Booking.com for STR's - what re your experiences?

Question

Please forgive this long rant but I’m curious if anyone else running STRs has become completely fed up with Booking.com as a host platform. I keep trying to make it work because, in theory, more exposure should mean more bookings, but honestly the entire system feels like it was built for hotels in 1997 and never updated for modern vacation rental operators.

One thing that drives me crazy is the payout structure. They send you the guest payout and then later invoice you separately for their commission. Why? Why are we moving money backwards and forwards unnecessarily? Airbnb figured this out years ago by just deducting the commission before payout. It feels unnecessarily clunky and creates extra accounting headaches for no reason.

The platform itself is painful to use. Every click opens a new window. Nothing is laid out logically. Half the time I can’t find what I’m looking for because settings are buried in random sections that don’t make sense. I constantly run into errors and weird glitches. Even something simple like updating an email address has become a saga. I’ve updated mine multiple times and apparently have to submit it separately for every property. Somehow they still keep sending important stuff to my old email.

Compared to Airbnb, Booking.com honestly feels ancient. Airbnb definitely has its own problems, but at least the interface is intuitive and designed around STR operators. Booking feels like it was designed for a chain hotel front desk and then awkwardly adapted for vacation rentals later.

My biggest frustration though is the guest quality. We’ve had several really bad experiences through Booking.com, especially at one of our Austin properties. It feels like they barely screen guests at all, particularly with heavily discounted last minute bookings. Just this week we had guests who apparently thought it would be funny to throw raw eggs all over the inside and outside of the property. Walls, carpets, upholstery, exterior siding… everywhere. The cleanup bill ended up costing more than the booking itself made. We’re still trying to get the smell out.

At some point I’m starting to question whether the extra bookings are even worth the operational headaches and damage risk. Has anyone here actually dropped Booking.com completely as a channel? Did it materially hurt occupancy, or was it more relief than regret?

John Underwood · Answer

I've never heard anything good about using booking.com

90% of our bookings come from Vrbo and 5% from Airbnb.

Philip Wrigley · Answer

Driving direct bookings is a smart business strategy - I really try and push it for repeat bookers with discount codes and such! I just hope we are visible on a google search!

Another annoying thing about booking.com for us - 5 times out of 10 they don'y send out the guest check-in instructions effectively. Guests get to the property (sometimes late) and start calling from the doorstep because they don't know how to get in. As soon as they say "we didn't get any check in instructions" I immediately know that they came form booking.com!

Bryce Jamison · Answer

My wife mostly manages our STR on Topsail Island, NC and your post flashed me back to all of her gripes about the non Airbnb platforms.

Ultimately we dropped them all. We were only getting maybe 10% of our bookings through them. Now we're trying to direct as much business as we can through our direct booking site. Ideally, 50%+ of our business comes from repeat customers every year, we get a good chunk of business from direct bookings, and we minimally rely on 3rd parties.

Philip Wrigley · Answer

Great to hear some people get on with them better than I do! :) They do integrate with our PM software but I feel like I do have to go into their intranet every so often and it just feels so 'clunky' to me. Luckily, most of our bookings come through VRBO and AirBnB or (to a lesser extent) direct!

JD Martin · Answer

I've used them for a long time. They're no better or worse than any of the others. Most of our international visitors came through there. I prefer the direct invoices, I find it makes my books cleaner. They are not host friendly, just like the others, and their support sucks. I was a fan at first but had some problems with them, especially scam bookings.

Andrew Steffens · Answer

Ive not had any bad issues with them - their intranet was annoying but is now fully integrated with our PMS.  Guess Im just lucky!

Koba Molenaar · Answer

Here's the thing, I think you need to be on more than one channel.

The great thing is that because there are so many platforms where you can list, you don't have to be on Booking.com.

I would seriously suggest you push the direct booking route. You mentioned relying on Google search and using discount codes for repeat guests (both sound and good). Does that include having your own direct booking website?

Aside from saving on the commission fees, what I like about having your own website is that you can control the experience, which sounds like something you'll value.

Philip Wrigley · Answer

Yes, we do have our own website and we have had some success with direct bookings. We took time to build a user intuitive website which I think helps a lot - Especially with repeat customers. I do find though, that certain people seem to love the security of booking through Airbnb and VRBO because they are very established brands. Even if they know they can avoid platform fees, some guests still prefer to book with a name that they see in advertising. Since we have our own website, and list on multiple platforms, I might take down the listings on booking.com. I feel sometimes the bookings are not worth the headaches that come with them.

Booking.com for STR's - what re your experiences?

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