing for the location and size of property. Because it’s variable between 3% and 20% we cant even adjust our prices to take account of it. So I’m thinking of moving back to us paying for the listing but can’t find anything on their website that tells me what fees are charged at that point. Can anyone help? I’ve scoured the Tripadvisor FAQ and forums but still can’t get the answer. And of course customer service numbers are hidden.

Thanks for your help!
Joanna
Posts: 1091
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:12 pm
Location: Chester, North West England & Sidmouth, East Devon
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Post by Joanna »

I seem to remember that it's a one way move - once you've left paid listings on TA you can't go back because they want everyone on commission now. I know we dithered for ages before we gave up our paid listing because we knew we couldn't go back. In the end we were getting so few bookings from them that it was working out too expensive so getting rid of it was a no brainer.

It also seemed that we were being pushed to the bottom of results because they favoured commision listings.

We get hardly any bookings from TA and our calendar is blocked off at the moment anyway. I just use them to fill late gaps - or will do when we can start taking bookings again. I put in whatever rate is currently on our own website and, yes, they add a hefty fee on top. However, people do pay it so you may be surprised.
Jo

Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
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Cymraes
Posts: 519
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:31 pm
Location: North Wales

Post by Cymraes »

I'm amazed by the premium people seem happy to pay on TripAdvisor - they pay £100s more than they need to for my cottage. I actually feel quite guilty at times when they realise afterwards.

I do think fewer people are using them now - I only get a few bookings a year which suits me. I don't want to wait months for TA to actually let me have the money!
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CSE
Posts: 4414
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:34 pm
Location: Galicia

Post by CSE »

There are plans by TA to give members a "club" preference. If a person joins (after paying a lump sum) that they will be able to gain more areas in the forums and obtain discounts.
I do not know what this "club" will be called or what monetary offers the member will receive. At first reading of basics it looks like the owner may have to subsidise the guest even more.
Plans are to roll this out in North America first.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
goosie
Posts: 408
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:47 pm
Location: Cotswolds

Post by goosie »

Thank you for your replies. I do feel terrible when people are
Charged such a hefty premium. I try really hard to give the name of our property in the hope that they might search it and find us independently without breaching the rules. I’ve just had a summer booking from them but now it seems they don’t even release the contact details until after the full payment is received - I assume as a further attempt to stop people cancelling and booking direct. It’s such a license to print money for them.

The problem is they know that people read the reviews. I’d be more than happy paying for a review listing only if only I could. Il going to look out simply owners and some others (were on Away with the kids, VRBO and some smaller ones already) as I like the commission-free policy.
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Mouse
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Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:47 pm
Location: Balearics
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Post by Mouse »

Although I didn't get many enquiries from TA, because their commission on top of my prices really made us expensive, I would always quote the real price on my reply but say the price quoted by TA would be more expensive as of course that was the commission they charged.
It was my way of making sure they knew.
If I ever got requests for discounts again I pointed out that they were paying the most expensive way of booking and that I only discounted on direct bookings (!).

I liberally scattered through my advert the name of our villa. 99% would then go on to find my website.
So that approach can work.

Many people tho are lazy even when in our case it meant paying £350+ more. Astounding.

Mousie
x
Sunbeam
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2015 5:24 pm
Location: Spain

Post by Sunbeam »

I completely concur with Mouse's approach and experience.
Pengman
Posts: 115
Joined: Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:54 pm
Location: Portland, Dorset UK

Re: Tripadvisor/holidaylettings listing fee

Post by Pengman »

goosie wrote:...Our summer price is £2500 and they are adding another £350 on top which means it’s well beyond the reasonable pricing for the location and size of property. Because it’s variable between 3% and 20% we cant even adjust our prices to take account of it...
I've been thinking of adding a listing on Tripadvisor to our arsenal, but the comments here are rather putting me off. On the plus side, £350 is 14% of £2,500, and 14% is pretty much the same as the commission charged by Booking.com and Airbnb, so what's the problem? - if I use a rate plan that's about 14% lower than my direct rates I should be OK shouldn't I? (assuming I'm happy to go that low). Or is the problem that this 14% is variable and you can't figure out in advance exactly what it will be? On the negative side, people are saying that they receive so few bookings via TA that it isn't worth it. So should I steer clear of Tripadvisor or not?
I came, I saw, I bought it.
Joanna
Posts: 1091
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:12 pm
Location: Chester, North West England & Sidmouth, East Devon
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Post by Joanna »

Personally I take a different approach - I work out the prices that I need to charge for direct bookings and then increase them for TA and ABB so that we get the same amount in the end. I have an Excel spreadsheet set up that calculates the rate - I put in a nightly base rate and it shows what the guest pays and what we earn for different numbers of nights. Then I adjust it so we're earning the same as we do for direct bookings.

In our case the percentages don't seem to change - the guest always pays 15.5% more and we always earn 3.6% less than the base rate.

We now only use TA & ABB for late bookings - where we would struggle to fill the dates ourselves and their cancellation policies aren't so much of an issue. Also, the bookings we get through them are often awkward lengths, or odd arrival/departure dates that don't work for our cleaners so leave us with odd gaps we can't fill. They can end up costing us more than direct bookings.

It seems that many people are still willing to pay those prices for the reassurance of booking through a big name. They always book direct the second time though!
Jo

Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
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