Misunderstandings with French and Dutch guests booking

How to communicate with your potential renters - how to turn site visitors into enquiries, and enquiries into bookings.
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Ben McNevis
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Misunderstandings with French and Dutch guests booking

Post by Ben McNevis »

I had thought that my emails explaining that we require deposit and a completed booking form to make a firm booking were clear enough. I've been using the same text for several years and have rarely had any misunderstandings. Now, with a flurry of bookings coming from mainland Europe (Pounds are so cheap at the moment) I keep getting misunderstood.

I'm fairly sure it's not a language problem as some of the people who think they have booked but don't send a deposit or a booking form have excellent English.

Here's an example of the text...
--------------------------

If you would like to book, please phone or email to let
me know, so that I can reserve the dates for you, then
print, complete and return our booking form:

http://www.scotland-cottage.com/booking.pdf

I will confirm when I have received your booking form and
deposit.

For the deposit, if you have a cheques with your euro account,
you can just send me a cheque for 75 Euros. I simply hold the
cheque then return it to you when we get the keys back after
your stay. If you don't have cheques, the easiest way for you
to pay the deposit is in Euros direct into our Euro bank account.

Details of our Euro account are:
blah-de-blah (obviously in the real thing, I put the real bank details but for this posting, "blah-de-blah" is near enough)

---------------------------------

Is that unclear? How can I make it clearer?
Cheers, Ben
www . scotland-cottage.com www . scottish-cottage.com


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Post by la vache! »

It isn't very clear to me I'm afraid, Ben - the bit about the deposit is confusing - most people take a 25% deposit and cash the cheque, not give it back to them after their stay - it sounds like you are talking about the security deposit :?
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Ben McNevis
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Post by Ben McNevis »

I take a deposit at the time of booking, which later becomes a security deposit. As I deal a lot with foreigners, I like to take a cheque deposit where possible so that I don't have expensive foreign transfers to do later.

Even though that way of dealing with deposits may be unusual, I don't see any difficulty in following the instructions. In fact, it's the booking form that causes most of the difficulty anyway. They just don't do it until I hassle them and even then I have to send them the link several times.
Cheers, Ben
www . scotland-cottage.com www . scottish-cottage.com


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Post by la vache! »

BenFriman wrote:I take a deposit at the time of booking, which later becomes a security deposit. As I deal a lot with foreigners, I like to take a cheque deposit where possible so that I don't have expensive foreign transfers to do later.
Well, that would confuse me! I understand why you are doing it, but it isn't the way most owners do it, so maybe that is the confusion. If you don't cash the cheque, maybe the customer is worried that you won't hold the booking for them. I don't know about Dutch, but most French people have a rental contract, pay 25% deposit up front, the cheque is cashed and the balance is paid on arrival or before the holiday if that is what your terms and conditions state. If you have a euro account, it is much, much cheaper to do bank transfers than take cheques from other countries in the eurozone. That's what I do, the charges are so minimal that there is no problem with taking 2 lots of payments, one for the deposit and one for the balance.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Ben,

I find it pretty unclear. Your booking deposit=security deposit is quite unusual, so I would spell that out, especially for people who do not speak English as a first language.
If you would like to book, please phone or email to let
me know, so that I can reserve the dates for you
To me 'reserve' is much the same as 'book' and this says that I can get a confirmed booking by emailing or phoning you, and not when you have received the deposit and booking form. I would change this part to:

If you would like to book, please phone or email to let
me know, so that I can put a temporary hold on your dates for you.

and add:

Your booking is confirmed when I receive your booking deposit and completed booking form.
Paolo
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Ben McNevis
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Post by Ben McNevis »

Much better wording. Thanks, Paulo.

I'll probably change the way that we do deposits too - now that we have the ability to do international transfers on our Euro account by internet banking. That's a new facility that I've only used for the first time this week. I'm yet to see what the real cost is.
Cheers, Ben
www . scotland-cottage.com www . scottish-cottage.com


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Post by Margaret »

I certainly find it all confusing in the way you have put it. We have a good number of German and Dutch guests and have no problems at all getting the booking form filled in. You have to tell them in exactly those words: fill the booking form in.

As quite a lot of them pay by bank transfer rather than credit card, we specifically tell them that we will hold the apartment for them until a particular date and that we only issue the confirmation of booking after the payment has arrived.

We have recently added our bank details to our website booking form (as is usuall in Germany) and this has eased things even more.
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