Quantifying Owners Direct's 'Sleeps' number
Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:40 am
Sorry, confusing title!
We have a one bed that sleeps 4 but that can only be 2 adults and up to 2 children (sofabed is only suited to kids and our lease restrictions mean we can't take more than 2 adults, or 2 adults with 2 kids).
TripAdvisor and Owners Direct will only let us put the number we can sleep, they don't have facility to quantify that so that unsuitable bookings can't be made. For example if someone tries to book for 5 people it flashes up that the maximum for our property is 4 and doesn't let them book it. What we need is the same thing to happen if someone tries to book more than the number of adults we can accommodate - the booking box does ask them to quantify the number of adults and number of children but it's advisory only, so still lets them book if they put in 3 or 4 adults as long as the maximum number of actual guests is 4.
We make it very clear in our listing, in the first paragraph, but you always get a bright spark who either doesn't read it or ignores it.
So currently when we get a firm reservation request (as opposed to just an enquiry) for 3 or 4 adults we have to decline it and then get penalised in the listings.
Have to say Tripadvisor have been very good so far and on the rare occasion this has happened, I've spoken to them and they've over-ridden our metrics and kept us at full acceptance level.
However OD say they have no way of doing that. Hence we are unfairly penalised for someone not reading our clear listing, and by OD not providing the facility for clarity that would stop this happening. Their only suggestion is to change our 'sleeps' number to 2, which of course would preclude us from a third of our bookings which is families with children.
This is a pretty serious issue as there must be many properties of any number of bedrooms that can sleep a certain number of adults and a certain number of children. And as I pointed out to them, it harms their traveller experience as well as owner experience as travellers are booking properties that can't be fulfilled and then their credit card companies hold the reserve on the funds they'd used to put the request in with for 7 working days, meaning some people wouldn't be able to book anywhere else.
If you've had the same problem could you also feed it back to OD (for what it's worth?) so we might get something changed? Or has anyone got any ideas on getting around this problem? As I say we've made it clear in the first para of the description that we can accept 2 adults or 2 adults and up to 2 children, and we can't accept booking for 3 or 4 adults. I've seen people ask travellers not to send firm booking requests without making prior contact, but that could put 'legit' bookings off if they just want to book somewhere quickly, I don't really want to give everyone a reason to hesitate from booking with us.
Any thoughts would be appreciated, for either TripAdvisor or OD's sites!
We have a one bed that sleeps 4 but that can only be 2 adults and up to 2 children (sofabed is only suited to kids and our lease restrictions mean we can't take more than 2 adults, or 2 adults with 2 kids).
TripAdvisor and Owners Direct will only let us put the number we can sleep, they don't have facility to quantify that so that unsuitable bookings can't be made. For example if someone tries to book for 5 people it flashes up that the maximum for our property is 4 and doesn't let them book it. What we need is the same thing to happen if someone tries to book more than the number of adults we can accommodate - the booking box does ask them to quantify the number of adults and number of children but it's advisory only, so still lets them book if they put in 3 or 4 adults as long as the maximum number of actual guests is 4.
We make it very clear in our listing, in the first paragraph, but you always get a bright spark who either doesn't read it or ignores it.
So currently when we get a firm reservation request (as opposed to just an enquiry) for 3 or 4 adults we have to decline it and then get penalised in the listings.
Have to say Tripadvisor have been very good so far and on the rare occasion this has happened, I've spoken to them and they've over-ridden our metrics and kept us at full acceptance level.
However OD say they have no way of doing that. Hence we are unfairly penalised for someone not reading our clear listing, and by OD not providing the facility for clarity that would stop this happening. Their only suggestion is to change our 'sleeps' number to 2, which of course would preclude us from a third of our bookings which is families with children.
This is a pretty serious issue as there must be many properties of any number of bedrooms that can sleep a certain number of adults and a certain number of children. And as I pointed out to them, it harms their traveller experience as well as owner experience as travellers are booking properties that can't be fulfilled and then their credit card companies hold the reserve on the funds they'd used to put the request in with for 7 working days, meaning some people wouldn't be able to book anywhere else.
If you've had the same problem could you also feed it back to OD (for what it's worth?) so we might get something changed? Or has anyone got any ideas on getting around this problem? As I say we've made it clear in the first para of the description that we can accept 2 adults or 2 adults and up to 2 children, and we can't accept booking for 3 or 4 adults. I've seen people ask travellers not to send firm booking requests without making prior contact, but that could put 'legit' bookings off if they just want to book somewhere quickly, I don't really want to give everyone a reason to hesitate from booking with us.
Any thoughts would be appreciated, for either TripAdvisor or OD's sites!