Anyone successfully renting STRs off Booking.com?

Question

In the midst of the Coronapoloclypse I thought it might be a good idea to re-open my property for rent off Booking.com in order to prepare for an inevitable slow down off the AirBnB and HomeAway channels.

What a mistake. Not only does there appear to be no actual way to reach customer support, they also keep trying to post mail me a super secret code to the listing address that cannot actually receive postal mail. Truly, I've never seen a site/service so uninterested in helping its partner as this.

Before I simply deactivate the property on their site yet again:

• Are any of you actually successfully using Booking.com with your properties? 
• If so, are you using a channel manager or their native extranet/Pulse app? 
• Any tips for actually reaching support (all the instructions they have in their help site just send you back through a login loop that never actually connects you to anyone)?

Luke Carl · Answer

I had the same experience as @Julie McCoy. There were times that dealing with them as a business was downright laughable. Again this was probably 3 years ago could be better now.

Cliff H. · Answer

Thanks @Julie McCoy. I have my listing managed through Porter, but it took me a good 2 weeks to setup the initial listing. In trying to refine the payment options to ensure I wasn't forced to meet someone in person to handle their default collecting payment in cash policy (?!), I appear to have now activated Payments by Booking, which adds yet another % fee atop their existing 15% commission and when I follow the steps to find out what that is for my unique listing, it just sends me into a page load and re-login loop.

So in the end I'm just tossing on a 30% surcharge atop my existing Air/VRBO rates to the Booking.com listing and leaving it up for anyone that chooses to go that route to make it worth my while to deal with the bloatware that is Booking's 10k switches, knobs, and poor website UX.

@Ken Latchers I'm glad to hear some folks have figured it out and perhaps you have more patience than I. As I said, my STR is in a location with no postal mail service so their antiquated means of mailing me a love letter to verify the property address is a nonstarter.

Ken Latchers · Answer

I am now on all four sites: booking.com, Airbnb, VRBO, and FlipKey. That is where everyone should be and use a property management system such as guesty, lodgify or ownerreservations.

different of the value of each listing site, depends where you are. Each one is parts of the country that may be the strongest in. You really need to try all of them. For long enough to know.

I do not process booking.com payments, I have them collect the payment. I just add to 15% commission as an admin fee, so I really don't pay anything for them.

booking sends a postal mail to everyone who adds a listing. That is their way of verifying and there's nothing wrong with it.

last year I was set to one day minimum bookings on booking.com at a higher price and two day minimum bookings at a lower price on Airbnb. I got about 6 booking.coms.for  every one Airbnb. Booking.com customers were great. A few Airbnb inquiries were discount sniffers

I have no problem contacting booking.com. You can contact them through the booking.com inbox by going through a couple of menu options or dropdowns, or you can try 4156 33407 5. They are a European company, so you will usually be called back from a foreign-looking number.

they have always been cordial and helpful, so I'm not really sure what problem you had with them.

Julie McCoy · Answer

@Cliff H. I experimented briefly with Booking.com about two years ago and found it to be way more hassle than it was worth for me.  YMMV, but it was very expensive, a TON more work, I had to process the payments myself, and I had to have them set up my listing, I couldn't do it myself (and it was far less customizable than VRBO/AirBNB).

After a couple of months - and some bookings and cancellations - I gave it up as way too much effort for a small return.

I know it's popular in overseas markets, particularly Europe, so I'm sure there's a market share there but I never needed it (and so far, even though I'm aggravated at AirBNB for how they're handling things, I am staying booked - so far every single day that got cancelled has been rebooked for me).

Cliff H. · Answer

Answering my own question, I did finally figure out how to reach Booking.com support, with a not unexpected 1 day turnaround time. Additionally, since the host fees appear higher than Air/VRBO, I added a 20% premium to the rate schedule to ensure I'm not paying more for less.

Still welcome others XP on the platform and tips on what you have found working/not-working.