What has a double booking actually cost you?

Question

Trying to put a real number on something. When a cross-platform double booking happens, the cancellation fee is only part of it. Airbnb also blocks those dates so you can't rebook them, and there's the Superhost exposure on top.
For anyone who's been through one: what did it end up costing you all in, and what did you change afterwards? Did you move to a paid channel manager, or just tighten up how often you check?

I'm building a small monitoring tool in this space and I'd rather size the problem from people who've lived it than from my own assumptions. Not selling anything here.

Lauren Kormylo · Answer

I don't use a PMS.  I haven't had a double booking yet, but I know that Vrbo is clunky and slow to update their calendar.  So when I get a booking on Airbnb, I go to Vrbo and sync the calendars manually.  Which is a pain.  When I get a booking on Vrbo, it's synced with Airbnb right away, so I don't need to in that case.  I would like a better way to make sure of no double bookings without the expense of going to a PMS.

Jules Aton · Answer

I’ve only had one that was caught quickly. PM messaged guest that it had already been rented and there was a glitch between platforms communication. He instructed them to cancel which they did without indicating they were upset.

JD Martin · Answer

I have had this happen only once in the past 5 years and it was a non-sync from Booking to VRBO. It was resolved with no costs for anyone.

Collin Hays · Answer

Haven't had one in several years, managing a number of properties.

Jon Martin · Answer

With calendar syncing this is very avoidable.

Andrew Steffens · Answer

Managing about 60 properties give or take for roughly 10 years I think this only happened once due to software glitch and it was resolved fairly easily.

Jaison Jacob · Answer

How'd you find out? And does the guest-cancelling thing usually work or did you get a nice guest?

Jules Aton · Answer

Only happened once thank goodness. This guest had also been going back and forth with multiple questions, that were in the listing btw,  which is when the other person booked. We figured it out when we got notices from 2 sites that the unit was booked on overlapping days.

Devin Redmond · Answer

Has only happened once in 6 years and I canceled the Booking(dot)com one because that platform delivers the least action for our properties. There was probably some penalty in the algorithm but I didn't really notice. Shortly thereafter we went on OwnerRez as our PMS and have never looked back. Their API connections always ping the source of truth calendar as a last step before confirming any bookings. Has not happened again.

Jaison Jacob · Answer

Yes. The signal is the propagation gap, not the collision. A booking lands on one platform, a block should show up on the others within the sync window. Still available somewhere twenty minutes later means the connection is down and that date is exposed. Same for the blunt ones: feed 404s, expired auth, a calendar returning zero events where it had fifty.

You're on Hospitable, when it's broken before, how'd you find out? And would you pay for this separately, or expect them to do it?

What has a double booking actually cost you?

What has a double booking actually cost you?

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