What are your experiences with flipkey, trip advisor, agoda and bookings.com ?

[catweazle]

Hi TV lovers!

My Thai wife and I are about to open a small holiday homes resort (8 rental units) with pool near the beach (west coast) in south Thailand soon. Work is progressing well, and we should be good to open in December, but I start to get worried about the whole booking thing. I know the timing is not good, but things in Thailand might change to the better...

Please could the ones of you who run a similar business let me know what your experiences and PROs and CONs of working with flipkey, agoda, bookings.com, etc. are or if you have any better suggestions to reel in bookings, plus how to use things like tripadvisor, etc. and what the DOs and DONTs are. I believe tripadvisor can be heaven or hell for anyone, depending on what clients you get, right?

I am in LOS for 23 years now and have had several businesses which all did quite well, some I sold, some I just closed when I had the feeling that it is time to do something new. Thus I am not a newbie to doing business here, but to the whole accommodation services and bookings thing. If you guys could give me a heads up and reveal some of your tips and tricks to me please, this would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance for your support!

This is my 1.000th post and I wanna make it count. I wish you all the best for your businesses in LOS for the coming season!

Cheers,

Catweazle

[oldsailor35]

From a customer point of view. I have nothing but praise for AGODA, having used them for several years plus others such as Asia Rooms etc., however AGODA is the only one for me now.

[RAZZELL]

OP -

this TV member has/had an hotel in Phuket. Ask him

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/user/174-simon43/

RAZZ

[chatette]

I use TripAdvisor (HolidayLettings runs the database and feeds to TA) and AirBNB booking sites for my beach-side rental, and use AirBNB for my own bookings. Both of them have their pros and cons. I used to prefer TA as the booking engine but now prefer AirBNB as it's made a number of recent upgrades that add value to both end users.

[Katipo]

I use Agoda, and have had no problems with them.

Resort owners I have spoken to (only 2 or 3) have had no problems with them too.

They don't seem to like Booking.com.... think it's because money isn't paid up front and commission is high. Please double check this though.

[brd]

each of the ones you have mentioned are excellent.

Tripadvisor is a MUST.

Agoda knows Asia very well and hotels.,bookings.com, flipkey are also very useful.

do not hesitate and work on the reviews offering your guests an immaculate service to start with.

Have a good business in perspective.

Cheers

[96tehtarp]

each of the ones you have mentioned are excellent.

Tripadvisor is a MUST.

Agoda knows Asia very well and hotels.,bookings.com, flipkey are also very useful.

do not hesitate and work on the reviews offering your guests an immaculate service to start with.

Have a good business in perspective.

Cheers

These booking sites operate very much like social media. The on-line reviews are important. Failing to follow up with online comments can trash your business.

I see quite a number of bad revues for some properties I book. I always give the property management the benefit of the doubt when I see a lot of effort online to resolve the issue or complaint. Everyone knows some customers are difficult to please and it makes a world of difference if the manager makes an effort online.

Good luck to the OP.

[Kaymcdonnell]

I am curious, where is your resort going to be?

[bridge2bridge]

I use trip adviser to check on the reviews of hotels.

But usually book with Booking.com

Never had a problem with them in 10 years.

[ozyjon]

When i travel i write Hotel reviews for Trip advisor

When i book a Hotel i use Agoda

For my own property i use Airbnb for advertising

the secret is to take care of your customers well

and they will review your properties well that will

result in more people going to your resort,, i will

read the people's reviews,, if they are bad i will

avoid the property outright so be warned.

[boriga]

I have had completely the opposite experience managing and marketing a small hotel. Agoda pay very late and have other more onerous terms. Booking.com are much easier to deal with and perform better for us. Basically you have to use them all and see who works well with you and your staff. Play the field and see what fits best.

Agents are good but nothing compares with the ROI on a good simple website, does not have to allow direct booking, though that would be advantageous and promote yourself directly through Google adwords. Costs money but yields strong returns over the long run if not in the short and medium term.

Good luck

[iancnx]

I recommend booking.com. I used to use latestays, but found thai hotels reserved their very worst rooms to offset the lower revenue.

[powerkick]

From a consumer's perspective I've generally (but not always) found that bookings.com has been cheaper than Agoda and Trip Advisor. The only thing I don't like is the BS about the number of rooms available. Every time I've booked there have been numerous vacant rooms around me even though T.A., B.C., and Agoda says only 1 room available.

[tezzainthailand]

From a customer point of view. I have nothing but praise for AGODA, having used them for several years plus others such as Asia Rooms etc., however AGODA is the only one for me now.

I can second that. I Have been using Agoda for the last 18 months, They have a good summary of each hotel, location and reviews. I have checked in to about 10-12 locations now, and all have been fuss free check-ins.

I have no reason to change to another booking company.

[mattyrocks]

Thai love to use agoda to book with. As they love the points. But they will take commission and payment can take 30 days. Booking.com is popular do to no payment before hand. Same owners as agoda. The other option is your own website but then you will need to spend on payment gateways and key words for people to find it on the web. Best bet is go with agoda and then see how that goes . Start on your own website and get all the details of guests who stay and get them to book direct next time.

I work in a 5* hotel and agoda is very popular. It's very hard to get guests to book direct with all the online OTA on the market. But most 4* and 5* hotels use lower grade rooms to people who don't book direct as you lose more revenue with the commission they charge.

[freebyrd]

No problems for me with Agoda thus far.

[nomad127]

Agoda has been generally good to me for quite a few years, though I do find that some hotels give us the oldest/worst room in the place, not all the time, but sometimes. I still use them, especially when comparing, but have drifted towards booking.com more now.

[JacChang]

catweazle

As much as people will tell you about the costs and etc. with each booking site. Remember, you are using a service. We don't use a service because of it's low cost and convenience. But we use a service which will give us the most money earning potential. What I am saying is, there could be a booking website which is the lowest in terms of cost. But how many customers will it bring? And what type of customers will it bring? These are the questions I think are more important to you as the owner of the business.

Personally I always use Agoda, the website layout, the customer service reply, has always given me the impression of "google". When I need to search something, it's google, the page loads fast, it's clear and concise, no bs. Whereas, if I use yahoo like 20 years ago, we see this unnecessary loading of gazillion of clickable buttons just to use a basic "search". Other booking websites give me that impression. The agoda format is very friendly to use and straight to the point. On top of that, they recently started offering additional discount of up to 7-15% by certain credit cards on top of the agoda discounts. So by far, they are cheaper, and I've stopped comparing with other websites, as I just directly resort to Agoda for all my travelling needs.

[MobileContent]

Agoda and Booking.com is the way to go. Important would be to know what kind of category you offer. 3/4/5 stars or a boutique property.

I do see a small problem as you only have 8 units and you need to make some kind of allotments to them or make sure you update the inventory on a daily basis.

Hopefully your property is not based in Phuket or Samui as it would be very difficult to make it to page 1 or 2 of their search results.

I know hotels in Thailand that pay 30% to make it on Page 1 but I can tell you they easily fill up 30-40 rooms last year.

Since the South has peak tourism starting in a few months time, make sure you start approaching them ASAP.

[DamienG]

As a regular overseas traveler I have tried the majority, but my overall preference and satisfaction has got to be Agoda. I have never had a problem to date.

Hope this is of some help.

Best of luck mate.

[blundaman]

Have worked both sides of the biz for some years and found Trip Advisor the best funnel for both researching and harvesting bookings. As a booking supplier Agoda wins hands down for a "one-button", client friendly operation, always ready to work the stick professionally to earn their commission and also has a pretty straightforward online payment system, entirely up to your schedule. Booking.com requires more papperwerk overhead to manage an operation and was repeatedly lax on the job when any correction was required, to the point of being very pushy ..so i pissed em off ...it is the hospitality industry after all ;-) Travelmob is pretty cool with minimal commission on room sales, Wotif/Latestays also quite good, some other local operators are fairly shabby imho

[JoeLing]

I use HostelBookers since many years for bookings at our bungalows. They used to be very efficient
but since they merged with HostelWorld which is now managed from China, I'm not too happy any
more as they started charging 15% (up from 10%) and are not as reliable as they used to be. Since
the merger, they forgot several times to send me customers booking details and the customers didn't
get their confirmation mail. Still, one reason I use HostelBookers is that they charge commission direct
to the customers and I have absolute no financial connection to them.

Back in time, I used to use Websawadee.com but they ask for yearly payment for the advertising, then
charge us commission (not entirely sure any more but think it was around 20%) for bookings.

For last year (2013), 76% of our customers did book accommodation at our place because the excellent
reviews we have on TripAdvisor, most of them did book via HostelBookers. 16% of our customers come
through recommendation of previous customers and around 8% are returning customers.

Agoda and Booking.com are just too expensive for my small guesthouse/bungalows.

Good luck and loads of success

[MarkyM3]

From a end-user's perspective, I have used several booking engines.

Agoda many times across Asia, Europe and USA with good results. They have a loyalty points scheme as we well, which is pretty good. There is always the risk that by pre-booking you won't get the room you want (you can put a wish-list in your booking request) but I suspect this is ignored by the hotelier rather than the fault of Agoda. Customer services are responsive and polite as well.

Have used sawasdee.com in Thailand with good results as well. Booking,com OK in Europe.

Hotels.com I used once and will never touch again -

I took my elderly mum to the USA earlier this sumer to visit my sister. Due to severe weather in the mid-west, we missed our connection back to Europe. Delta Airlines then screwed up big-time but that's a different story. I was referred to hotels.com byDelta customer services so we could find somewhere to sleep. So I spent $200 on one of the last rooms in town plus $80 taxi fare tp get out there. Upon arrival, we found no room and a lobby filled with several other pissed-off customers in the same boat. Front desk said hotels.com were at fault - they'd told them the place was full hours ago. Paid another $80 back to MSP to sleep in chairs as no other rooms in town..

When I got back to UK, hotels.com customer service (which appears to be an Indian call-centre) were not interested and pretty hostile, alternately claiming the reservation didn't exist (despite my card being billed and having email confirmation) or telling me to ring back in 3 days when the system worked! I had to get Delta to intervene to get my money returned. The wasted $160 taxi fares I am trying to claim from insurance as no-one admits liability.

Hope this helps.

[Don Aleman]

I have used/relied on Agoda for the last 15 years and find them super efficient in what they do and forgiving when I screw up -- an unbeatable combination !

[nsimmons]

They are pretty much a scam in some ways. At the start you could have "contact owner for availability", and just be a paid member for those leads.

Now they won't divulge the clients real email address, and make you communicate only thru them, and they now insist on taking the money!

Before you could charge the client via Paypal, but now they take the money from the guest/client, and then pay you only when the guest arrives! This way they often have the guests money for months before you get paid. Agoda is the worst, they promote that they get you (the guest) up to 70% off normal rates! But how could they? Say the room/apartment is $100per night, how can they get it for you for $30? This is how, the renter (me) puts highly inflated rates on my own website of say $200 per night (when really it is/was $100) and then you see Agoda's rate of $100 and seems like 50% off! But really they got you the normal rate. Also, the more you "give" Agoda, the higher you are in their listings. At one time we did give them a true 15% off normal rates, but those that gave them say 20% off were put much higher in their listings (for Phuket), and if you gave them 25% off you were listed higher still!

I own/promote http://www.BaanPuriPhuket.com/ , with my own website and have very good reviews at Trip Advisor, but due to them

taking the money, and not letting you deal direct with the guest, I get few bookings that way anymore.

Your own website promoted on Google Adwords is probably the best, if you want to have your true rates on the site and not be part of the

"discounted rates" scam.

Good luck!

NS

[catweazle]

Dear all,

thanks a lot for the comprehensive and useful info received so far! To answer the questions contained in a few posts: The resort is located in Khao Lak, and it is a boutique kind of holiday home place with 3 apartments/studios and 5 houses with 2br and kitchen each. Quite posh, but no stars

Cheers,

Catweazle

[eeeya]

My parents booked centara grand hotel in Bkk above central world for a week. Needed to change the dates after booking and it was a bit of a problem. Other than that agoda has served us right for many years now, don't bother with anything else

[NoshowJones]

OP -

this TV member has/had an hotel in Phuket. Ask him

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/user/174-simon43/

RAZZ

Yes, Agoda, they are the ones who use the small print and hope you don't notice.

[ripper15]

As a consumer, I have found that using tripadvisor, agoda and booking.com to find places and reviews helpful. But try to book directly with the establishment for the best rate. Same with the airlines.

[1FinickyOne]

The most heartfelt reviews that I see, are ones where they met the owners and felt that they were sincerely concerned that they enjoyed their stay.

and yes, I frequently use agoda - never a problem.