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I always find when reading reviews that I need to consider all the reviews and apply sensible filters. For instance, do not apply the same criteria to a two star hotel as you would to a five star hotel.

A few years ago we booked a cheap weeks stay in a Spanish hotel. Some of the reviews were awful but others good. Some of the moans were about the food. Applying the sensible filter we booked. At the end of the week we were glad to leave because of the food. They put out breakfast, then food for mid morning, then lunch, then mid afternoon and then dinner. It was absolutely delicious so we used to avail ourselves of all. Came away absolutely stuffed. On the basis that my OH is very fussy about food presume those that did not like it was because there were not burgers and chips each time.

There has been some adverse publicity about the booking companies. I do prefer to book direct - obviously, if the price is the same, I lose nothing and the establishment does not have to pay commission.
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I don't take cards and I only accept cheques from french banks. When I've required any payment in advance from non french customers I accept paypal in euros or bank transfer. The one time I had a booking conflict with BC (which was partially their fault) they contacted the customer and rebooked them. The one time I had a rotten 'score' they agreed that their comments were complementary and their score terrible and the review was therefore 'incoherent' and they pulled it. So they are not totally rigid.
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Maybe I'm having a bad day and getting a little cynical but Booking.com for me so far is not distinguishing its-self from all the other no contact organisations with a complete lack of Customer service.

My account has been approved but there is nothing about someone visiting me, I can study a video before putting up my listing on their intranet whatever that is, it says that it will be in English only and wont be translated unless they get sufficient enquiries from other countries which is about as much use to me as a chocolate teapot, I have already written the description for them in French and English.

I have lots of questions for them which would have been answered were they to have visited me or even if I could phone them, as it is like so many other companies these days there is no "contact us" information, no phone number, no e-mail address, no live chat, nothing.

I can tell you that at the moment I am not minded to hand over 15% commission to them.

Have I missed something?

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Have you got a 'hotel' number and password. If you have then you have access the Intranet. Once in the Intranet all the contact details for 'hoteliers' are there including email (which is through their own Intranet and NOT through the Internet) and phone number.

This is their Intranet login address https://admin.booking.com/hotel/hoteladmin/

Once your in you can click on Inbox and the contact details are on the right. For obvious reasons they are not going to put 'hotelier' support information on the website for customers to see.

I have to disagree with you about their support, from a 'hoteliers' point of view it is absolutely excellent.

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I'm surprised you haven't had an RDV (albeit on the 'phone) with someone - we had two on the 'phone of about half an hour each sorting out our setup. Since then, through the extranet Q mentions, we've had lots of good support.
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[quote user="Quillan"]

Have you got a 'hotel' number and password. If you have then you have access the Intranet. Once in the Intranet all the contact details for 'hoteliers' are there including email (which is through their own Intranet and NOT through the Internet) and phone number.

This is their Intranet login address https://admin.booking.com/hotel/hoteladmin/

Once your in you can click on Inbox and the contact details are on the right. For obvious reasons they are not going to put 'hotelier' support information on the website for customers to see.

I have to disagree with you about their support, from a 'hoteliers' point of view it is absolutely excellent.

[/quote]

Got the number and password, have to Watch video to learn how to use the intranet (someone please tell me what the **** that means) before they will let me activate my listing, OK I Watch a video that just gives some general stuff and ends saying "now learn how to use the intranet by watching the video" What effing video??????????????????

A play button comes on the screen which just replays the first one which all it tells me amongst lots of words and music is that I must keep the calender up to date.

I am still no more the wiser, still not bookable and still have no means of contacting them

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Calm down mate.

If you can get into the Intranet (an Intranet is a private version of the Internet, it means you are connected directly to their computers) using your hotel number and password look to the right at the top and it should say 'Inbox'. Click in that and you will see all the emails they have sent you. To the right you will see the contact details of your customer support which is different depending where you are in France because they have regional offices. Booking does not send any emails via your email address with the exception of bookings (reservations), invoices and the occasional information email. every other email communication with you requires you to login in (using the link I gave you previously) using your hotel number and password then visiting the 'Inbox'. Customer support is multi lingual so you can chat in either French or English if you wish. Once you have logged in and gone to your Inbox you may find they have contacted you about training and a visit.

There is an email address which is not for the public, I will send you an email with it, you can then email them. Make sure that you include your hotel number in the subject line. Likewise, for later on, if you have a problem with a reservation you should always put the reservation number in the subject line.

 

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Thanks Quillan.

I was having a bad day, very rare for me but today was one, I did eventually find the contact détails and have sent them a message, thanks for letting me know that I would wait forever for an E-mail notification that wasnt going to come.

Just logging in is grief enough, it keeps logging me out then presenting me with a log in page that hasnt saved my username and password, only the link from the E-mail I got has that, another annoyance common to so many websites, they talk about "username" but it isnt, its a number they have given me, you call it the Hôtel number, well even that would make more sense but they keep asking for a username, and its not as if I can change it to something that I can remember like........., well like a username!!!!!!

Then pages that say "here you can edit your inventory, availability and calender (I think) well you can do the last 2 but I'm still none the wiser what the inventory is that they refer to.

I saw my listing but wont make it live all the time that the robot text they have created remains, it looks like something that P***orn writes on the other forum, they asked me for a description in English which I did, it gave the option for another language so I did French as well, it then asked me to tick hundreds of boxes many of which were duplications, like "bath and shower" "bathroom" "shower" "bath"

My listing on both the French and English site instead of starting with my descriptions of the Hôtel just contains random and repeated phrases from some of the tickboxes, it's completely n'importe-quoi and the French one is in English which is no use to me at all.

I hope tomorrow is a better day.

Thanks again for your help.

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Hope you are having a better day today. [:D]

Do you have an English version of the manual on how to use the Intranet? If you don't would you like one?

You need to understand Hotel speak is the first thing. You do not setup individual rooms, you set up room types. Then you give the number (quantity) of that particular room type. This, incidentally, is the problem with B&B's in that we all give the rooms names everywhere else but we can't do this on Booking. So if all your apartments are the same you only need to setup one room type.

If there is no activity when you are in the Intranet it will automatically log you out after a set time for security reasons. You need to consider that very big multinational hotels register with Booking and with hundreds of employees the system is open to abuse. This is why it does not remember your hotel number (username) and password.

An inventory is the number of rooms of a particular room type. I can't remember how the calendar is stepup, I know it is complicated, because I use a 'Channel Manager' it is done automatically. A Channel Manager for your information is a service that links to many websites which have availability calendars (Bookings, LateRooms, Agoda, Hostelworld etc) and it synchronizes them automatically as it also does on our own website. Save you having to visit every site when you get a reservation and updating the calendar. This is where problems arise, you need to keep the calendar up to date at every reservation you take wherever it comes from. Obviously if it is via Booking then the calendar is automatically updated.

Booking does create some automatic text for your entry depending which boxes you tick in the facilities bit

It is complicated to setup and you do need help initially which is why you have the course and somebody talks you through it. If nobody has contacted you about training then contact them and ask for it. You cannot make your details live, this is done after it has been checked by Booking. All you can do is to advise them it is ready to go live. Normally they won't let it go live until you have received the training.

Because Booking has regional offices keep in mind that my experience may not be the same as yours. It depends how good your regional staff are and how they interpret the rules etc. Indeed we all know form experience in France how one region does something may be totally different to another.

Good luck and let me know about the manual.

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Q, that was very well explained. I must say I would have found it impossible to set up the room types etc without being instructed by their agent. Chancer, I hope you manage to make contact with areal human being to help you!
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I can view all the site pages in both English and French and understand both equally, arguably its in English now that I get confused.

Manual? - Training? Neither of thos for the time being.

I have made one big boo-boo though, I spoke of writing the introduction in both French and English, that was for Tripadvisor, the 3rd time I have tried with them and for my troubles the site once again threw me out at the last hurdle and lost everything that I had written in both languages, par for the course especially on a bad day.

The regional office hasnt contacted me, I'll give them their 24 hours, looking at the listing and comparing it to a competitor who is doing well I can see that they are both drawn from the boxes ticked and the info given, either theirs was done by a human and mine by an incompetent robot or mine was done by an incompetent human, it carries a fraction of the info that theirs does and it's incoherent with text like this

Featuring a shower, private bathroom also comes with a bath and a hairdryer. Presumably they wanted to say, private bathroom with bath and shower, either its robotic or a French person has composed it, in which case why wont they write the listing in French? I'm an Apparthôtel in France.

The regional thing, you mean the Picard exception? [:)] Well time will tell, 24 hours to be exact, that's the reason I had a bad day, everyone that I came up against was an example of what they do best (not met or came across because with fermé people its always an ugly confrontation) and the reason why this place gets me down, a big doseage concentrated in one day.

The thought of someone actually coming to see my place to train me, discuss things and most of all listen filled my heart with a new optimism that I honestly havn't had for 10 years, how sad is that [:(]

I cannot drag people here from local businesses, the aéronautique college (despite me now working for/with them) the office de tourisme, the community de communes, those that do make appointments with me either cancel at the very last minute, often several times presumably hoping I will give up (another local trait) or just dont turn up, just shrug their shoulders and say they were busy and do the same thing again.

Even the local paper that wanted to do a report on me, they contacted me, failed to turn up for the first meeting, cancelled the second 20 minutes before by E-mail and on the 3rd appointment it turned out to be a stagaire and not the reporter who had contacted me, the stagaire was quite open (meaning not fermé, the Young here are relatively normal and outgoing) and said the reporter couldnt be bothered to go out so sent them instead.

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Looking up, I had a call from "Simon" who said he was calling from Paris when I asked, he made an appointment to call me tomorrow morning to get me up and running, he had that curious American French accent and I would say that I am more comfortable and less hesitant speaking in French than he was in English, it was a bit like an Bangladesh call centre although his English was better than my French it made for a very stilted conversation and I really had to concentrate on what he was saying, he didnt want to speak in French with me.

Then a lady whose name I forget called me to check that everything was OK, I told her things were in hand, she was totally at ease speaking in English, so much so that initially I thought she was une démarcheuse especially with all the phone calls in the background, it was a 0031 prefix, is that Holland? 

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When I did my training I had to install or run a program on my computer so the trainer could control it remotely and go through everything. I don't know if they still do this but if they do don't panic. You can remove the program after and a unique key is generated every time the program is used which you have to enter to allow the connection. When connected is does NOT allow data from your computer to be copied. deleted or viewed.

Anyway it seems you are on your way so good luck.

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[quote user="Kong"]If you have a windows OS the program you are referring to is 'remote assistance'. It is very useful as two people can run on the same device at the same time. Very good for this sort of scenario.[/quote]

Ther are various programs so I didn't want to name any in particular.

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There still has been no talk of training, just "get you up and running", I think if were still offering the training and handholding they would be promoting it and communicating better, i.e. within a couple of days you will be contacted by your regional office to arrange training on the extranet"

All I got was:

Congratulations! We reviewed and approved your accommodation agreement. But wait – you're not online and bookable just yet.

Shortly, you will receive an email with a link to create a secure password.

After you create your password, you will be taken to a login page. Your Property ID 12345678, is your login name. Use your Property ID and the password you just created to log into your Extranet.

Once you are logged in, you will find instructions on how to get your property online and bookable!

And it heartens me to hear that you two would have had problems without the training that they then provided, perhaps not as many as me but I certainly didnt get the confident feeling I was expecting after your recommendations, quite the opposite.

I did also recieve this message early on:

We have received all the information we need to get khv czkj zvhk online and bookable on Booking.com. Soon, your local support team will provide you access to our Extranet, where you can set your rates and availability.

Again, no mention of a visit, a réunion on the phone or training.

On the positive side if my local office really is in Paris then the people will be the best there are and the least fermé

Editted. do you see what I mean about "login name"? Its not a name and cant be changed to one, why cant they stick to calling it property ID instead of adding confusion, it frequently happens that the same organisation when putiing me through "security" will aske me for my  password or whatever by calling it three different things, I recall the setting up of accounts with Santander (I think it was them) was terrible with a Customer ID, a personal ID, a E-banking passcode, a registration number, a telephone banking number and probably some others, all of these were sent to me in secure envelopes and each time they were called something else [:'(]

And then I had to do it all again to open a second 123 account!!

It might seem a minor niggle but when you have someone telling you that you have failed security, that your cards and account access have been blocked and to take your passport into a local brance when you are in another country then its no longer minor, good communication avoids these sorts of problems and angry customers.

A spade should be consistently called a spade, a username should be a name not a number, one that you can change to something you can remember.

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After a chat with Mme Kong we can't recollect any joining up of PC's so my most recent posts maybe irrelevant. We do recollect lengthy calls in which they did a lot of the setting up and we dipped in to see how and what was done. The whole thing was efficient.

However I can understand having a gripe at what they think punters want in the description - ie free car park with hairdrier. But in the end our add pulls customers.
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I have another teleconference with them tomorrow, I spent today uploading photos and thought I would make it live at 22.00 tonight before the discussion.

2 bookings in the first hour, between 22.00 and 23.00 on a Sunday night [:-))]

I feel like a long term unemployed bloke who has just landed a job and doesnt know whether to laugh or cry [8-)]

I suspect this may well be the end of life as I know it, a very cushy laid back one with no deadlines, obligations or responsabilities [:P]

I Wonder if my alarm clock still works after 11 years of non use?

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