Pricing Hack that you can do right now on Booking.com

Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 129. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about a pricing Hack that you can do right now on Booking.com.

Here's the audio for this episode:

Here's the video for this episode:

Timestamp

00:00 Start
02:30 The power of 360 pictures
03:20 Recording on the way to the apartment
04:00 What we did

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Transcript from the Episode

Welcome back to the Boostly podcast everybody. And for those of you that have been here for a while, you will know that I have been working with a local host here in Javier to help them try and get bookings for an apartment that they are finding it tricky to shift and get bookings for. So over the last couple of days, what I've been doing is we've been focusing on making sure that all the bases are in play. Now the ideal goal here is to get bookings in directly. But as I've always said, You've got to make the otas work for you when you need them the most. This is a real benefit of being listed on there is you can take advantage of the millions of people that use their site on a daily basis. We started off by doing a search on Google, first and foremost to make sure that they are listed on all of the websites that are coming up first and prominently and the 80-20 rule sold at 80% of sites. So 20% of sites are kind of a person at a time we boxed off, we found out more about their customer avatar. So we found out that again with their guests, they are predominantly Dutch. But the other sites are very compiled by Airbnb and booking.com. So we fixed the Airbnb listing, we optimized it. So not only will it be more visible in the search rankings of Airbnb, but also as well we emphasize right at the very start, that this is a property management company. And it's not just somebody doing it as a hobby.

What we will do today

Now we're focusing on booking.com. And we've optimized their listing. We did that a little bit yesterday with the 360 picture and today I'm going to show you a nice little hack. And this hack will mean that not only will you become higher in the search rankings, but you can also make more money as well. Now as we know booking.com, Airbnb etc charge a commission. Normally the commission starts at 15%. And what most hosts do to offset this is that they put the price up on these otas. Now something that you've got to bear in mind here is that people that use booking.com they are willing to spend more money because again people think of booking.com as being a website that is more professional. Airbnb people are looking for bargains because again, they think it's just people doing this as a hobby or you know, crashing in a spare room, a lot of the times, they still don't realize that the property management companies are using their sites as well. So this is what we're going to do. And a really cool hack is that you can really put your prices up on booking.com. And there's a really nice thing that you can do to make sure that you come up high in the rankings.

Now, for full context, you've got to check your local price parity rules. So for some countries in around the world, this isn't an issue. But in some countries, there still is a case price parity is something that is going to be going out very soon, all over the world. But when you sign a contract with the likes of booking.com, you are basically saying that the price that is visible on there is going to be the same price. It's around the internet. Now, again, this is going out. In Spain, we don't have this problem, thankfully. So that's one part of context.

The second part of the context is that Casa4U their channel manager right now is Lodgify. So what we're able to do with part of the PMS and the channel manager is do this hack that I'm about to show you, it may be a case that your PMS won't allow this. If so, find out how you can maybe do about by contacting them directly. So let's just dive in.

Mark-up prices

So what I've done is I've shared my screen. And right now we are on the lodgify extranet. So this is the back end, I've gone into the channel manager section, I've clicked on booking.com. Now what I want to show you right here is the markup. So what we're able to do is we're able to mark up the listing on booking.com. And we can mark it as much as you want. And we've gone for 50% markup, and we were just testing, we're testing and trialing this. Now, to give you an example, we tested 50%. And a booking has already come in. So again, people don't mind spending more money. Now again, another part of the context of this, which is really important I want to share with you is that the time of the year is important as well. We are right now, end of June, early July, Spain is currently coming out of the pandemic, borders are open and people are able to travel again, there's a lot of pent up demand Javier is a very popular tourist destination. And people are now trying to get here. The people that predominantly use booking.com will be Europeans. English people use it, Dutch people use it, and Spanish people use it. Okay.

So again, you got to bear in all the context around this. But what we're doing is we're marking it up 50% As you can see, now, when you do the markup of 50%, what you're able to then do is say for example, the rate is 100 pound a night base rate on your website by marking up 50%. Then what you're able to do then is you're able to go right well now we're able to look into the opportunities section. So let me just go quickly into the opportunity section of booking.com.

Now, as we can see, right here booking.com loves to throw opportunities at you to give them more money or more incentives. And a couple of the ones that they like to put in front of you will be getaway deals, mobile phone deals, etc. You know, you've got the genius program, etc, etc. They're always looking to try and offer you something that you can get more visible. Now, because you've bookmarked it by 50%, you can actually get involved in these. Normally, if it's your base rate, I say to steer clear of these every time. But this is why I talk about making the otas work for you when you need it most. Because you've now marked it up 50% you've got some room here to work on an opportunity. The mobile phone one for example, a lot of the people will use their mobile phone when booking on booking.com first. And so while booking.com do is they give them a mobile phone discount. You can also put in a staycation discount. Now I wouldn't recommend in bulk in all these in one go because it can get to a point where actually you're losing money. But if you can just choose one of them have a look at the ones that make sense, the ones that are going to make you visible. And what I always recommend that you do is you go on the front end of booking.com go and look in your local area. And what I would recommend that you do is to see well what are other hosts in the area? What advantages what other options have they taken advantage of?

So if I were to go on to booking.com right now, let me go into the front end like I have done here. Okay, let me just see if what the popular filters and we've got the things to do and the deal so I'm going to factor in all deals. So four properties there are four deals out of all of the units that are in there. So if I go back one, there was how many options 99 properties found, okay. And bearing in mind what I've done is I've done a week long search around about the same amount of people that the property may attract now this can sleep up to Six people. So I just put five adults in. Like so. And I'm going to put in another filter for apartment cuz they're going to want to be around a similar niche. So let me just see we've got 18 options found. And there are no deals. So again, by simply doing one deal here, what it means is that my property will be able to be stand out right at the very top.

So again, you've always got to bear in mind the context around anything that we're talking about here, number one, we've got marked by 50%. Now we can utilize their boosters or their deals or their opportunities to be more visible. So instantly, by doing so, and doing a tiny little bit of research on the front end, I know that I can go to Jeanette and Tim and saying, right, let's add in this opportunity, and we're going to be more visible. And you can put a 15,20 25% discount on that. And you still got a 25% upmark than what your normal base rate is, which is really beneficial to you to do so.

And again, you've got to add in the context time of the year, people pay more on booking.com. And the beauty of it is is that if somebody sees that listing, and they do a little bit of research on Google, and they find our property directly, and on the website, we've got best rates when booked direct, and what they're going to do pick up the phone and give you a call.

So that is a pricing hack for booking.com. Go Feel free to use it as much as you want. This is part of a little series I'm running called Boostly tuneup.

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