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Thoughts on Booking/paying online


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firstly I must apologise for radio silence, been busy getting my life in order!

I've been looking at our advertising this year and how effective our promotions have been. One of the things we don't have the ability to do is online booking/paying. To list on the likes of booking.com you have to be able to process credit cards ( at the moment we use Paypal) Has anybody done any research on this or has tips recommendations for getting a credit card terminal and costs?

It seems to me that more people are using sites like booking.com laterooms.com hoyels.com , do people have concerns about this or is your usual advertising working?
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For what it's worth, as a punter, I use Booking.com and Late Rooms for all my hols - mostly b&bs - in Europe and the UK.  So much more convenient than the alternatives.  If it's not on the net and  bookable on line I'm not interested.  My only gripe is that it's not always easy to tell what some of the establishments mean by disabled access - often they put this when all they've got is something like a ramp into their bar, not properly adapted rooms and the booking system doesn't specify whether these rooms are the available ones or not.  Grr!
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Yes they do but that is pretty much industry standard if you don't pay to list with them. Talking to guests people are just not using the books like Sawdays or chic retreats as they might have done 5 years ago just the website. I'm just having a total rethink of how we advertise, we've always paid to list on sites I just want to get the best bang for my buck. We're up on last year so far but Brits are down a lot, I was wondering if its because they've changed the way they book breaks ( we've always done longer breaks as holidays not just overnights) or they've no confidence in booking in advance There also seem information overload on the web if you're looking for a holiday, and seems harder to find specialist travel websites that appeal to independent travelers and deliver holiday makers.
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[quote user="Pickles"]We have used booking.com to make hotel bookings. However, my understanding is that they take 15% - which to me is a heck of a lot for what they do.
[/quote]Well, it seems a lot but, afaik, you only pay when there's a booking.  Adverts/listings in publications you pay for regardless of the return in terms of business.  The punter only sees what they pay - they could care less (most of the time at any rate) where the money actually ends up!  I also feel better protected with their cancelation policies.  When I got cancer last year I just cancelled my Belgian holiday on line with no comeback or extra costs involved.  Very neat.  I did rebook this year to compensate though!
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Not directly related, but I live down the road from you and so far we have seen far fewer British tourists around this year, but lots of German, Dutch and Spanish, so perhaps it is general?

You have a lovely place in a charming village, and a good site.

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Thanks Norman, they're very kind words, its lovely when people like what we do. I think your right there just aren't so many Brits around.

Does anyone know good listings that appeal to Northern Europeans and Scandinavians? The equivalent of Sawdays or Chic retreats? , my knowledge is shockingly bad!
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Firstly I think it is true to say that bookings from the UK (and most other English speaking countries) are down this year. Having said that there are bookings to be had from other EU countries, Italy being particularly strong this year for some strange reason. It is a cycle without doubt and it has been like this before.

Getting a card machine varies depending on who you bank with and what region you are in. BNP charges less for the service but you have to be registerd with a siret and TVA number to get a business account before you get the service. Bank Populaire does not require these but you do still have to have a business account. Another popular route is a virtual terminal from PayPal but that's 20 Euros per month and 3.4% (against an average of 1.5% with banks) of the transaction price. If you use a bank you can supply your own terminal which you can buy on Ebay for about £45.

With many sites like Booking and Laterooms (don't know about Hotels.com) you must keep your calendar up to date which is a pain unless you invest in Channel Management software which is what we have. This updates all our calenders (except Hostel World) in one go and allows you to have the ability to view availability on your website and guests to book direct. Updating the other calenders is automatic. Even Channel Management can be a pain to source as some 'talk' to the database direct where others make it appear like a human entry. The latter is better because the more you times you update your calendars on many of the websites the higher up their rankings you go. This does not work with software that updates directly in to their database.

Currently we are only registered with Laterooms and get a few bookings from them but no way do they fill us up and mainly they are just one or two nights. Overall we are down quite a bit this year although the French in particular are waiting till only a few days before hand to make a reservation. Lot's of one nighters as we are about halfway from the ports to the holiday areas of Spain. A lot of work of course but then it's a 'bum in the bed and money in the bank' as they say. Mind you we thought last year was going to be pretty grim but when we cashed up at the end of the year we were pleasantly surprised.

One of the things I do get fed up with at times is other (local) B&B owners who of course always have the 'best year yet' but it is easy to find out that it is not always the truth. Not that I am implying anyone here does that of course. We know of a local B&B that always says this but then you discover that they have their friends over to stay in August who pay nothing which is why they can always claim they are full. Perhaps they are secret millionaires and don't need the money!

I don't know much about what happens in the North of France but I seem to remember that in another thread where somebody was looking to buy an up and runnng B&B up there smebody passed comment about the high number of B&B's for sale there mainly because the amound of Brits holidaying there had dropped dramaticly. Down south however does draw guests from mainly France and other EU countries which is a bonus. Saying that we have seen three B&B's close locally over the last couple of years but I think that is because they were English owned and aimed at the English market. As a side comment I too have noticed quite a drop in English registerd cars in the area, very few and far between.

 

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Fwiw, Bookings.com pops up in many languages when you do a search so I don't get the impression it's country-specific.  To sum up, I've this year - a pretty average one for me - booked on line three days in the Vendee (Maisons de Charmes - very helpful French language site ); plus a week in Spa; 5 days in Shropshire and 2 in the Forest of Bowland via Bookings so it's certainly not a matter of the odd day or two for me.

The little hotel in our village is often full but he admits that it's mostly workers since there is so much going on in the Sarthe (new extension to the tramway for example) that lots of incomers are here during the week doing the stuff there aren't enough locals for!  On the other hand, gite owners have struggled - well, the couple I know anyway - and I guess if the weather goes on like this they will continue to do so.

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Actually until the end of last month we were really lucky because we had two EDF engineers/surveyors stay for six weeks because the are refurbishing two dams further upstream. It made a big difference financially as they had Tables D'hotes also. One has booked in September for six nights with his girlfriend which is an added bonus. We got them by sending business cards to the personnel office (forgot it's French name) at the regional EDF office. We did the same with DDE. They all seem to get an allowance per day rather than hand the invoices in on expenses.
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Q, as always very useful info! Interesting where to get business clients from, we are getting more and more Antique dealers as Pezenas and the big markets in Bezier etc are close, I think the weakening Euro has helped them with their buying. But we pick up very little else business wise, odd nights with people in the wine industry and thats about it. We too have had more Italians this year but fewer Dutch as well as Brits

Thanks for the info on the banks I bank with BNP Paribas who don't have a branch in Pezenas and my accounts still in the Gers so I need to open an account a bit nearer so I'll look into Bank Populaire.

I've done more one nighters than before, we just allocate 1 suite per night for over nighters as I'm running it on my own the work load would just be too much to do more.

Thanks for all the useful info
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I seem to remember that BP charge about 5% if you don't have a siret and TVA number which is why we never used them. Something about insurance against fraudulent use but whose I don't know although when I worked in the card industry it was well know that most fraud (money wise) was actually carried out by the business that had the machine rather than stolen cards or card details.

To be honest it's only Bookings that demand the ability to take cards, it is not problem for Laterooms or other companies we deal with. We take deposits via PayPal or French bank cheque and accept only French bank cheques, Euro travelers cheques or cash on site and I don't think it has done our business any harm.

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I think I'm trying to ( hate this phrase ) future proof the business a bit as it has to be commercially viable as I've a fairly hefty mortgage. Paypal charges have gone up so much this year the other rates from banks now seem a bit more competitive. I want to think the whole process of online booking and paying before I change banks rather than just deal with each individual problem . I've just listed with laterooms but nothing so far not sure if its aimed at the luxury end of the market but as its commission based I'll wait and see.
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Out of curiosity I did a bit of research on B&B's nearby you. Now I might not have found them all but the ones I did find seemed to be a bit cheaper than yours, some just a little and others by quite a lot although I suspect those that are really cheap are not even in the same league as you. That said in general the others are cheaper. You might consider doing some research yourself and see if you come to the same conclusion.

I did notice that one has closed and opened as a Gite and another is closed for a sabbatical (in July, August and Sept?).

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And thats the fundamental problem, people who come think we're great value but for round here we're the top end of the market with what we do so its not comparing like for like, we only have suites etc etc funnily enough with long distance travelers we're often the cheapest place they stay when they're touring but think we're one of the best, and I've had people say they thought there must be something wrong for it to be so cheap so in terms of value I'm not worried its just getting to the customers with marketing , thats the difficult bit!!!
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[quote user="Babbles"]And thats the fundamental problem, people who come think we're great value but for round here we're the top end of the market with what we do so its not comparing like for like, we only have suites etc etc funnily enough with long distance travelers we're often the cheapest place they stay when they're touring but think we're one of the best, and I've had people say they thought there must be something wrong for it to be so cheap so in terms of value I'm not worried its just getting to the customers with marketing , thats the difficult bit!!![/quote]

Just looked you up on TA: you have reviews for which some would give their right arm!

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Couldn't agree more on that Pickles, excellent reviews and it places Babbles as No 1 in the town by far. The problem as I see it is that whilst this appears on the second page when you look for B&B's in Péxenas you don't find any further reference to the place until it pops up on page 12 of the search thats way too far down the page count.I think this is pretty poor because obviously some money has been spent to create a nice website and whoever did the work should also ensure the site ranks well, at least in the first three to four pages if not higher although it is difficult to get above Tripadvisor but even so I would have expected better.

I was also wondering how people 'found' Babbles place, does she keep a track of this sort of information? How does the value of the bookings recieved from say Sawdays (as an example) compare to the cost of advertising with them?

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I had a very quick look and a few thoughts came to mind...

1) I have seen that booking.com has a new option 'book without a credit card'... so it may be possible.

2) SEO is something I have been playing at albeit not very professional..

 a) as Quillan suggested maybe Pézenas  should be in your title, rather than you B&B name

 b) 'bed and breakfast' works well but B&B does not do you any favours if you google it.

 c) You dont have a meta keyword

 d) Your h1 should be your promotional keywords

 d) Although the text on your home page reads well it may need a bit of tinkering to support you promotional keywords

n.b. I may be talking rubbish.. so best talk to others in the know.

3) You site had been done professionally so why not have a bit of sql, a web page for dates maintenance, and a calendar to show what is available.

You could then have a 'reserve now' button.

4) Do you have your b&B advertised in local business google.. its free and lots of others in Pézenas do.

5) How about in google maps.

6) How about translated in French

Osie

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I have looked at your site and I agree with the two previous comments.in particular about having a French language version and having an availibilty chart. Also it would be a good idea to have an online booking facility

As you have obviously got a very high standard of suites I think you should have more photos of them on the site. Remember a picture is worth a rhousand words.

Good luck. \I hope everything goes well for you

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I was also going to say the same things but did not want to be too negative all in one go.

As some will know I keep stastics going back to almost when we opened (2001) and here are some which are number of reservations of the top three nationalities staying at our B&B from Jan 1st of each year to todays date (19/7/2012) with America thrown in to show they are just not coming in such big numbers which shows how things have changed.

 

 

Nationality

2007

2011

2012

American

12

0

0

British

65

29

15

French

16

42

42

Belgian

9

12

9

No Dif nationalities

12

14

10

 

I picked 2007 because it was the year before the crisis.

The decrease in nationalites is interesting because they are all from none Euro countries (with the exception of the UK of course).

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Yep - very easy - been using Availcheck on our website for 3 years now - easy to incorporate using simple HTML code and links directly to your Paypal account. Handles deposits and full payments.

I've upgraded to their Pebble booking system admin system which is superb - and very cheap!

As you can tell I'm a convert.....

Chiefluvvie

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