Booking dot LAME

[Terry Ouimet]

What has been your experience with Booking.com compared to Airbnb and VRBO ? 
if I were to take my property and delist it from Booking.com I think my calendar would fill back up with Airbnb and VRBO bookings. What do you think?

recently, I tried a little bit of a strategic experiment with our 3/2 single-family home 8 miles from the beach in FL. I decided to try to maximize my Booking.com profile and increase bookings partly because I wasn’t getting enough bookings from Airbnb and VRBO and it worked, my bookings probably doubled coming primarily from the Booking.com genius level customers, who supposedly have fewer cancellations and give hosts more bookings. Overall, I guess I would tend to agree, but here’s what I do not like about booking.lame ; 

1. Customer support is horrific, you have to call somebody in China. They have to hang up and call you back to verify, and sometimes they don’t call you back and the process takes three times longer than Airbnb or VRBO host verification. 
2. Limited Ability to hold bad guests accountable . They don’t have a process or system to rate guests,  so the guests can rate you, but you can’t rate them. It’s very difficult to hold bad guests, publicly accountable and warn other hosts about them in the same way that you can on Airbnb and VRBO.
3. Damage protection & reimbursement: i’ve had a couple experiences on Booking.com with damage and reimbursements but my general understanding is that Booking.com wants to place that responsibility on the host and does not offer the same level of support that Airbnb and VRBO does. Ive had plenty of experience over the years with Airbnb and VRBO and for the most part as long as I follow the rules and take good photos, there is a decent level of support, not ideal, however, I think they let some bad guests off too easily and make it painfully difficult & time consuming to get reimbursed for damages. 
4. Cancellations after booking are much higher on Booking.com- sometimes it’s right in that sweet spot where you can’t really get their money from a cancellation, but they canceled late enough to cause you a pain and block off your calendar unnecessarily. I have no idea why this is please let me know.

In closing, my current bookings are probably 70% Booking.com 20% Airbnb and 10% Vrbo, 

I’m thinking of taking my property off Booking.com but I really felt like Airbnb and VRBO. We’re not getting me the bookings that I wanted. I wonder if Booking.com has better SEO/ marketing and gets my calendar booked before the other two platforms,  so if I just delist on  Booking.com. Perhaps my schedule will fill back up again with Airbnb and VRBO. Truthfully, I think all these platforms are necessary evil.

i welcome your thoughts , all the best to you STR investors.! thanks and blessings

[Andrew Steffens]

I have never had an issue with BDC, though I have mostly heard negative things outside of my personal experiences.

I use all available sites (16 total - including Capital One Travel, Marriott Homes & Villas, Google Vacation Rentals, etc etc) to cut down on Airbnb.  I am not a fan at all of their arbitrary policy changes and refunds to guests.  Any medium that can take a booking away from them is a win to me.