Online booking service.
It's interesting that you guys are quite negative about online reservations. In the B&B/hotel world they're much more common and perhaps our experience might be of interest to yourselves.
Basically we're very pro online booking simply because we find that on the sites where there's a choice of having immediately confirmed reservations and of having reservations by enquiry (on request in "hotel-speak"), we very, very rarely get on-request reservations. In fact, we get over 90% of our reservations via the immediate confirmation method, although to be fair the longer term (week or more) bookings are more commonly via the on-request method (they're also much further in advance).
I do take your point about it being less personal upfront and in a holiday rental environment I think that's quite an important aspect for the owner but I still think that the immediate confirmation is a big plus for the renter. I know that when we used to book places it was incredibly annoying to have to either call four or five separate places to get one that had availability.
We're planning on moving to use hostelsclub.com as our booking engine soon as they only charge 2.5% commission and offer multilingual booking. At the moment we run the bookings through hostelworld.com but 10% commission is a bit much now that our ownsite bookings are building up (we look on it as 90% in the bank that wouldn't otherwise be there).
If some nice kind person would soup-up one of the holiday rental calendars so that they could handle B&B rooms we'd be more than happy to pay a straight £50 or so a year for such a service.
Arnold
Basically we're very pro online booking simply because we find that on the sites where there's a choice of having immediately confirmed reservations and of having reservations by enquiry (on request in "hotel-speak"), we very, very rarely get on-request reservations. In fact, we get over 90% of our reservations via the immediate confirmation method, although to be fair the longer term (week or more) bookings are more commonly via the on-request method (they're also much further in advance).
I do take your point about it being less personal upfront and in a holiday rental environment I think that's quite an important aspect for the owner but I still think that the immediate confirmation is a big plus for the renter. I know that when we used to book places it was incredibly annoying to have to either call four or five separate places to get one that had availability.
We're planning on moving to use hostelsclub.com as our booking engine soon as they only charge 2.5% commission and offer multilingual booking. At the moment we run the bookings through hostelworld.com but 10% commission is a bit much now that our ownsite bookings are building up (we look on it as 90% in the bank that wouldn't otherwise be there).
If some nice kind person would soup-up one of the holiday rental calendars so that they could handle B&B rooms we'd be more than happy to pay a straight £50 or so a year for such a service.
Arnold
Arnold,
Our neighbours (b&b) have just been "invited" to register with the local police in order to get a class 1 licence- is this new licence obligatory all over FRANCE, or just in the Var?
Re multi property/multi room availability, have you looked into rentorsorg? It's free (but might be too clumsy for b&b). It would only work for individual rooms, but you could have availability for each room.
Our neighbours (b&b) have just been "invited" to register with the local police in order to get a class 1 licence- is this new licence obligatory all over FRANCE, or just in the Var?
Re multi property/multi room availability, have you looked into rentorsorg? It's free (but might be too clumsy for b&b). It would only work for individual rooms, but you could have availability for each room.
Best,
Alexia.
Alexia.
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Alan Knighting
- Posts: 4120
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:26 am
- Location: Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France
Arnold,
I have always regarded B&B as accommodation for a night or two, much more like an hotel than self-catering. Although you offer both, your experience
With or without an availability calendar, I remain unconvinced that I would want to get into the anonymity of on-line bookings. I prefer the “getting to know you� process as a preamble to a booking and I know my guests do.
Alan
I have always regarded B&B as accommodation for a night or two, much more like an hotel than self-catering. Although you offer both, your experience
appears to support the thought that B&B and self-catering are two different things. For an hotel most of the time a booking is a booking for a night or two, made at relatively short notice. On-line booking is quite appropriate if it is supported by guaranteed availability, otherwise it is not....although to be fair the longer term (week or more) bookings are more commonly via the on-request method (they're also much further in advance).
Availability is one thing, on-line booking is another. I do not believe that on-line booking can work reliably without guaranteed availability.…I know that when we used to book places it was incredibly annoying to have to either call four or five separate places to get one that had availability.
With or without an availability calendar, I remain unconvinced that I would want to get into the anonymity of on-line bookings. I prefer the “getting to know you� process as a preamble to a booking and I know my guests do.
Alan
Alexa: it has always been obligatory throughout France although seldom enforced. You need a license 1 even to sell water.
Had a look at rentors.org. It would need soupping up for us. The problem is that we need to be able to have several different room types for the property. I'm sure that there's one out there though; I just need to find it. Hadn't actually thought of looking towards America 'til now but I would think that the B&B market there would have such a thing.
I think you're right Alan about the similarity between hotels and B&B booking. For B&B's the average lead time before arrival is 2 or 3 weeks vs months for self-catering and that's right in the hotel booking timeframe. In the last year I find that this 2-3 week leadtime is dropping down to more like 3 or 4 days at times.
The guaranteed availability is the problem. We are listed with about 5 or 6 different guaranteed reservation places and in the summer it is a nightmare keeping on top of it. Last year we spent on average 30 to 40 minutes per day over the summer to make sure that we didn't get double bookings.
We do get the "get to know you" aspect too and in the summer it represents 10 to 20% of our total bookings. In practice, these tend to be our longer stays and are booked further in advance but that's a side-effect of us getting so many online bookings - someone calling in late July to book a few days in August is probably going to get the reply "sorry, we're full".
Of course, you don't lose the personal aspect of the thing when the guests arrive. In fact, I'd argue that you get more of it than you would otherwise as we'll ask where they've been, where they're going and what they're doing in the area as a standard thing which with a prior e-mail query may well have been glossed over.
Arnold
Had a look at rentors.org. It would need soupping up for us. The problem is that we need to be able to have several different room types for the property. I'm sure that there's one out there though; I just need to find it. Hadn't actually thought of looking towards America 'til now but I would think that the B&B market there would have such a thing.
I think you're right Alan about the similarity between hotels and B&B booking. For B&B's the average lead time before arrival is 2 or 3 weeks vs months for self-catering and that's right in the hotel booking timeframe. In the last year I find that this 2-3 week leadtime is dropping down to more like 3 or 4 days at times.
The guaranteed availability is the problem. We are listed with about 5 or 6 different guaranteed reservation places and in the summer it is a nightmare keeping on top of it. Last year we spent on average 30 to 40 minutes per day over the summer to make sure that we didn't get double bookings.
We do get the "get to know you" aspect too and in the summer it represents 10 to 20% of our total bookings. In practice, these tend to be our longer stays and are booked further in advance but that's a side-effect of us getting so many online bookings - someone calling in late July to book a few days in August is probably going to get the reply "sorry, we're full".
Of course, you don't lose the personal aspect of the thing when the guests arrive. In fact, I'd argue that you get more of it than you would otherwise as we'll ask where they've been, where they're going and what they're doing in the area as a standard thing which with a prior e-mail query may well have been glossed over.
Arnold
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Alan Knighting
- Posts: 4120
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:26 am
- Location: Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France
Arnold,
With B&B I would have thought you are bound to develop a relationship with the visitors, even if only at breakfast time.
With self-catering I find that some, not many but some, people really do want to be left alone.
Keeping availability calendars on multiple sites slap-bang up to date for B&B must be quite a task. There's no way of avoiding it if you take on-line bookings. I am guessing that you also get "off the street" bookings which must make the updating task that bit more urgent.
Alan
With B&B I would have thought you are bound to develop a relationship with the visitors, even if only at breakfast time.
With self-catering I find that some, not many but some, people really do want to be left alone.
Keeping availability calendars on multiple sites slap-bang up to date for B&B must be quite a task. There's no way of avoiding it if you take on-line bookings. I am guessing that you also get "off the street" bookings which must make the updating task that bit more urgent.
Alan
Online reservations normally have a cutoff date so that it's generally not possible to book and come on the same day (worth bearing in mind if you ever want to do just that yourself: a hotel will be marked as "full" for today even if it isn't). Anyway, that means that when we check our mail in the morning we know if someone will be coming that day or rather we know what rooms we have free; net effect is that someone just dropping in isn't a problem if they're staying for just one night but if it's more than that, you need to mark their room as booked and that's where the problems come.
Actually the biggest difficulty we had was in overlapping dates for reservations. Quite frequently we had to juggle room allocations over the following couple of weeks. That particular issue is what tends to be a limiting factor for small B&Bs in peak seasons and there was quite a debate last summer on the Living France forums as to how to handle it.
Arnold
Actually the biggest difficulty we had was in overlapping dates for reservations. Quite frequently we had to juggle room allocations over the following couple of weeks. That particular issue is what tends to be a limiting factor for small B&Bs in peak seasons and there was quite a debate last summer on the Living France forums as to how to handle it.
Arnold
A lot of rental owners have an 8-12 week booking season so there is no great benefit to an online booking service in terms of time-saving. Dealing personally with everyone who books is the way to avoid bookings like the party of students about to join the army who trashed an apartment in Spain recently (see somewhere else on the forum). But if I had a B&B, with over 100 bookings per year, I would definitely find online booking attractive.
Paolo
Lay My Hat
Lay My Hat
The online booking doesn't save any time overall. An individual booking is obviously quicker to deal with but you spend a lot more time juggling rooms when you're fairly full. Just about every morning in summer we found that when we picked up the bookings in the mail we had to juggle rooms over the next few weeks and were spending getting on for an hour a day on reservations at the peak.
You're definitely right about the advantages of the personal contact when you're not onsite. I don't think I could hack it if I were sitting in the UK renting out a place in France and not seeing it for months at a time. As you say, you're taking a whole lot on trust when people are checking in and, of course, there's the caretakers to trust too in many cases.
Arnold
You're definitely right about the advantages of the personal contact when you're not onsite. I don't think I could hack it if I were sitting in the UK renting out a place in France and not seeing it for months at a time. As you say, you're taking a whole lot on trust when people are checking in and, of course, there's the caretakers to trust too in many cases.
Arnold
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Alan Knighting
- Posts: 4120
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:26 am
- Location: Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France
Arnold,
The logistics of having a second home in another country always put me off when I was living and working in the UK and that's without the thought of letting it off when I was absent. Letting a second home on a B&B basis I find quite mind boggling, I don't understand how it can be done. With your experience, I'm not surprised to hear you say you don't think you could hack it.
Now that I have had a few years experience of running self-catering properties I find it difficult to understand how they can be run properly by an absentee landlord. I think it is the little things that make the difference and the little things can only be dealt with immediately when the owner lives on-site or in close proximity.
The "little things" like replacing a light bulb when it fails or clearing leaves in and around the pool every morning make the difference between "it was OK" and "it was great".
It's all to do with the quality of the product and the attitudes of the people concerned.
Alan
The logistics of having a second home in another country always put me off when I was living and working in the UK and that's without the thought of letting it off when I was absent. Letting a second home on a B&B basis I find quite mind boggling, I don't understand how it can be done. With your experience, I'm not surprised to hear you say you don't think you could hack it.
Now that I have had a few years experience of running self-catering properties I find it difficult to understand how they can be run properly by an absentee landlord. I think it is the little things that make the difference and the little things can only be dealt with immediately when the owner lives on-site or in close proximity.
The "little things" like replacing a light bulb when it fails or clearing leaves in and around the pool every morning make the difference between "it was OK" and "it was great".
It's all to do with the quality of the product and the attitudes of the people concerned.
Alan
I actually read of someone on the LF forum who was planning on buying a small hotel here and getting someone to run it for them 'til they moved over themselves. Totally nuts I think.
Having said all that, we're toying with the idea of buying a place in southern Spain with a view to renting it out March-September and living in it November-March (closing this place whilst we're away). Any thoughts on whether that's a daft idea?
Arnold
Having said all that, we're toying with the idea of buying a place in southern Spain with a view to renting it out March-September and living in it November-March (closing this place whilst we're away). Any thoughts on whether that's a daft idea?
Arnold
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Alan Knighting
- Posts: 4120
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:26 am
- Location: Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France
Arnold,
In spite of what I said in my last posting I don't think it is daft idea at all.
When I said I find it difficult to understand how they can be run properly by an absentee landlord I didn't mean it was impossible. With the right manager/caretaker of course it must be very possible.
Joan and I have friends who have an apartment in Los Alcazares which they let out in the summer and they seem to be very happy with the arrangements they have made, except for a relatively low level of bookings.
With that one reservation I would go for it if I thought I could afford it.
Alan
In spite of what I said in my last posting I don't think it is daft idea at all.
When I said I find it difficult to understand how they can be run properly by an absentee landlord I didn't mean it was impossible. With the right manager/caretaker of course it must be very possible.
Joan and I have friends who have an apartment in Los Alcazares which they let out in the summer and they seem to be very happy with the arrangements they have made, except for a relatively low level of bookings.
With that one reservation I would go for it if I thought I could afford it.
Alan
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Hells Bells
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- Contact:
Alan , I'm hoping that my manager/caretaker will turn out to be just that-the right one. So far, she's sorted out a garage (free) for me to have my furniture delivered, just in case completion is delayed. She doesn't ahve anything to do with my bookings or marketing though, except to give me a link on her website (she also runs a ski school with her hubby).