What you don’t know when booking your holiday
Some of you may know these tips and tricks of the trade but for those who don’t it’s amazing what goes on without you knowing. So, sit back and find out how you can be better equipped when researching your next holiday.
Trip Advisor, Airbnb, and HomeAway are just some of the booking platforms that people may use when researching or looking for their next break away. The internet is a vast platform where there are thousands of other sites like those all offering you, the guest, the best rate available. Well in some cases this is true – some larger hotel businesses offer their direct price exactly the same via these third-party websites and take the loss as it spreads visibility and fills up their calendar. However, for those smaller businesses, mid-size letting agents and individuals who go it alone this is not the case.
Although these sites are great for us to boost our visibility and enable us to reach more people, what customers don’t see are the fees which we, and other letting agents/individuals pay to advertise on there. In previous years this was more acceptable and varied between 3%- 5%, however this year has accelerated the changes in the travel industry, and now big brands such as HomeAway and Airbnb are charging up to 15% per booking.
Previously a guest would have been charged the rental cost and a service fee. Now to encourage you to book more on their platforms, they have removed the service fee as customers were starting to question why they had to pay Airbnb £50 (as an example) per booking. This new move hides the service fee from the customer and is now applied to the letting agent/host – to which they encourage us and others to uplift our prices to cover this charge, which you as a customer still pay. In a nutshell, the uplift of at least 15% is more than what you would have paid previously.
If you do use an external booking website, make sure you search the holiday home name and location on Google. If they are a letting agent or individual there is a good chance you will come across their website – and it will be cheaper direct.
When we say book direct and save money – we genuinely mean it. You can save a lot more on your holiday if you book any of our holiday homes direct with us than through any third-party listing site.
To go one step further we also offer returning guests a 5% discount saving you even more.
Yes, we do list our properties on those platforms, but we are trying all we can to encourage others to research our name – Google us – share this post – and help others save money.
Be smart. Search. Save.