Holiday Lettings - Booking Manager

[Essar]

The majority of my bookings (85%) come through HL, their new website seems to be gradually being phased but their testing seems a little lightweight. They do have an awful lot of bugs (I've reported 3) many of which seem to be associated with different browsers - in particular Internet Explorer 9, if you use Mozilla or Chrome their site usually works ok.

I thought I'd take a look at the early stages Booking Manager system they've just introduced. My interest is both financial and simply systems curiosity (my background is large scale usage software design and analysis).
I don't know if they have liased with any owners about the design, if they have it's not been talked about and would probably not be large in number. The impression I get is that it's more likely to be an agent or an owner with multiple properties.
From a financial view point - if you accept PayPal payments and the credit/debit card facility PayPal provide; you will like me be probably paying the higher PayPal charge of 3.4% + 20p a transaction. If you join the Booking Manager you must have a verified PayPal account, but you will benefit from just 1.9% +20p. It's probably worth it just for that because if you never use Booking Manager you still get the lower rate when using PayPal.
So I joined up and linked my PayPal account to the Booking Manager, it will take up to 7-days for PayPal to acknowledge the changes - I haven't checked yet (it's been 3-days).
The setup is fairly straightforward; you add your own Terms & Conditions (pdf) that will be included with any quote sent out.
You can add up to 3 messages; one to go with the quote, one when you receive a deposit payment and one when you receive the balance payment.
You can set your deposit percentage, plus additional charges - such as a booking fee - and a range of optional extras.
You can set the balance due days - such as 56 for 8 weeks or 42 for 6-weeks - any length of time really.
So far so good, but then Cancellation Terms: HL refund when there is a cancellation if the guest cancels with them, so there are several cancellation "sets" - Mild, stricter, more stricter, very strict, etc each with a different set of rules for refunds. None of them matched my own and I certainly wouldn't want HL involved in any cancellation I had. They point out that their cancellation Ts&Cs override any you may have in your own Ts&Cs - not acceptable.
I did a couple for test enquiries and followed them up with quotes. The paperwork seems to make sense and the bespoke text messages you can add also look good. However, the biggest drawback about actually responding to an HL enquiry with and HL quote is that as soon as you send it HL blocks off the dates as "Reserved" (light red rather than deep red for "Booked"). You can of course go into the calendar and change them but that's an extra job. It seems to me that a lot of enquirers use a scattergun approach and send off an enquiry to many different properties. What happens if they send off ten, say 3 of the 10 use HL's BM to send a quote; they all get "Reserved" dates on their calendars. You can set a time limit in days - the defaults 5 - when the the dates will be released but in the meantime enquirers ignore you because your dates are reserved. I don't know what happens if you get another enquiry for the same dates and you quote - double reserved! or is your property ignored in the search (more likely).
I'm old school - first come first served - a quote is not a booking, not even a reserved booking - a booking is only a booking when I have a Reservation Form, the guests accepts my Ts&Cs and I have some money in the bank from the guests.
The HL BM fails at this point.
So I will continue to watch what happens, I've made a few suggestions to HL concerning these "features" but have not yet received a reply - I'll keep you posted!

[kg1]

Thank you for setting this out so clearly. I have been meaning to dive into BM for a while to see if it would suit. On your summary above I don't think it will for the same reasons you give, blocking off dates, their T&Cs superseding mine & taking over the cancellation process. I like to decide on a case by case basis whether I will refund on a cancellation (sob story usually works!).

I rarely get asked for PP payments but might consider it for that only.

Saved me a lot of time, thanks.

[Nightowl]

thanks for the research, I was intending to look at it too...but reserving dates for an enquiry is just madness.... I think I will be avoiding it in that case! thanks for the heads up.

[Hells Bells]

I used Booking Manager for an HL enquiry, purely out of curiosity. It was clunky, basic and not worth the effort. The guest booked, and I still had to send him a separate booking form to get all of his details. Worth keeping for the reduced PP fees, though I think Holiday rentals will soon be doing something similar.

[Essar]

I sent an email to HL about Booking Manager on the 24/8/2012, full and unedited:-

I have been looking at the new free Booking Manager that you offer. I have the following observations that may help you.

The software looks well designed and has some thoughtful ideas, the testing under different browsers doesn't seem to be very robust, particularly, with IE9.

The ability to share in a discounted PayPal rate is excellent, it's worth it for that alone.

Bookings Settings:
- Messages To Guests:
The three you have are good, owners will no doubt add their own wording once they become more confident.
How about a forth:- "Balance Reminder" - sent out to remind guests when the balance is due, usually, 3 to 7 days before its due. Owners often have their own personal messages for this reminder rather than a standard HL one.
-Cancellation Policy:
I know why you have a fixed set of rules; so that, you can automatically refund when a booking is cancelled. However, most owners prefer to do this themselves as often the circumstances of the cancellation can be quite personal and traumatic (death!), and owners may offer a different angle in such circumstances. In my experience no two cancellations are alike and I would prefer to make my own arrangements for refunds, charges and future discounts. So I suggest two extra options:
1 - Included in Booking Terms
2 - I have my own (PDF)

Basic Settings:
In this day and age most enquirers often use a scatter gun approach to property selection, they will often send the same enquiry to 10 different properties for the same dates and destination. If 3 owners out of the 10 use Booking Manager and use the quote facility; all 3 will have the dates reserved on their property calendars. Reserved dates put off enquirers - its a bit like a house For Sale sign stating Sold STC, its not sold yet, but is likely to be, so buyers don't pursue it. This "Reserved" status could last for 5-days if you accept the default setting, so 3-owners may miss out on potential enquires during this period. An enquiry followed up by a quote is not a booking, not even a reserved booking, it's just a quote. Nothings is definite until a Reservation Form has been received and the deposit/in-full payment made. What happens when the owner receives two enquiries for the same property for the same dates and quotes both, this happens more than you might think, particlularly, during Jan/Feb busy period? You should not block off the calendar with the reserved status, only block it off as booked status when you process the payment or the owner updates the calendar when they process the payment. If the guest does take up one of the quotations from the 3 owners; do you release the reserved dates for the other 2 then or must they do it?
In my experience only 1 in 3 enquries that I quote for turn into a firm booking, talking to other owners on web forums this seems to be about average, so many owners would not like this feature. I can confim this has been discussed and the concensus is negative

Finally, what about including a Reservation Form so guests not only make a payment but also provide the details required by the owner in one go. You could even allow the owners to set up their own webpage form that would be called after the PayPal payment has completed. (eg: http://www.bournemouthselfcatering.com/ ... n_form.htm). This would close the circle of the booking automatically and would enhance your Booking Manager considerably.

I hope this sort of feedback assists, it's not meant has a criticism of your software folk's hard work, just experiences from an actual owner/user. You've probably already thought of these enhancements and are about to implement them, in which case - can't wait! My background is software design and analysis, but in a totally different industry - shipping.

I have received a reply, but have asked the author for authority before publishing it here.

Steve

[Essar]

I have received authority to publish the response from HL:-

Thank you for your email and feedback.

We really appreciate our advertisers taking the time to review our tool and providing us such a good comments about things that we can improve.

We are aware of current issues with using the Booking Manager in different browsers and certain limitations when using Internet explorer. What we are recommending our advertisers at the moment is that they try another browser if they find any problem. Regarding the balance chaser, an email is sent to the holiday maker 7 days before the balance is due. This is currently not editable at present and I have logged this as an addition.

In regard to the cancellation policies, we have included a selection of the most common cancellation policies between our owners but we know that some of our owners have their own personal cancellation policies and these are not reflected. Unfortunately, at the moment, it is not possible to include your own but we have passed your suggestions.

As far as the reservation system is concerned, this is in place as when someone receives a quote, they have the opportunity to pay the deposit whilst the quote is active. It is possible to shorten the quotes active period to 24 hours. This system where the dates on the calendar show as reserved is in place so we avoid double bookings. I have also passed your feedback about marking the days as available in the rest of the quotes sent to the holidaymaker once the payment is made for one of those. However, this could present problems if a holidaymaker enquires about different dates as they could actually be booking more than one holiday at the same time.

I have also looked into the reservation form link you sent. This is a very good idea and we would definitely pass it over so it can be looked at.

Once again, many thanks for your email where you have provided all this feedback about our Booking Manager tool. Booking Manager is on its early stages and all feedback provided is highly appreciated as this will help us to improve the system so it is adequate to all our owners.

Kind regards,

Samuel White
Customer Service Advisor
2nd Floor, Barclay House, 242-254 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 7BY
t +44 (0)1865 312 070 e Samuel.White@holidaylettings.co.uk

f +44 (0)1865 594 354 w www.holidaylettings.co.uk

My email message asking for authority also prompted further questions from me:-

Dear Samuel

Thank you for you fast response.
I am a member of several owners’ forums and would like to keep them up to date with progress of your new product. As you probably know many are HL subscribers and sometimes the comments about HL & TripAdvisor are not very complimentary. The general consensus is that the people who are your actual customers do not know what is going on with your website, changes come and go but there doesn’t seem to be any information about what’s happening. May I suggest that within the owners section you have details of any current work being done, new features being added and more importantly any issues with the site that will affect them – for instance what’s happened to the hits history page that everyone finds extremely useful, it just disappeared?
Can I have your authority to include the email response you sent me about Booking Manager, it will attributed and unedited?

I have another question about TripAdvisor reviews; How do you access the full review from HL, you only currently show the headline text without the full review being displayed. You don’t show an owner’s response. There may be a simple solution that I’m missing but if not I think it’s a retrograde step not to include all the review details – it could also be misleading. I have a perfect example on my property 165540 – one review that has a warning from the guest as the headline – the rest of the review is first class and I have also responded, however, this is not shown on HL only on TA and this has already lead to me losing at least one customer that I know about because they are not in possession of the full facts.

I received the following response:-

Thank you for your latest email.

As a website, within both the online and travel industries there is a need to change and develop, to keep pace with new innovations and booking behaviours in order to continue to grow in terms of website traffic, enquiries and ultimately what our customers want – holiday bookings. To that end, as you and no doubt many of our other customers will have noticed, 2012 has seen many changes for the Holiday Lettings website from updating the very out of date code that many of our pages we’re initially built in, to the release of the new Booking Manager tool that you have provided such valuable feedback on.

With so many changes afoot, we completely understand the need to keep the lines of communication open with our customers – I’d recommend keeping an eye on the following areas of the website for updates:

- Our FAQ’s
These are linked from nearly all the Home Management Pages (http://www.holidaylettings.co.uk/faq.aspx) as well as the home page. In case of any sudden website changes or technical issues – we’ll always post alerts and updates here under the ‘Common Questions’ section. You’ll see the second question currently posted is relating to the disappearance of the hits history, which is a technical glitch that occurred on Thursday and we are aiming to fix by the close of play tomorrow.

- Our monthly newsletter

We aim to communicate changes to adverts or the home management page in our monthly newsletter

- Bespoke emails

For changes effecting specific groups of customers or indeed large releases to the website such as the new Booking Manager feature – we send bespoke emails out to our customer base announcing the changes and providing links to support material such as ‘How to’ video guide and dedicated landing pages

Of course our Customer Service team are also here to assist advertisers with extended opening hours, as well as providing support through social media such as Twitter. For larger projects, such as the development of Booking Manager we set up specialised teams to help support and educate customers through the changes and act as liaison to the production side of the business to ensure that comments and feedback from customers are fed into the development of the feature.

In answer to your point regarding reviews. Reviews left via your Holiday Lettings advert are fully expanded on Holiday Lettings and minimised on TripAdvisor. Reviews left via a TripAdvisor advert are expanded on TripAdvisor and minimised on Holiday Lettings. This is in order for Google to be able to allocate appropriate credit for the content in the reviews within its algorithm – I guess a kind of ‘copyright’ declaration, which we will be unable to change. I’ve checked the advert and review you refer to and on Holiday Lettings - the review and your response are fully expanded.

Thank you again for your very insightful feedback, and again I can reassure you that it will be passed to the rest of the Booking Manger and Product teams. We do have a range of tweaks to the system coming up very soon and the more feedback we get from advertisers the more weight we have to ask our Product team to make changes!

If you wish to summarise my points to others, you may do so in this instance. Tell them to contact us with their Booking Manager feedback too!

Kind regards and have a lovely evening.


Samuel White
Customer Service Advisor

Well I couldn't criticise the prompt and detailed responses from Samuel.
I think it answers several questions LMH's have been posing elsewhere, particularly, the missing HITS counter and Reviews.
Although, I don't see how the Google "copyright" attribution makes any sense.

I've kept using the Booking Manager for a couple or real quotes, so I'll add the results later.

Steve

[Essar]

Back to Booking manager usage.

I've now done two real quotes using HL's Booking Manager, both in addition to my normal system's quotations. Obviously, both versions are identical.

Haven't had any feedback from either enquirer:-
1 - 27th August 2012 11:40pm. 4-Nights in September. Expected in-full payment.
2 - 28th August 2012 20:33pm. 3-Nights in October. Expected deposit plus balance payments.

In the settings I've limited the expiry of my quotes to 2-days and have manually removed the "Reserved" status from the dates on my HL calendars for the quoted dates, incidentally, this doesn't have any affect on the quotation files on HL they are still shown as pending payment. However, my dates are still available - I can honestly say that this would not be a problem for the small number of quotes that I do, particularly, as it doesn't seem to have any negative impact anywhere else on the system - it would be nice of course if it didn't happen at all as it is still something to remember to do following a quote.
I received an email from HL with a copy of the quote for enquiry 1 from HL within 1-minute.
Within 1-hour of the first quote being sent I received another email from HL advising that the first quote I did was about to expire, remember I set the expiry time to 2-days so HL must do this within 48-hours of an expiry of a quote. It also states that they had emailed the enquirer telling them the same - is this good or bad I ask myself? Don't know yet!
There is no print facility within the Quotation/Booking system so you have to wait until you get the emailed quotation copy to print it. You don't actually get see a copy of the actual quote sent to the enquirer.
Once a quotation has been sent it is moved to the "Booking" section. There is a note on the Booking - that's a quote really - that the enquiry came from HL, you can of course add other enquiries and quote using BM not sourced from HL. There is no indication on the original enquiry in the Inbox section that you had in fact completed a quote using BM, in fact it still has the "Create A Quote" button highlighted.
Incidentally, whilst I have been writing this the 2nd quotes confirmation email came in accompanied by the "about to expire" email.
That's all there is to it, we'll have to see if a quote turns into a booking and if it does what happens next.

Steve

[Essar]

Received today at 17:14 from HL:-

Dear Steve,

Just wanted to drop you a quick email, in addition to the last one I sent yesterday evening.

The change to the system regarding the “Hits” button has been delayed until tomorrow, according to our technical team.

We apologise again for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,


Samuel White
Customer Service Advisor

"no comment" said the suspect.

[Essar]

Sent the following to HL today following additional BM delving:-

Dear Samuel

Thank you for your responses. I have posted your answers regarding Booking Manager on our forum.

More on BM usage please pass on to relevant department:-

Missing link
The quotations completed in the “Bookings” when expanded show the reciprocal link to the HL enquiry that they originated from, however, the enquiry in the “Inbox” should also be updated to show a reciprocal link to the subsequent quote that was generated (it doesn’t currently, in fact it still shows the button to generate a quote). You should be able to clink on these links for them to open in a drop-down window (your style of dropdown) below the relevant Enquiry or Quote – basic cross-referencing and linking – this is extremely simple yet powerful. Obviously, only applies to HL generated enquiries.

Enhancement
Settings > Payment Options > Deposit then balance

Add Minimum charge – e.g. I charge a 25% deposit on a booking subject to a minimum of £100, this should be simple basic arithmetic – If {RESULT}<{MINIMUM} then {MINIMUM} else {RESULT}.

Determine where to apply the deposit and subsequent charges on the quote – e.g. my deposit consists of a 25% calculation on the Holiday Fee calculation plus a Booking Fee (which is an Essential Extra). You will find that many owners apply different methods for their calculations; rarely do they just have a percentage based on the overall total.
You could keep it simple but effective by offering just 2 or 3 alternatives or by making the final deposit field editable (on edit the balance field automatically updates to the correct balance due and all sums checked).
Drop-down selection of alternatives could be:-
Apply deposit to:
1 – Holiday Fee + Essential Extras + Optional Extras (all as now)
2 – Holiday Fee + Optional Extras (my favourite – excludes Essential Extras from the percentage calculation)
3 – Holiday Fee + Essential Extras (excludes Optional Extras from the percentage calculation)
4 – Holiday Fee (excludes all Extras from the percentage calculation)
You don’t need to amend the way the quote looks when the calculations are made just state which is the method being applied.

I will continue to look at the system as I use it and make any suggestions.
You will no doubt know that many owners use bought-in systems (such as PIMS) to do this work and they allow many different types of set-up for the applications of charges, etc. Your system will have to be further enhanced to meet a basic requirement which would be very usable and used my many owners without their own software- it’s not far off and not bad for free!

Incidentally, do you keep statistics from the follow-up responses to an enquiry – you know the email that askes the enquirer whether they booked a holiday in Bournemouth YES or NO. I imagine you do, can these be published on owners accounts (anon of course) it would be very useful feedback to folks like me who like to know why we didn’t get a particular booking.

Kindest regards
Steve

Am I wasting my time? What do you think? Is this useful?

[FelicityA]

I think that is all very useful stuff, Steve and they should be paying you - that is a lot more than 'owner feedback' you are giving them!

[wallypott]

Surely it would be in their interest to employ you, or at least offer you your subscription, in terms of the benefits they are getting from you. I think it is rather a poor show if they don't propose that.

[Big Sis..]

Thanks for this Essar!!

Pretty timely as Ive had an enquirer who seems keen to pay by CC or Paypal...[my first]
From how I read the rates of Paypal on HL, its only cheaper if your paying in more than £1500 a month, have I read that right?


''The standard rate for receiving payments for goods and services is 3.4%.

If you receive more than £1,500.00 GBP per month, you're eligible to apply for PayPal's Merchant Rate - which lowers your fees as your sales volume increases. Your fees can be as low as 1.4%, based on your previous month's sales volume.

Purchase payments received (monthly) Fee per transaction
£0.00 GBP - £1,500.00 GBP 3.4% + £0.20 GBP
£1,500.01 GBP - £6,000.00 GBP 2.9% + £0.20 GBP
£6,000.01 GBP - £15,000.00 GBP 2.4% + £0.20 GBP
£15,000.01 GBP - £55,000.00 GBP 1.9% + £0.20 GBP
above £55,000.00 GBP* 1.4% + £0.20 GBP''

[Essar]

Hello Bigsis

Your right if you are working as an individual or a small company. I am on 3.4% +20p scale for the numbers that I do, including the small amount of goods I sell on eBay.

However, the advantage of the HL Booking Manager arrangement is that they have done a deal with PayPal so that all owners who use the system pool their PayPal sales, and with the numbers they have it doesn't take long to hit the £15,000 threshold. They have agreed 1.9% and not 1.4% because of the small numbers so far, it shouldn't take long for it to hit the £55k threshold.

It's worth it just for this as your wouldn't have to worry about the high costs of accepting cc's on a small number of bookings - and of course if you use eBay you'll get those PayPal payments at the same low rate. You don't even have to use the Booking Manager once you've signed up as far as can see, there's nothing in the Ts&Cs to say you have to - just use PayPal for payments anyway and miss out HL altogether.

I may have got this totally wrong but I've been through it three times to make sure.

Steve

[e-richard]

Steve, I think your analysis is correct.

Mind you, based on the fact that I started the subscription process, but did not complete it and have had no less than 5 follow up emails and 3 follow up phone calls exhorting me to continue do rather indicate that they are "struggling" to achieve their targets.

I hope they succeed cos I do think that the concept of "pooling" to negotiate rates from PayPal is an excellent one.

[Hells Bells]

The 'pooling' to reduce my Paypal fees was one of the reasons I activated Booking Manager, however, they have still sent me 5 emails, and phoned me asking why I haven't. It is still much easier to quote with PIMS, and it lets me collect more information.