Lay My Hat

I've just had my first ever enquiry from Russia (and it's not spam - I've just talked to her on the phone!) for a three night booking in May - the enquirer has said though that she doesn't have any means of paying a deposit as we don't take credit cards directly, and Paypal doesn't function in Russia.

I've never had guests from Russia - does anyone have any ideas? Does their banking system really not allow international transfers? The deposit would only be 100€ anyway so possibly prohibitively expensive even if it did.

I'm inclined to take the booking without deposit as it's only 3 days and it's neatly sandwiched between two longer bookings anyway so no big deal if they don't turn up. And she's given me the names of several other chambres d'hôtes that they've stayed at before as 'referees'!

All thoughts welcome!

I had a booking late last year from Russia, they booked for August and he paid with Paypal and even sent me a virtual Christmas card, which I though was a nice thing to do, he seems very excited about his trip and a really nice guy. It was definitely a Paypal payment, not sure how or if that helps at all.

This is what a Russian lady (from Moscow) wrote me:

we are ready to transfer you payment in advance by bank if its ok for you, or I can give a credit card number, or we can bring you cash, pls advise what you prefer and the rates,

She paid by credit card. But in the payment information, the payment seems to arrive from
Region: "Africa" (?)
Country: "Russia"
whatever that means.
From other experiences, AFAIK, there is a huge % on money tranfers, this is why we were likely to receive payments from Puerto Rico, Caribbean, Cyprus (but not one from Russia).

FC, I've had several payments from Russia via Paypal. I have regular guests who use it each year.

FC, I also have had guests from Russia who paid wire transfer.

Thanks peeps. Where would we be without such instant good advice?

If she comes back to book I'll ask for a Paypal deposit.

My Russians last year (some may remember the tale of woe) paid by bank transfer.

I've also had guests from Russia and they have either paid with PayPal or directly into my bank account.

I don´t know if this helps but I´ve had guests from outside Europe e.g. the USA, Costa Rica and others. So rather than have them do a bank transfer which seems to be very expensive both ways I asked them to send a personal cheque which I then held until they arrived whereupon they paid in cash and I returned the cheque to them.

Brendan
How does holding a foreign currency cheque not drawn on an account in your own country ensure that the guest will turn up?

You can lodge a personal cheque to your account - the costs are high though

We've received a payment by international bank transfer payment from Russia in the past which went through smoothly enough. We get quite a few IBT's, mainly from Germany and Hong Kong which cost us £7. We generally recharge these to the guest and, as yet, no one has ever complained or baulked at being asked to cover this.

I've also had Russian guests who paid via paypal. I suspect they had to pay charges as they asked to pay the balance in cash on arrival, to which I agreed. They were lovely guests, no hassle at all.

With bank transfers, I ask guests to mark the transfer "charges exempt for payee" so that they pick up the charges at their end, on payment.

I have some Russians coming for 3 months in the summer and they have paid by transfer direct to our French account.

They also asked for an email with specific wording to enable them to get their Visas (they sent the Ghost Email for me to copy and add in the relevant information) but so far no problems at all.

We also have recently taken two bookings from Russia (one of them is from Siberia) and both paid deposit via Paypal. Have also refunded a deposit to Russia via Paypal.....