Lay My Hat

GailR wrote:The "Google email service" is code for 'gmail' ie "joe.bloggs@gmail.com"

Not necessarily. It could be interpreted as the googlemail domain and not gmail.

Mouse wrote:I've just gone back on with them as a commission listing. I have only 4 wks to sell for this season as we've been very fortunate with repeat bookings, so though for 4 possible bookings I would see.
However I've increased my rates to cover their 9.7% charges to me so after enquirers get their charge lumped on then I doubt we'd get any takers.

Just as an aside, being on commission would cost me almost as much as subscription after only 1 shoulder booking (if i hadnt increased my rates to cover it) but as I haven't had any interest from OD for nearly a year I don't want to pay for subs.
The charge they're putting on top of my rates for enquirers are eye watering.

Mousie (not holding her breath)
x

Wow, Mousie. It is 9.7% now??!! I thought it was 8%. So you have to increase your charges that much and then some for the guest. That surely means that Expedia must be reaching 20% or thereabouts for the booking and doing f all really!

Tremewan wrote:Not necessarily. It could be interpreted as the googlemail domain and not gmail.

googlemail and gmail are actually interchangeable.

i.e. fred at googlemail will reach fred at gmail and vvv.

/quote]
Wow, Mousie. It is 9.7% now??!! I thought it was 8%. So you have to increase your charges that much and then some for the guest. That surely means that Expedia must be reaching 20% or thereabouts for the booking and doing f all really![/quote]

It is. I read that they charge the owner 8% but then also charge the owner 1.7% for transaction handling.

Mousie
x

Mouse wrote: 1.7% for transaction handling.

Yet another euphemism for credit card charge.

What a crazy bit of legislation that was.

Mouse wrote:I read that they charge the owner 8% but then also charge the owner 1.7% for transaction handling.

I think maybe that the extra 1.7% is the VAT element (at 20%) as it applies to the 8% net commission. By my calculation it should be an addition of only 1.6% of the net commission.

If the main reason you’re hanging on with OD is your reviews, why not simply screenshot them and add them as photos to your own website?

Newtoit wrote:If the main reason you’re hanging on with OD is your reviews, why not simply screenshot them and add them as photos to your own website?

It's a thought Newtoit, but I also want new reviews this year. At the moment I copy some of them across onto my website and take extracts from the comments people leave in our guest book. But of course I could have made those up! There is some sort of "objective independence" to the reviews that get posted on OD which I believe makes them more credible.

If credible is what you are after, I think that nothing beats photos of a visitors book, like:

http://scotland-cottage.com/guestbook.html

You can't fake that.

Ben McNevis wrote:If credible is what you are after, I think that nothing beats photos of a visitors book, like:

http://scotland-cottage.com/guestbook.html

You can't fake that.

I agree Ben, but while my guests are there they write maybe a single line of text in the guest book. On OD I get a whole paragraph! Sometimes a short novel! It's like they've gone away and thought about it and recount the experience of their whole two weeks. That is very special and invaluable for prospective guests. A recent example, shown below would never appear in my guest book. This is why Owners Direct reviews are so important to me.

Just back from a wonderful 2 week stay at L'arrival Cottage - phew, where do I start? First off, Sue & Tod are great owners - their communication leading up to our stay was brilliant from asking what we would like in our welcome pack to providing detail instructions on how to find the cottage once we left the main roads. Very helpful. The cottage itself is amazing - so lovingly restored by Sue and Tod. I recommend reading Sue's blog on her website (or the hardback book in the cottage itself if you stay there) on the journey to restore it from a derelict barn - such an amazing transformation and something they are rightly proud of. Inside it is spacious and has everything you could ever need for your holiday (and more) - we took as number of 'bits' with us as we do when we stay in cottages but all we kept saying was "oh, they've provided that already". The outside dining area provides great views across the countryside - we enjoyed some great warm evening bbq's here with the odd glass of wine!. Perfect for relaxing at the end of the day. The pool is great to be around on sunny days with plenty of sun loungers - for those who struggle in the sun there's a nice shaded area by the pool also. Sue and Tod are brilliant hosts - they went out of their way to make our stay enjoyable and the help they provided on numerous occasions will always be appreciated (especially the bike hire and the hamper things for the night market at Laparade). So the Cottage is great and Sue & Tod are great but the stars of the show are Vita and Bertie, their 2 dogs. They were great to have around, so friendly and it was lovely when all of a sudden Bertie would appear out of nowhere and just roll over for his tummy to be tickled. I've rated this 5 out of 5 but somehow it doesn't seem enough so I'm going to use the Chris Evans Radio 2 show feature "I did this for the first time today" scoring system and give it a million out of 5. Thank you Sue and Tod - we can't wait to come back.

That's one decent review! Get it stuffed and mounted.

I also direct people to google maps to leave a review. (Assuming you have set your property a ‘place’).

I would agree with that, Newtoit. Google is going to be around for a long time to come. I wouldn't be so confident about homeaway.

Exactly- but I fear it won’t be long before they start monetising their listings too. In other words hiding our contact details and making sure the customer pays via them...but hopefully not for some time yet. I honestly think Google could be our best weapon to bring about the extinction of the evil HA/TA etc.

it won’t be long before they start monetising their listings too

I think it's unlikely. There's another live thread on this at the moment: viewtopic.php?t=28111&highlight= (corrected)

Currently, the new Accommodation Search box shows paid and free listings alongside each other. Obviously the paid have an advantage - otherwise it wouldn't be worth paying. But it follows the model of the main Google Search where Google gets its authority from the relevance of the organic hits which in turn makes it worth paying advertising money to be seen in front of them.

In the case of Accommodation Search, you generate your Maps Places entry for your property, with web link and phone number and give it a suitable category and it will appear in the box for *some* searches. The downside of not advertising is that it won't appear with all relevant search terms (e.g. "accommodation" vs "holiday apartment") and it will disappear if the user sets a price filter.

Overall, I think it's very promising and poised to be a pain in the posterior to ABB and Homeaway![/quote]