Hotel /Guesthouse booking sites

[gpesticcio]

Hello I am Gary Pesticcio. I own the Westwood Villa guest house. I took over about 2 years ago and business is going well it is going well because I use booking.com and laterooms.com to get my bookings. I did my final year accounts for this year and made an astonishing discovery. I have been paying on average £600 per month to these booking sites. Now that is the biggest expense in the business. It has made me think even though the booking site get me the business is there a more cost effective way of getting bookings? Any advice in this area would be much appreciated.

 

[bluedreamer]

Welcome to the forums

£600 sounds expensive but what does that work out to per customer each month? If you get 60 sold rooms per month that's £10 per room. While that may sound a lot you'd probably spend much more if you didn't use a 3rd party service, and you'd have much less exposure to the market.

The big booking sites are really a must for any business like yours nowadays since "everyone" uses them. In fact just this weekend I was looking for somewhere for a short break, and the big booking sites was where I started looking.

Have you tried shopping around to other booking sites, laterooms etc, to see if they can offer a better deal? Or have you asked booking.com for a better deal "as you're thinking of switching", sometimes they may offer you better rates rather than lose a client. You have to be careful if you actually switch, especially if booking.com send you a regular stream of income.

 

[VirtualVIP]

Hi Gary

I operated a small hotel with a friend and we had a similar experience.

£600 commission per month suggests you are bringing in £4k revenue per month from the two sites. That is not bad for a guest house!

Booking.com does give you massive exposure that is difficult to gain on your own. There are a few other things you can consider. Check out this useful little blog:

http://www.guestcentric.com/booking-com-your-worst-best-friend/

Hope this helps!

Steven

 

[EvanD]

business is going well it is going well because I use booking.com and laterooms.com to get my bookings

This is pretty normal, what % of your booking come via your own website?

You will find for smaller hotels its 1/3rd hotel website and 2/3rds booking sites

It's hard to get customers to book direct, but small hoteliers have a few tricks up their sleeves!

 

[naxtech]

Hi Gary, OTAs like Booking.com are to a certain extent a necessary evil. The best way to avoid OTAs is to focus on direct bookings which means investment in your own website, online booking system, CRM system, email marketing, SEO and more. So to reduce indirect bookings you need to spend money and put in a lot of effort to promote direct bookings.