The advantages of Booking.com

Booking.com in short was founded in 1996 in the Netherlands (!) and offers more than 500,000 accommodations in 150+ countries. They hold offices in The Bank at Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam, keizersgracht and a new HQ near central station.

Booking.com is the largest hotel room rental website and claims to rent 700,000 hotel rooms per day. Booking.com is focused on hotels but also offers short-stay apartments and bed and breakfast rooms (apartments that are rented out full-time). Recently Booking.com created a new portal specifically focused on apartments and vacation homes: Villas.com. We will leave the latter out of this analysis. Booking.com is part of the American Priceline.com.

Booking.com usability

When you think of booking a hotel, you think of Booking.com: the Web site is the equivalent of what Google is for Internet searches. As a potential renter of a hotel room, the website not only allows you to simplify your search by making selections on the number of stars, group composition, budget and reviews, but also virtually ensures that you get the most advantageous offer of the moment: Booking.com is so successful that it buys rooms at a competitive rate, and as a user, you benefit.

The diversity of offerings and selection criteria is top-notch, but there are some downsides. For example, the review model works one way: guests can review the accommodation; not the other way around. So, as a landlord, you don't know in advance what kind of guests you are bringing in. This is particularly unpleasant for apartment owners, bed and breakfasts and smaller hotels: they are especially selective about which guests they want to take on. In addition - everyone knows - shows Booking.com for every accommodation you view shows how many people are viewing that accommodation at the same time, when the last room was booked, and how many are left (often only a few...). With this, Booking.com wants to get you to quickly book the accommodation before someone else does. The Advertising Standards Commission designated this messaging as misleading in July 2014.

Booking.com target audience

The biggest advantage of Booking.com is that the website has a huge number of users: the website is used all over the world, and the user base is very diverse: young and old, tourists and business travelers, buying people and budget travelers. The website is available in many languages and even travelers' reviews are translated so that each new user has a good idea of the experiences of previous guests.

Booking.com revenues and rentability

The website's huge audience and visitor numbers mean that virtually every hotel is affiliated with Booking.com. Having their own website or marketing budget may be unnecessary for hotels for this reason: most of their sales come from Booking.com from. Therefore, the influence the website has is quite significant. A common complaint among hoteliers is that Booking.com charges a hefty commission: 15% of the booking amount. Unlike Airbnb and Wimdu, for example (3.6%), this is indeed high. The downside is that the occupancy that a hotelier can achieve through Booking.com generates is higher, allowing for a more optimal return: hotels that are not on Booking.com are by definition missing out on a fair share of their sales.

An advantage for travelers who Booking.com is that you can cancel your booking free of charge up to 24 hours before it starts. It is a condition that Booking.com has imposed on hotels to boost the user-friendliness of the website. So as a hotelier, you won't know where you stand until the last minute. Given the huge number of bookings, the number of cancellations will be limited, although we know stories of travelers who book accommodations well in advance only to scour the Internet a day before departure looking for a hotel room offered at a hefty discount. When that is found, they cancel their reservation through Booking.com...

Booking.com for landlords

A number of advantages and disadvantages for landlords have already been discussed: on the one hand, the good findability of your accommodation (say, a place on the world stage) and a more optimal occupancy vs. revenue; on the other hand, the higher commission, lack of screening possibilities on guests and free cancellations. One thing we haven't mentioned yet is that the landlord is responsible for collecting the booking fee during the stay: Booking.com only collects its own commission up front.

One final tip: travelers who use the website often also check the hotel chain's own website to compare the price of their accommodations. Although every hotelier with Booking.com agreed not to undercut the price of Booking.com price, a hotelier is allowed to offer free extras such as breakfast or a bottle of champagne if you book through their own website. Benefit for the traveler: more value for money; benefit for the landlord: save on commission.

Conclusion

Booking.com is not comparable to platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo that focus on the sharing economy. Nevertheless, a it is an important platform to consider if you are a hotelier or have a short-stay license. Each platform has its pros and cons, an ambitious landlord weighs them carefully and decides for himself which are the most important and bases his choice on that.