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I had a similar issue with a booking. I assumed that the usual Booking.com T&C's applied. As posted above, I've always found Booking.com a great way to book hotels.yup you're right- my reservation said 50% charge for any cancellation up to 7 days prior then 100% after that- good lesson, bad idea
i have contacted the hotel as there was an additional caveat about the establishment setting the fees and this place indicated they had never used Booking.com before.
Lots of lessons- hope this doesn't get too much more expensive or I will have to join the entrepreneurial Spaniards to find a way to pay my Way. (and for those of you missing a joke gene, that WAS a joke)
I would still send a note to Booking and ask them to request the hotel waive the cxl fee. We get those requests regularly and in your case where it's over a month before arrival I would always waive the fee knowing it will be booked by someone else. If the request comes from Booking they are quite likely more inclined to agree to waiving it. Good luck!i had made reservations for a hotel on the edge of SPdP for my arrival on September 6th with Booking.com
I had paid via pay pal a 25e deposit
i have to cancel due to the flight being cancelled.
Booking.com is charging me 22e
this doesn't seem to fit everyone's report about the beauty of using Booking and being able to cancel
What gives? any thoughts?
one booking where the listed location and actual location were very different
After reading this I feel bad for complaining! For us the money wasn't the main issue really, it was the fact that we got the 'stink eye' from dozens of Pilgrims when we piled out of the transfer van in the morning at the Portomarin bridge who must have been thinking we were a bunch of taxigrinos... How do you explain that one? Impossible...I booked a place in Melides (Portugal) with booking.com. We spent 3 hours trying to find the place, based on the GPS location given by booking.com. It was nowhere near where we’d been looking. It was also closed! (Which explained why they didn’t answer our calls.) And there was nowhere else to stay in or near Melides. We were able to get the last bus of the day to Troia. Booking.com refunded me 49 euros, which was the difference in price between what I had booked for 50 euros, and where we finally found accommodation for 99 euros. I had not paid anything at all for the first booking. I wonder if booking.com was able to get their 49 euros back from the place in Melides, which had advertised “availability”, and were taking bookings, although they were actually closed for the winter. Jill
To be a bit more nuanced, the raving is about the ease of use. The refund policy varies by the accommodation. Booking.com clearly states the refund policy for any given reservation, sometimes offering a no cancel fee rate or a free cancellation rate up to a certain date. Read that part of the listing before you reserve, and you will never be surprised. I always know well in advance of each reservation date when I need to cancel or modify to avoid a charge. No one has ever charged me when I adhered to that date!So many people raved on this forum about ease of cancelling
@mcopelandWe made a booking for Palas de Rei - and then discovered that it was 6 km out of town and they were not willing to pick us up (yes, our fault for not paying more attention to the location - they had a very loose definition of "in town"). The refund policy is up to the lodging, not booking.com. We did two things - emailed booking.com and called the place. My husband is very persistent and got the place to not charge a fee. At the same time booking.com called the place and confirmed with them that they would not charge us. Booking.com stayed in communication with us, and we were pleased with the service, maybe because we had used them several times before.
it would be easy to book a room a long way away from where one wants to stay
I booked a place in Melides (Portugal) with booking.com. We spent 3 hours trying to find the place, based on the GPS location given by booking.com. It was nowhere near where we’d been looking. It was also closed! (Which explained why they didn’t answer our calls.) And there was nowhere else to stay in or near Melides. We were able to get the last bus of the day to Troia. Booking.com refunded me 49 euros, which was the difference in price between what I had booked for 50 euros, and where we finally found accommodation for 99 euros. I had not paid anything at all for the first booking. I wonder if booking.com was able to get their 49 euros back from the place in Melides, which had advertised “availability”, and were taking bookings, although they were actually closed for the winter. Jill
yup you're right- my reservation said 50% charge for any cancellation up to 7 days prior then 100% after that- good lesson, bad idea
i have contacted the hotel as there was an additional caveat about the establishment setting the fees and this place indicated they had never used Booking.com before.
Lots of lessons- hope this doesn't get too much more expensive or I will have to join the entrepreneurial Spaniards to find a way to pay my Way. (and for those of you missing a joke gene, that WAS a joke)
Booking.com charges a fee (20%?) for their aggregator services
Thanks Jill, good to know!Hi, just to clarify, booking.com invoices the hotel 10% of the total fee after the guest has stayed (I’ve worked in the accounts dept of a hotel which uses booking.com).
Interesting, a few days ago a Quebec hotelier gave an interview on the CBC radio about an issue she has faced with an online booking site. She has never done business with them, but they still lists her hotel on their website and listed it as fully booked, ven kf she wasn't.
She found out when a client of many hears contacted her to ask if she may not have an available room that may not be part of the website's block. She did not understand what the client was talking about.The website did this on their own, without request, negociation or conscent.
For this site it was a way to force the hotelier into working with it as clients who googled to find info on the hotel would see it listed on their site and seeing it was fully book would move on to another hotel, possibly found on the website.
Not cool!
Booking.com is really convenient, but I had never thought about how they are able to squeeze people to make them use the site. Thanks for that insight, anemone. I frequently use booking.com to get names, location, etc of places where I want to reserve. But I usually only use it as a search engine, and then call or contact the hotel directly, at least if it is a small place. As many others have said, that 10% fee is not trivial for a small family operation. I know that owners appreciate the gesture.
p.s. I used Booking a lot on my Camino and most things worked out well with the exception of one booking where the listed location and actual location were very different. I ended up sitting in Portormarin for an hour waiting for a van to pick us up and then return us in the morning. After that I checked the location on the map
I'm sorry, I don't agree with this assessment. I run a resort and we have official agreements with a few online travel agencies (OTA's). However, we get many bookings from other OTA's who we have no affiliation with. Any travel agency in the world, online or brick and mortar, can sell your property. They simply make an Parent/Child arrangement with a travel agency you do have an affiliation with (for example big travel companies like Thomas Cook have thousands of small, independent travel agencies around the world selling in their name). If an arrangement is made with the affiliated agency and the parent (affiliated) agency has sold out their allotment then the child (non-affiliated) agency must also say they are sold out too. This has nothing to do with the resort/hotel's actual occupancy but rather just the allotment of that particular agency. To say anyone is being forced to work with a OTA just isn't correct.Interesting, a few days ago a Quebec hotelier gave an interview on the CBC radio about an issue she has faced with an online booking site. She has never done business with them, but they still lists her hotel on their website and listed it as fully booked, ven kf she wasn't.
She found out when a client of many hears contacted her to ask if she may not have an available room that may not be part of the website's block. She did not understand what the client was talking about.The website did this on their own, without request, negociation or conscent.
For this site it was a way to force the hotelier into working with it as clients who googled to find info on the hotel would see it listed on their site and seeing it was fully book would move on to another hotel, possibly found on the website.
Not cool!
Hi @jsalt - there are different rates for different types/sizes of properties. My resort falls into the category of 20% and it is conceivable that there are other rates I'm not privy to.Hi, just to clarify, booking.com invoices the hotel 10% of the total fee after the guest has stayed (I’ve worked in the accounts dept of a hotel which uses booking.com).
Hi @peregrina2000 - to clarify, resorts/hotels aren't squeezed, we sign up to get their business! OTA's like Booking.com bring in huge amounts of revenue for us each year because it is such a widely known booking agency that is truly worldwide. Would we like to not pay the commission and get direct bookings? Sure, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as you would expect because one of the conditions major OTA's like Booking.com use is rate parity meaning if we sell our rooms on our own website for less than we offer them to Booking.com, they will pull their business from us or at the very least demote us on the search pages.Booking.com is really convenient, but I had never thought about how they are able to squeeze people to make them use the site. Thanks for that insight, anemone. I frequently use booking.com to get names, location, etc of places where I want to reserve. But I usually only use it as a search engine, and then call or contact the hotel directly, at least if it is a small place. As many others have said, that 10% fee is not trivial for a small family operation. I know that owners appreciate the gesture.
This is not an assessment on my part: I am only summarising the interview given by the hotel owner to the CBC. I think I will give that owner the benefit of the doubt on how she is running her business and the troubles she has had with an online booking company. What you are saying may be true in your case, and as you say you are in a business relationship with some online services, but she is not, and never has been, so why would she end up on one of those sites, parent or child.I'm sorry, I don't agree with this assessment.
To say anyone is being forced to work with a OTA just isn't correct.
Hi @peregrina2000 - to clarify, resorts/hotels aren't squeezed, we sign up to get their business!
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Asking for business is not squeezing, it's asking for business. The OTA could not have included her on their website if they didn't enter a contract with someone else her hotel had signed a contract with. As I mentioned, anyone in the world can sell any resort/hotel if they can sign an agreement with anyone you have an agreement to business with unless you put a clause into your contract that prohibits them from reselling their allotment. Nothing illegal or immoral about it and as I mentioned, we have many guests coming from OTA's on every continent (except AntarticaAgain, you may have signed up with Online booking agencies, but the woman who gave the interview to the CBC certainly did not. In fact when the company engaged in a discussion with her after she complained they kept asking ner to sign up. She was being squeezed.
The hotel did refund
I contacted them directly as well as booking.
Pays to read the fine print
So many people raved on this forum about ease of cancelling that it seems a heads up was needed
All done
Nanc
Asking for business is not squeezing, it's asking for business. The OTA could not have included her on their website if they didn't enter a contract with someone else her hotel had signed a contract with.
.
That may be because 100% of zero is nothing! I hate to make a profit on my friends, but I have found that my enemies do not want to do business with me.Hi @peregrina2000Would we like to not pay the commission and get direct bookings? Sure,
At a guess, because your English spellcheck is thinking of falcons when it makes this correction.*Help please. Does anyone know why whenever I try to type the female form of peregrine the system deletes the ending 'a' and subsitutes 'e'?
At a guess, because your English spellcheck is thinking of falcons when it makes this correction.
Thank you for this @ Albertagirl. I had typed peregrinO but the spellcheck doesn't like the 'o' ending either but the elision of pilgrims with the peregrine falcon is wonderful and perhaps that is why one of our veteran members chose that bird as part of their forum name. At the end of each Camino walking day fellow pilgrims would often remark that we all shuffled like penguins so the idea of flying like a hawk appeals especially.
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